THE TRUTH ABOUT NIVEA MAGIC BARS: Specialist testing Soap Free Cleansers; Better than DOVE SOAP? Review

I bought these Magic Bar a year ago. Why did it take me so long to make a review on them?! Well, I wanted to test them thoroughly. I used every single one of these bars for a couple of months (all except Intensive Exfoliation and Makeup remover bars, you will later hear why) and now I can give you my fully formed opinion on them. I hope it will be worth the wait.

So Nivea came up with these SOAP-FREE gentle facial cleansers and calls them Magic Bars. Nivea emphasizes that these are plastic free, with 99% of natural origin, they are pH optimized (which means that they won’t disrupt the natural pH balance of your skin), and they have a vegan formula and fully recyclable paper packaging.

They even have a COSMOS NATURAL Certificate, this is important. Because this certificate is not easy to get. Fun fact: This one and the Natrue Certificate and the two certificates valid in Europe for natural skincare. If you are all for natural skincare products just look for these two certificates and you’ll be good.

Anyways Nivea has 6 Magic Bars on the Market. Four are just meant for cleansing: Sensitive, Radiance, Anti-Impurities, and Refreshing; and two are not meant for cleansing but for Exfoliating and Makeup Removing. I will talk about these at the end.

I will first focus on these 4 that are meant for cleansing.

What is the base formulation of Nivea Magic Bars and how different are they from Dove soap?

Nivea Magic bars have a base formulation with 4 super gentle surfactants (Sodium Coco-Sulfate, Sodium Lauroyl Glutamate, Coco- Glucoside, Cocamidopropyl Betaine), some emollients (Palmitic Acid, Stearic Acid, Cetearyl Alcohol, Glyceryl Oleate), and depending on what effect the bar is supposed to create on the skin they have ingredients added or reduced.

For example, the Sensitive Magic Bar is the only Magic bar that doesn’t have Fragrance, because it is known that Fragrance can irritate sensitive skin. And it has one antioxidant added and that is Grape Seed Oil. All other Magic Bars have Fragrance.

Anti-Impurities Magic Bar has Green Tee Extract and Kaolin(Clay). Green Tee is good for acne-prone skin, and Kaolin is an absorbent and can suck up excess sebum. This makes this Magic Bar good for people with oily skin.

Radiance Magic Bar has Vitamin E to help with making your skin more radiant I guess. I have to admit that I didn’t notice that.

And the Refreshing Magic Bar has Almond Oil, and I’m honestly not sure how is Almond Oil supposed to refresh your face and how did they come up with the claim “REFRESHING” in the first place? I’m not sure. But bottom line is that these have the same base formulation.

Now if you are interested in how these are different from Dove Beauty Bars, well, they are very different. Dove Beauty Bars have 2 traditional soap ingredients + gentle surfactants + emollients, and Dove Beauty Bars are Combo Soaps. If you are not sure what is a combo soap, I explained it in the video below.

These Nivea Magic Bars are 100% SOAP-FREE, and these are much more gentle then Dove Beauty Bars, but still cleanse well. These don’t dry out my skin even in Winter.

Bottom line is, these are much better than Dove Soaps.

Now let’s see how well exactly they cleanse.

These four all cleanse well, Radiant, Anti-Impurities, Refreshing and Sensitive. I didn’t see a huge difference between them, they foam well, rinsing off is easy, and they leave your skin soft and properly cleansed. Watch the demo application + cleansing in the video below.

You don’t even need to double cleanse if you are not wearing makeup, these can remove sunscreen on their own. But if you are wearing makeup, just make sure to remove makeup first with a different product.

BIGGEST CON

The biggest con for me with these cleansers was that after a while they start melting, and if you don’t find a way to keep them dry in between uses, they will start melting and after a while will become completely useless. That happened to me with the Radiant one.

I did see that Nivea came up with the solution for the problem, they have a special dish container designed for these Bars (Picture below), so I guess this helps. I didn’t try it, but it seems helpful.

Bottom line is I do recommend these 4: Radiant, Anti-Impurities, Refreshing and Sensitive. I must say that my fave was the Anti-Impurities Bar, that one is my first recommendation. In case you have sensitive skin you can get the sensitive one, but all in all you are not going to make a mistake with getting any one of these.

EXFOLIATING + MAKEUP REMOVING MAGIC BARS

These 2 are not my faves.

Exfoliating Bar has the same base formulation as the previous 4 but it has Active Charcoal added. It is supposed to be used 2x a week and is supposed to exfoliate your skin.

I had 2 problems with this one. When I used it directly on the skin it scratched my skin, but when I lathered and then applied it to my skin, it didn’t do any exfoliation. So I guess you can use this one for cleansing as well, but don’t expect much exfoliation. Just get a different product for exfoliation.

Makeup Removing Magic Bar has a completely different formulation than others. It has only 1 surfactant (the stuff that is cleansing the skin), 2 emulsifiers, and a bunch of emollients. I guess emulsifiers and emollients are supposed to remove the makeup but that is just not happening.

I’m not sure where Nivea was going with this formulation, but something is wrong here. It’s neither cleansing nor removing makeup, so this one is a complete waste of money for me. I do not recommend it.

And there you go, that is all I have to say about the Nivea Magic Bars! Thank you for reading!