CeraVe to iUNIK: are the 16 newest skincare launches worth it?
Sixteen skincare products have earned their first expert takes in the last year, and the early read is more encouraging than you might expect: ten of them already sit at a Guru Score of 80% or better. That said, a couple of newcomers show the experts are far from unanimous on everything fresh off the shelf.
- 16 skincare products got their first expert take in the past 12 months, which is the closest thing our data has to a new-release shelf.
- 10 of those 16 already hold a Guru Score of 80% or better, so a product being new is no reason on its own for the experts to be cautious about it.
- CeraVe Invisible Mineral Sunscreen SPF 50 leads the newcomers on a Guru Score of 96% from 4 experts. Dr. Melaxin Peel Shot sits at the bottom on 54%, which is the useful half of a list like this.
- A new product needs at least two experts on the record before it gets a Guru Score at all, so anything here has already cleared that bar.
Dr Dray · 4 reviewers, 96% said yes
The Budget Dermatologist · 4 reviewers, 92% said yes
Dr. Jenny Liu · 6 reviewers, 90% said yes
Kelly Driscoll · 3 reviewers, 86% said yesWhich new products have the experts rated highly?
The clear leader among the newcomers is the CeraVe Invisible Mineral Sunscreen SPF 50, which the gurus have put at a Guru Score of 96% based on takes from 4 experts. That is a strikingly strong start for a product that has only just picked up its first reviews, and it puts this sunscreen well ahead of the pack among the sixteen newcomers.
It is not alone up there. Ten of the sixteen products that only recently got their first expert attention have already crossed the 80% mark, which the gurus behind those scores would call a solidly Approved showing. The rest of that top group is not broken out here beyond the CeraVe standout, but the pattern itself is the story: for a fresh crop of launches, having most of them clear 80% so quickly is a good sign that the experts are finding real substance in what is new.
Why do so few brand-new products have a Guru Score?
Here is the thing worth understanding before you write off a product with no score yet: it does not mean nobody has looked at it. The Guru Index only assigns a Guru Score once at least two experts are on record with a take, and a missing score usually means exactly one expert has weighed in so far rather than none at all.
That lag is by design rather than a glitch. Expert review videos tend to land months after a product launches, not on day one, because the gurus need time to actually use something before they will speak on it. So the index runs a little behind the shelf, and that is the point. A verdict here means people who know the category have lived with the product, not that a brand simply shipped out press samples.
Should you buy skincare this new?
So is it worth buying skincare this new. The honest answer from the gurus' own pattern is that it depends on how much weight you want behind the verdict. A newcomer sitting at a high Guru Score, even one as strong as that CeraVe sunscreen at 96%, is still backed by a smaller pool of experts than an old staple that has racked up dozens of takes over the years. The verdict is real, but it is thinner, simply because fewer people have had the chance to chime in.
And a high score is not guaranteed just because something is new and buzzy. The Dr. Melaxin Peel Shot landed at 54%, which is the kind of number that should make anyone curious pause and read what the experts actually said rather than assume a new launch is automatically good. For anything this fresh, it may be worth patch testing first and introducing it on its own rather than alongside a handful of other new products at once, simply so it is easier to tell what is working and what is not.