DR.DIFFERENT CEQ Antioxidant Serum

What is this product?

Worth considering if you want a high strength pure vitamin C serum that actually publishes its numbers, and worth avoiding if you need a gentle or fragrance sensitive formula. Ascorbic acid is disclosed at 15% in second position, tocopherol at 1,000.25 ppm and ubiquinone at 0.1 ppm, and the product is filed in Korea as both a whitening and a wrinkle improvement functional cosmetic, with arbutin and adenosine, the notified actives for each, present in the list. The catch is that the brand's clinically proven sevenfold improvement line rests on a skin irritation test and an in vitro DPPH antioxidant assay, neither of which measures seven improvements, and the seven are never itemized.

What makes it different?

Three of the 36 ingredients are volatile essential oils, sage, mugwort and basil, which is unusual in a high strength vitamin C serum and makes this a poor match for fragrance reactive skin even though no 향료 entry appears in the list. Concentrations are disclosed for three separate ingredients rather than the usual one, which is rare enough to be a real point of difference, though one of those disclosures, ubiquinone at 0.1 ppm, works against the marketing that names it. Gluconolactone, a PHA, sits near the end of the list, so this is not an acid free formula. The brand's usage direction is three to five drops after toner, and it warns that a brief tingle is expected from the high vitamin C level and recommends refrigerated storage.

What is in it?

The full ingredient list as the brand publishes it, in the printed order. Each name links to what we know about that ingredient.

This brand publishes its ingredient list in Korean only. Names below are the matching INCI names from the Korean Cosmetic Association ingredient dictionary.

Key ingredient

• Water
• Ascorbic Acid
• Ethoxydiglycol
• Propanediol
• Butylene Glycol
• 1,2-Hexanediol
• Arbutin
• Dipropylene Glycol
• Brassica Oleracea Italica (Broccoli) Extract
• Curcuma Longa (Turmeric) Root Extract
• Ananas Sativus (Pineapple) Fruit Extract
• Salvia Officinalis (Sage) Oil
• Artemisia Vulgaris Oil
• Sodium Hyaluronate
• Ocimum Basilicum (Basil) Oil
• Astragalus Membranaceus Root Extract
• Coptis Chinensis Root Extract
• Phellodendron Amurense Bark Extract
• Scutellaria Baicalensis Root Extract
• Tromethamine
• Choleth-24
• Ferulic Acid
• Glycerin
• Tocopherol
• Glucosylrutin
• Panthenol
• Polyglyceryl-10 Oleate
• Cellulose Gum
• Hydrogenated Lecithin
• Ethylhexylglycerin
• Adenosine
• Sodium Phytate
• PVP
• Fullerenes
• Gluconolactone
• Ubiquinone

Ingredients with no mark are ones we found nothing notable about, and when marks overlap on one ingredient we show the caution first.

We could not place these in the list above: Salvia Officinalis (Sage) Oil, Artemisia Vulgaris Oil, Ocimum Basilicum (Basil) Oil, Hydrogenated Lecithin, Polyglyceryl-10 Oleate, Tocopherol

Did the ad claims hold up?

We checked 4 lines this product advertises against the ingredient list and public documents. One of them holds up. The rest are only partly right or have nothing behind them.

Claims translated from Korean, originals preserved.

Each line is quoted as the brand published it, and each one was read on its own against the ingredient list and the documents the brand publishes.

How we read these lines