If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you would know Miniso is one of my favourite places to spend money in Lagos. I practically leave the store, wondering where my money has gone. They have everything from bags to makeup to household appliances, power banks, phone cords, you name it…

They also have a range of skincare products. After reading Uzzy Mali’s of their hydrating toner, I went to their store in Maryland Mall to get mine. It was sold out but I got this moisturizing lotion instead.

Keep reading to see if this moisturizer is worth the buy or nah.

Product Description

Enriched with deep and intensive moisturizing essence. Enhance skin tone. Leaves skin moisturized, supple and smooth.

Usage: Apply appropriate amount of the product to face after cleansing and toner, gently pat for complete absorption.

Review

This lotion comes in a transparent cylindrical plastic bottle with a nice wood-like cap, which makes it look so bougie. I like the dispenser[which is about 0.5 cm in diameter] because it doesn’t dispense too much product. It contains 85ml of product, which is great[especially for the price].

The product itself is white in colour and very light in texture and consistency. It does not have a particular fragrance to it, which is nice.

It absorbs nicely into the skin and doesn’t leave the skin feeling shiny or oily when applied. My skin looks supple after I’ve applied it.

However, I wish this lotion contained SPF. It doesn’t, which limits it to night time only[or daytime, if you prefer to layer SPF on top].

It contains aqua, glycerin and some other humectants as ingredients, which make it a great moisturizer. I also like that it doesn’t contain parabens.

One thing I noticed is that it does contain dimethicone. I did a little research and dimethicone is a chemical in makeup and skincare that smoothes out the skin. It can also clog pores and dry out the skin, making it less suitable for sensitive, oily and acne-prone skin. Check out these facts for and against dimethicone as an ingredient.

Verdict

I like this lotion a lot especially in combination with my . Combined, I call them the moisture bomb. It hydrates my skin really well.

However, it is not of benefit to people with acne-prone skin and hyperpigmentation, because it doesn’t contain active ingredients that combat those problems.

I like it as a great night time moisturizer and the last step in my night time skincare routine.

Price: N1490

Where to buy: Miniso Stores worldwide

Have you used any product from the Miniso Skincare range? Leave a comment sharing your experience…

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Ifedayo xx

My name is Ifedayo and I am a beauty enthusiast living in Lagos, Nigeria. I have always been enthralled by the confidence that beauty inspires. With the right makeup, skincare and beauty regimen, I believe that women can be the most beautiful and best versions of themselves. I started this blog to empower Nigerian women to "bring forth" their inner beauty. I hope you enjoy reading my posts as much as I enjoy writing them. For product reviews and collaborations, you can contact me via email at: amakeupjunkiesblog@gmail.com Happy reading! View all posts by Ifedayo Balogun

Lightweight and nourishing formula, enriched with multiple plant extracts. Provide abundant moisture and nutrition for your skin to make it supple, soft and hydrated.

Uploaded by: abujiu on 03/09/2020

Ingredients overview

Aqua,Butylene Glycol,Dimethicone,Betaine,Isononyl Isononanoate,Hamamelis Virginiana Extract,Aloe Yohjyu Matsu Ekisu,Silica,Acrylates/​C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer,Hydroxyethyl Acrylate/​Sodium Acryloyldimethyl Taurate Copolymer,Bis-PEG/​PPG-16/​16 PEG/​PPG-16/​16 Dimethicone,Xanthan Gum,Potassium Hydroxide,Caprylic/​Capric Triglyceride,Sodium Hyaluronate,Sclerotium Gum,Polysorbate 60,Sorbitan Isostearate,Phenoxyethanol,Chlorphenesin,Methylparaben,Diazolidinyl Urea,Aroma,Ci 42053

Highlights

alcohol-free

Key Ingredients

Other Ingredients

Skim through

Ingredient name what-it-doesirr.,com. ID-Rating Aqua solvent Butylene Glycol moisturizer/​humectant, solvent0,1 Dimethicone emollient0,1 Betaine moisturizer/​humectantgoodie Isononyl Isononanoate emollient Hamamelis Virginiana Extract soothing, antioxidant, antimicrobial/​antibacterialgoodie Aloe Yohjyu Matsu Ekisu emollient, moisturizer/​humectant Silica viscosity controlling Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer viscosity controlling Hydroxyethyl Acrylate/Sodium Acryloyldimethyl Taurate Copolymer viscosity controlling Bis-PEG/PPG-16/16 PEG/PPG-16/16 Dimethicone emollient, emulsifying, surfactant/​cleansing Xanthan Gum viscosity controlling Potassium Hydroxide buffering Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride emollient Sodium Hyaluronate skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/​humectant0,0 goodie Sclerotium Gum viscosity controlling Polysorbate 60 emulsifying, surfactant/​cleansing Sorbitan Isostearate emulsifying0,1-2 Phenoxyethanol preservative Chlorphenesin preservative, antimicrobial/​antibacterial Methylparaben preservative0,0 Diazolidinyl Urea preservativeicky Aroma Ci 42053 colorant

MINISO Aloe Vera Moisturizing Cream

Ingredients explained

Also-called: Water | What-it-does: solvent

Good old water, aka H2O. The most common skincare ingredient of all. You can usually find it right in the very first spot of the ingredient list, meaning it’s the biggest thing out of all the stuff that makes up the product.

It’s mainly a solvent for ingredients that do not like to dissolve in oils but rather in water.

Once inside the skin, it hydrates, but not from the outside - putting pure water on the skin [hello long baths!] is drying.

One more thing: the water used in cosmetics is purified and deionized [it means that almost all of the mineral ions inside it is removed]. Like this, the products can stay more stable over time.

Butylene glycol, or let’s just call it BG, is a multi-tasking colorless, syrupy liquid. It’s a great pick for creating a nice feeling product.

BG’s main job is usually to be a solvent for the other ingredients. Other tasks include helping the product to absorb faster and deeper into the skin [penetration enhancer], making the product spread nicely over the skin [slip agent], and attracting water [humectant] into the skin.

It’s an ingredient whose safety hasn’t been questioned so far by anyone [at least not that we know about]. BG is approved by Ecocert and is also used enthusiastically in natural products. BTW, it’s also a food additive.

What-it-does: emollient | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 1

Probably the most common silicone of all. It is a polymer [created from repeating subunits] molecule and has different molecular weight and thus different viscosity versions from water-light to thick liquid.

As for skincare, it makes the skin silky smooth, creates a subtle gloss and forms a protective barrier [aka occlusive]. Also, works well to fill in fine lines and wrinkles and give skin a plump look [of course that is only temporary, but still, it's nice]. There are also scar treatment gels out there using dimethicone as their base ingredient. It helps to soften scars and increase their elasticity.

As for hair care, it is a non-volatile silicone meaning that it stays on the hair rather than evaporates from it and smoothes the hair like no other thing. Depending on your hair type, it can be a bit difficult to wash out and might cause some build-up [btw, this is not true to all silicones, only the non-volatile types].

A sugar beet-derived amino acid derivative with nice skin protection and moisturization properties. Betaine's special thing is being an osmolyte, a molecule that helps to control cell-water balance. It is also a natural osmoprotectant, meaning that it attracts water away from the protein surface and thus protects them from denaturation and increases their thermodynamic stability.

It also gives sensorial benefits to the formula and when used in cleansers, it helps to make them milder and gentler.

An emollient ester with a rich and creamy but non-greasy skin feel. It makes skin supple and protects dry skin.

Witch hazel is a smallish tree [up to 5m] that's native to North-America, has nice yellow flowers and is similar to the hazelnut bush [hence the name].

As for skincare, it's loaded with active components that have a bunch of magic properties, like astringent, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-bacterial. It's also a well-known vasoconstrictor [it makes the blood vessels narrower] and promotes the healing of broken skin by tightening up the skin proteins and thus creating a protective covering.

The complication, however, is that different extracts and distillates can be made from different parts of the plant [bark, twigs, and leaves are typically used] and different extraction methods from different parts produce different results. So if you see only Witch Hazel Extract or Witch Hazel Water on the ingredient list, it's a bit hard to know what you're actually getting but we will try to summarize the possibilities to give an idea.

The main biologically active components in Witch Hazel are hamamelitannin [a potent astringent and antioxidant], catechins [anti-inflammatory and antioxidant] and gallic acid [antibacterial]. The bark extract contains by far the most hamamelitannin and it has the most gallic acid and catechins. The twigs contain fewer catechins, less gallic acid, and much less hamamelitannin [4.77% vs 0.18%]. The leaves contain hardly any tannins [0.04%] or catechins and contain a medium amount of gallic acid [compared to the bark and twigs].

Witch Hazel also contains tiny amounts of the essential oil and fragrance component eugenol, but the amount is so small that it's probably not significant for the skin.

Apart from the differences in active components in different parts of the Witch Hazel bush, the extraction methods also vary. Witch Hazel Distillate contains 14% added alcohol according to the USP specifications and alcohol is, at best drying, and at worst skin-damaging. Luckily, there are also alcohol-free distillates, so if you prefer no alcohol check the ingredient list carefully. Witch Hazel Extracts can also be made in different ways: browsing Ulprospector, we could find hydroglycolic, hydroalcoholic and glicerine/water based extracts.

Well-known skin care expert, Paula Begoun rates witch hazel as poor and says, "depending on the form of witch hazel, you’re exposing your skin either to a sensitizing amount of alcohol or to tannins, or both." This might be the case if you are dealing with an alcoholic witch hazel bark water or extract, but looking at CosIng [the official INCI name listing of the EU], witch hazel bark water or witch hazel bark extract are not listed ingredients. Bark and leaf or bark and twig or all three are used together to create extracts, so the chance that there is too much hamamelitannin in the final cosmetic ingredient seems small. Also alcohol-free extracts and distillates exist; actually, the majority seem to be alcohol-free nowadays. So all in all, we think "Hamamelis Virginiana Extract" on the ingredient list is nothing to worry about.

We even found a German study that compared the efficacy of Hamamelis ointment to panthenol ointment for soothing the skin in children [from 27 days to 11 years old]. They observed 309 children and concluded that both ointments were similarly effective but the one with Hamamelis was even better tolerated [98.2% vs. 92.3% tolerated well the ointments in the two groups].

All in all, Witch Hazel Extract is a sloppy INCI name [btw, not in the CosIng listing], and you do not really know what you're getting. Most probably though, you are getting a goody with nice astringent, soothing, antibacterial, and even antioxidant properties.

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

A white powdery thing that's the major component of glass and sand. In cosmetics, it’s often in products that are supposed to keep your skin matte as it has great oil-absorbing abilities. It’s also used as a helper ingredient to thicken up products or suspend insoluble particles.

Though its long name does not reveal it, this polymer molecule [big molecule from repeated subunits or monomers] is a relative to the super common, water-loving thickener, Carbomer. Both of them are big molecules that contain acrylic acid units, but Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer also contains some other monomers that are hydrophobic, i.e. water-hating.

This means that our molecule is part water- and part oil-loving, so it not only works as a thickener but also as an emulsion stabilizer. It is very common in gel-type formulas that also contain an oil-phase as well as in cleansers as it also works with most cleansing agents [unlike a lot of other thickeners].

This long-named, polymer molecule [big molecule from repeated subunits] is a helper ingredient that's good at emulsifying and stabilizing oils into water-based formulas. It also acts as a thickening and gelling agent that creates nice, non-sticky and supple textures. It works over a very wide pH range [3-12] and can be used to thicken up low-ph formulas, such as exfoliants. Its recommended used range is 0.3-3%.

We don't have description for this ingredient yet.

It's one of the most commonly used thickeners and emulsion stabilizers. If the product is too runny, a little xanthan gum will make it more gel-like. Used alone, it can make the formula sticky and it is a good team player so it is usually combined with other thickeners and so-called rheology modifiers [helper ingredients that adjust the flow and thus the feel of the formula]. The typical use level of Xantha Gum is below 1%, it is usually in the 0.1-0.5% range.

Btw, Xanthan gum is all natural, a chain of sugar molecules [polysaccharide] produced from individual sugar molecules [glucose and sucrose] via fermentation. It’s approved by Ecocert and also used in the food industry [E415].

It's a very alkaline stuff that helps to set the pH of the cosmetic formula to be just right. It's similar to the more often used sodium hydroxide and pretty much the same of what we wrote there applies here too.

A super common emollient that makes your skin feel nice and smooth. It comes from coconut oil and glycerin, it’s light-textured, clear, odorless and non-greasy. It’s a nice ingredient that just feels good on the skin, is super well tolerated by every skin type and easy to formulate with. No wonder it’s popular.

It’s the - sodium form - cousin of the famous NMF, hyaluronic acid [HA]. If HA does not tell you anything we have a super detailed, geeky explanation about it here. The TL; DR version of HA is that it's a huge polymer [big molecule from repeated subunits] found in the skin that acts as a sponge helping the skin to hold onto water, being plump and elastic. HA is famous for its crazy water holding capacity as it can bind up to 1000 times its own weight in water.

As far as skincare goes, sodium hyaluronate and hyaluronic acid are pretty much the same and the two names are used interchangeably. As cosmetic chemist kindofstephen writes on reddit "sodium hyaluronate disassociates into hyaluronic acid molecule and a sodium atom in solution".

In spite of this, if you search for "hyaluronic acid vs sodium hyaluronate" you will find on multiple places that sodium hyaluronate is smaller and can penetrate the skin better. Chemically, this is definitely not true, as the two forms are almost the same, both are polymers and the subunits can be repeated in both forms as much as you like. [We also checked Prospector for sodium hyaluronate versions actually used in cosmetic products and found that the most common molecular weight was 1.5-1.8 million Da that absolutely counts as high molecular weight].

What seems to be a true difference, though, is that the salt form is more stable, easier to formulate and cheaper so it pops up more often on the ingredient lists.

If you wanna become a real HA-and-the-skin expert you can read way more about the topic at hyaluronic acid [including penetration-questions, differences between high and low molecular weight versions and a bunch of references to scientific literature].

A big sugar molecule [polysaccharide] that is used as a natural thickening and gelling agent. It is similar to more commonly used Xanthan Gum, and the two are also often combined to create gel formulas or to stabilize emulsions.

A common little helper ingredient that helps water and oil to mix together, aka emulsifier.

What-it-does: emulsifying | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 1-2

A handy helper ingredient that helps water and oil to mix nicely together, aka emulsifier. It is especially recommended for protective, baby care and general purpose emollient creams.

It also helps to disperse insoluble particles [think color pigments or zinc/titanium dioxide sunscreen] nice and even in cosmetic formulas.

It’s pretty much the current IT-preservative. It’s safe and gentle, but even more importantly, it’s not a feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason paraben.

It’s not something new: it was introduced around 1950 and today it can be used up to 1% worldwide. It can be found in nature - in green tea - but the version used in cosmetics is synthetic.

Other than having a good safety profile and being quite gentle to the skin it has some other advantages too. It can be used in many types of formulations as it has great thermal stability [can be heated up to 85°C] and works on a wide range of pH levels [ph 3-10].

It’s often used together with ethylhexylglycerin as it nicely improves the preservative activity of phenoxyethanol.

A little helper ingredient that works as a preservative. It works against bacteria and some species of fungi and yeast. It's often combined with IT-preservative, phenoxyethanol.

What-it-does: preservative | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0

The most common type of feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason parabens. It's a cheap, effective and well-tolerated ingredient to make sure the cosmetic formula does not go wrong too soon.

Apart from the general controversy around parabens [we wrote about it more here], there is a 2006 in-vitro [made in the lab not on real people] research about methylparaben [MP] showing that when exposed to sunlight, MP treated skin cells suffered more harm than non-MP treated skin cells. The study was not done with real people on real skin but still - using a good sunscreen next to MP containing products is a good idea. [Well, in fact using a sunscreen is always a good idea. :]]

An antimicrobial preservative that helps your products not to go wrong too quickly. It works especially well against bacteria, specifically gram-negative species, yeast, and mold.

Somewhat controversial, it belongs to an infamous family of formaldehyde-releasers. That is, it slowly breaks down to form formaldehyde when it is added to a formula. We have written more about formaldehyde-releasing preservatives and the concerns around them at Dmdm Hydantoin, but do not get too scared, those are more theories than proven facts.

As for Diazolidinyl Urea itself, a study from 1990 writes that at concentrations up to 0.4%, it was a mild cumulative skin irritant, but the CIR [Cosmetic Ingredient Review] reviewed it in 2006 and found that, in concentrations of