M20 SKIN PROTECTION

M2O, or Mountains to Ocean, are a new Aussie company with a mission to end chafing for good. With this in mind they’ve released two new products: M2O skin-protection antichafe cream and M2O skin-protection anti-chafe cream for women. The cream is designed to hit chafing on three fronts; preventing the friction that causes it, relieving it when it occurs, and helping the skin to recover afterwards. AMB tested both the unisex and women’s versions of the creams. Both creams are pretty solid, thick, white creams that take some effort to squeeze out of the tube (especially in cooler weather). That’s because the cream is endothermic, which means it reacts to heat - if you warm it up, it softens. In practice, this property is designed to help the cream form a protective barrier no matter whether your skin is hot or cold. Most chamois creams on the Australian market are water-based and quite thin. M2O’s product is thicker and doesn’t rub in clear, and is difficult to wash off your hands (which is what you want, really, for a barrier that lasts). That said, we didn’t notice any staining of our clothing, so the cream came out in the wash. The idea behind men’s and women’s creams seems to be that because men sweat more, and women have more sensitive skin, some product tuning is called for. We tested both and didn’t find the differences to be staggering, with both offering very similar levels of protection from chafing and lasting a similar amount of time. In action, the cream forms a good barrier that lasts, although we did find that it disappeared after a couple of hours. It performed better than most chamois creams in wet weather, and we liked the tube packaging, which was easy to throw in a bag when travelling to and from the trails.

HITS

- Easy to use - Washes out - No chafing!

MISSES

- Not as long lasting as some RRP: $27.99 FROM: m2oindustries.com