CVS Sensitive Skin Beauty Bar (Unscented) soap review

Discussion in 'Shave Soaps' started by Shaver X, Jun 8, 2014.

  1. Shaver X

    Shaver X Well-Known Member

    CVS Sensitive Skin Beauty Bar (Unscented) soap review

    Yup, this is a review for a store brand bath soap used as a shaving soap. Most bath soaps fail badly when used for shaving, but there are a few exceptions. Savon de Marseille olive oil soaps work well for wetshaving, as does Dove. CVS sells the Sensitive Skin Beauty Bar as a store brand counterpart to Dove Sensitive Skin Unscented Beauty Bar. Just for the heck of it, I decided to see how the CVS soap works for shaving. As it turns out, it works much better than expected.

    I have used this soap four days running with an Edwin Jagger DE89L razor and a Voskhod blade. Every shave was baby-bottom smooth and irritation-free.

    CVS website: www.cvs.com

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    Overall: (8.7/10)

    This bath soap works surpisingly well for shaving. It is efficacious, very affordable and widely available. An added bonus is that you do not need to purchase separate shaving and bath soaps. In the event there are no CVS stores nearby, the the soap can also be ordered online.


    Ease of lathering: (8/10)

    A creamy lather can very quickly and readily be obtained from the CVS soap, even with a floppy badger brush. A boar brush works even better. The lather is less thick and rich than that from top drawer shave soaps. Despite this, it worked quite well. A short time swirling the brush on the soap yielded enough lather to last for four shaving passes, with enough left over for at least one more pass.

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    Life span of lather: (7/10)

    Once applied to the face, the lather starts to disappear rather quickly. At first I thought it was going to be like so many shave soaps where the lather vanishes in zero seconds flat, and is thereafter useless. Such was not to be the case with the CVS Sensitive Skin Beauty Bar, however. Although the lather did start to vanish, the process soon stopped and left a half-vanished, half-there lather. It remained this way for some time thereafter, allowing plenty of opportunity to finish each shaving pass. Rather odd, but it resulted in great shaves. While not getting stellar marks in this category, the soap also does not merit a poor rating.


    General skincare: (8/10)

    The skincare quite good, although not extraordinary. My face felt fine and dandy after the shave thanks to the soap. This is expected from a product that sold as a sensitive skin beauty bar, and the CVS soap delivers.


    Lubrication: (8/10)

    The lather is no slouch in the slickness department, and the razor glides over my face with no dragging or pulling. In combination with the soap's protective qualities, it was enough to deliver a pleasant, absolutely baby-bottom smooth four pass shave. Wow, I mean just wow! It was put a big 'ol grin on yer face, mind-blowing excellent. Well into the afternoon, my face is still super smooth from this morning's shave. The other shaves were pretty much the same.


    How protective: (10/10)

    Now this was the most surprising part: The CVS Sensitive Skin Beauty Bar is one of the most protective soaps I have ever used. No irritation, nicks or cuts at all, just a nice, comfortable shave. It works even better in this regard than the Valobra shave soap, which is no mean feat. In my experience, only Prairie Creations Tallow and Lanolin and Kell's Original Hemp Blend are as protective as the CVS soap.


    Scent: (N/A)

    The soap is sold as unscented, and so has no scent other than that from the ingredients. To me, it smells like a barely detectable unscented sun block cream. The soap being unscented and smelling unscented, no numerical rating is given for this category. Looking at the list of ingredients, it appears that some do have a scent. Maybe "unscented" means formulated to smell unscented?


    Price: (10/10)

    Two 4 ounce (113 grams) soap bars cost $2.99. That is way beyond dirt cheap for a shaving soap. Given the soap's fine peformance, it represents a fantastic value for the money.


    Would you buy again: (10/10)

    Oh yeah! That is because this soap works very well and is inexpensive. Why would I pay more for purpose-made shave soaps that don't work any better?


    Soap ingredients:

    From the wrapper on the package:

    Sodium Tallowate, Sodium Cocoate or Sodium Palm Kernelate, Water, Glycerine, Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate or Sodium Lauroyl Isethionat, Glycine Soja (Soybean) Oil, Stearic Acid, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Aniba Rosaeodora (Rosewood) Oil, Juniperus Mexicana Oil, Rosa Damascena Flower Oil, Cocomidopropyl Betaine, Titanium Dioxide, Coconut Acid or Lauric Acid, Sodium Isethionate, Sodium Chloride, Ethelyne/VA Copolymer or PEG-12 or PEG-8, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Pentasodium Pentetate


    Brushes used:

    Dovo 918052 pure badger
    Omega 50014 boar travel brush

    Note that although the Dovo brush is sold as a pure badger, the brush characteristics and cost indicate that it is actually a better grade then pure.


    My water hardness:

    62 ppm as CaCO3 (moderately hard)

    The water hardness was taken from my utility's latest water quality annual report. The scale below was used to correlate water ppm to the soft/hard rating, and is from the US Geological Survey website.

    Water hardness scale (as CaCO3):

    0-60 mg/l: Soft
    61-120 mg/l: Moderately hard
    121-180 mg/l: Hard
    Over 180 mg/l: Very hard

    mg/l is milligrams per liter
    Some utilities give water hardness in parts per million (ppm)
    1 mg/l = 1 ppm (not exactly, but very, very close)
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2018
  2. Dapper-in-a-can-man

    Dapper-in-a-can-man and Dad-on-hand

    My only drawback is the lather on the face; for the price it's worth it I reckon.
     
    PatrickA51 likes this.
  3. PatrickA51

    PatrickA51 Well-Known Member

    Well written review. Thanks for posting it.
     

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