Beyond Coastal Active Daily Lip Protection

Beyond Coastal has a great philosophy: "protect, nourish, repair and hydrate". Can't argue with that, as those are the exact elements we all look for in a great tube of lip balm. The company makes all-natural, additive-free sunscreens and lip balm for active people in sunny places (or so it would appear from the images on the site). And they sponsor the US Open of Surfing, which I didn't know existed.

Price: $5.00 online.

Appearance: Taller and fatter than a standard tube, slightly smaller than a gluestick. Dial is at the top near the cap- always helpful if you keep yours in a jean pocket.

Glide: At first it's okay. You don't really discover the true nature of a balm's glide until after a few uses, and I discovered that this one's kind of a bummer. It's a little grainy and a little greasy and a little sticky, and slathers on a little, possibly owing to its larger surface area. I always end up wiping off a bit with my finger.

Flavor/Smell: Claims to be citrus-scented, but I cannot think of which particular citrus this is supposed to be, if citrus at all. Maybe citrus and soap? No flavor, per se, but there was a week where I kept thinking I was tasting or smelling metal (and freaking out over what kind of disease that meant I had) until I finally realized that it only happened when I used the balm. I suspect that may have been just my personal reaction to it, but that certainly was a first.

Lasting Power: It moisturizes for more than an hour. Actually, I don't know for how long exactly because I kept taking it off because of the metal phenomenon.

Product Pluses/Minuses: SPF 15 is great. However, I think it suffers from too many chefs in the kitchen- almost every moisturizing ingredient you can think of has been crammed into it: safflower, wheat germ, coconut, soybean, avocado, jojoba seed AND grape seed oils; shea butter, aloe vera, honey, yerba mate; beeswax, candlilla wax, carunuba wax...oy. If all that resulted in a wonderful, harmonious balance, that'd be one thing, but its performance is only so so. The upshot is, with all that great stuff, you know some of it has got to work. My advice: use it as a pre-exfoliator moisturizer.

Now, I wasn't out biking and snowboarding in the blazing sun, so maybe I didn't experience its full potential, but I give it 3.5 out of 5 tubes.