MDSolarSciences MD Creme Mineral Beauty Balm

I was looking around on Dermstore's website and came across MDSolarScience's MD Creme Mineral Beauty Balm.

It is a tinted moisturizer, but this part of the product details really got me:  "Lightweight and silky smooth to the touch, each application instantly conceals imperfections, controls shine and enhances skin tone for a perfectly polished, matte complexion." What? Conceals imperfections, controls shine and can achieve a matte finish? Sign me up!

I got the MD Creme Mineral Beauty Balm in Light/Medium. It comes in a small tube that holds 1.23 oz of product. It has all physical sunscreen, including both zinc oxide and titanium dioxide. It is SPF 50. The texture of this product is very slippy. Dimethicone is the first ingredient, so that makes sense. It has that unscented scent, if you know what I mean, but it fades away after application and is not bothersome. It is a gel cream and comes out of the tube a light beige color, but once you blend it in, it pretty much disappears on the skin. Here are some swatches.

Inside, no flash:

 Inside, with flash:

 Outside, no flash:

Blended in very well on my NW15 forearm - outside, no flash:

This beauty balm has a lot of pros, as well as some cons. Let's look at the pros first. When you first apply it, it blends in like a dream. It feels like a makeup primer, due to the high dimethicone content. It isn't chalky and doesn't look white on the skin. My skin is NW20 and it blended right in with no obvious lines or color match issues. It had a slight blurring effect, but was completely sheer. The finish is pretty matte, but I still added loose powder over the top. It didn't have an offensive smell and my makeup went on nicely over it without balling up. It also didn't make me break out!

I really enjoyed wearing this beauty balm, except for a few problems. The first problem is that it never really sets. This led to issues with my undereye concealer. I apply my sunscreen to my face, neck and all around my eyes under my makeup. I then apply cream concealer to my dark undereye cirlces and set it with loose powder. This usually works with no problems with my normal sunscreen (Skinceuticals SPF 50 Fusion and Sheer Physical mixed together), but with the MDSolarSciences product, I had significant creasing under my eyes. The next problem was that it didn't really cover any imperfections. I still needed concealer and foundation. The last and most troubling issue was that it really sucked the moisture out of my skin. I noticed this especially around my nose and mouth. So much so, that it made me want to wash my face at about dinnertime and apply moisturizer. (I usually wash my face right before bed.)

So, unfortunately, the MDSolarSciences Creme Mineral Beauty Balm didn't work out for me. I could see it being a nice option for someone with oilier skin than mine that just wanted something easy to wear for sun protection and didn't want to wear concealer around the eye area. My skin, unfortunately, didn't like this product.

Be sure to check out my demo and review on YouTube!