Colgate Optic White Stain Fighter Toothpaste Dentist Review

This is my personal review of the Colgate Optic White Stain Fighter Toothpaste where I’ll be giving you my subjective thoughts and also the objective facts about this dentifrice.

Yes, I am a dentist so don’t skip the section about how this toothpaste removes stains from your teeth. Our goal is to help you in deciding whether or not this whitening toothpaste may be right for you.

Overview

The Stain Fighter toothpaste is a part of Colgate’s Optic White line of products that are specialized in teeth whitening. You can easily differentiate the optic white products from their non-whitening products by its bold red and white packaging.

Featured benefits

The primary selling point for this whitening toothpaste is that it can safely remove up to 5x more surface stains with a micro-polishing action to help your teeth stay white longer.

Product specifications

Ingredients

There is a total of 16 ingredients in the Colgate stain fighter whitening toothpaste.

Remineralization agent:

• Sodium Fluoride (0.24%) – anticavity.

Whitening abrasives:

• Hydrated Silica – mild natural whitening abrasive.

Stain and tartar prevention:

• Pentasodium Triphosphate – prevents adhesion to enamel.
• Tetrasodium pyrophosphate – tartar and stain prevention.

Flavoring:

• Sorbitol – sweetener/humectant.
• Flavor – yes this was a listed ingredient…
• Sodium saccharin – sweetener for flavoring.

Others:

• Water – solvent.
• Glycerin – humectant.
• PEG-12 – Lubrication/spreadability.
• Sodium lauryl sulfate – surfactant that helps foaming and lathering for cleaning.
• Cellulose Gum – thickener/stabilizer.
• Cocamidopropyl Betaine – detergent/foaming.
• Xantham Gum – thickener.
• Sodium Hydroxide – pH adjuster.
• Titanium Dioxide – white colorant.

Unboxing

The optic white stain fighter toothpaste comes in a rectangular cardboard box with bold red and white lettering. The optic white’s bright red color design is very iconic and in my opinion, you can’t miss it when you see it in stores.

The top of the box has the optic white logo on it while the bottom has the lot number and expiration date.

The cardboard flaps are sealed with glue which lets you know if it’s been opened or used before. I do appreciate it when it has a tamper proof design such as this.

Upon opening, you’ll find the tube of toothpaste nestled inside with no additional contents. Yes, it’s just the box and the tube.

The texture of the tube’s plastic feels similar to any other toothpaste on the market. Relatively standard with nothing out of the ordinary.

The dispensing mechanism is a squeezable plastic tube with a flip cap design. The flip cap has unparalleled convenience because you can open and close it within a second.

The only thing is that there is no aluminum seal once you open the toothpaste. I suppose the saving grace is that at least the exterior box was glued shut so you know that no one has used it before.

Nonetheless, I do like the flip cap design for all of these recent toothpastes coming onto the market. One nice perk is that it allows the product to be stored in an upright vertical position.

The vertical storage position offers two advantages:

• More organized bathroom counter look.
• Gravity pulls the paste inside down to the bottom for easier dispensing.

Overall, my impression of the product is very positive so far. There aren’t any features that I think are lacking or should be improved upon.

Well, perhaps they can add an aluminum freshness seal inside the tube!

My experience

After using the colgate optic white stain fighter toothpaste, my mouth felt very clean, fresh, and minty. It didn’t really feel any different from most of the other normal toothpastes out there. There also wasn’t any discomfort from using it.

Color: The color of this toothpaste is an opaque white color, mostly due to the titanium dioxide in the ingredients. There are no fancy stripes, swirls or other colors in this paste.

Smell: It has a sweet mint smell to it which I find to be quite pleasant. It isn’t the chemical menthol type of mint. The scent is closer to the dessert/candy type of mint smell.

Taste: To me, the stain fighter toothpaste tastes like Wrigley’s Double Mint chewing gum. In other words, it is sweet and delicious tasting. You do get a little bit of that spicy mintiness but not overwhelmingly so.

Texture: I didn’t really feel any grittiness or abrasiveness from the toothpaste as I was brushing with it. It felt smooth and uniform in texture unlike the other optic white toothpastes (pro series, renewal, advanced) which were gritty.

Body: The paste does hold its shape very well. It isn’t watery so it doesn’t drop all over the place. Even when I inverted my toothbrush upside down, the paste did not slump off of the bristles.

Foaming: You should expect a lot of foaming because this is a SLS-based toothpaste. Then there is also an additional foaming agent in it as well, cocamidopropyl betaine.

The image above shows the amount of foam in my mouth after two minutes of brushing. You definitely get the mouthful feeling with this paste.

Overall, I had a very pleasant experience brushing with it and I couldn’t really find any complaints to be honest. Felt like a quality toothpaste that you’d expect from Colgate.

Pros & Cons

Does it work?

The stain fighter toothpaste can definitely whiten your teeth but not in the way that you’re probably thinking of.

• It can mechanically scrub away extrinsic stains on the tooth surface
• It can’t chemically bleach away intrinsic stains within the tooth.

So yes, it is a whitening toothpaste but in a different kind of way.

Mechanical teeth whitening

Mechanical teeth whitening involves using abrasives within the toothpaste to scrub away stains on the exterior surface of the teeth.

This optic white toothpaste utilizes hydrated silica as the whitening abrasive.

What we mean by mechanical abrasion is similar to using a sponge and scrubbing a dinner plate that is stained with food. Once you remove that piece of stuck food, it will become cleaner and whiter.

That is essentially how this whitening toothpaste works. As a matter of fact, that is also how 95-98% of all whitening toothpastes on the market work so it isn’t unique to this toothpaste.

Chemical teeth whitening

When most people hear the words teeth whitening, what they’re thinking of is chemical bleaching of the teeth with hydrogen peroxide. This is the whitening method that your dentist uses during in-office bleaching sessions.

Peroxide is the only ingredient that can chemically whiten your teeth because it can form powerful free radicals that oxidize intrinsic stains.

How hydrogen peroxide whitens teeth:

1. Peroxide will form free radicals that can diffuse through the tooth.
2. It oxidizes stains by converting double bonds to single bonds.
3. Stains with less double bonds will absorb less light and reflect more of it, thus appearing whiter in color.

Without peroxide in the formulation, there will be no way for it to chemically whiten your teeth. Unfortunately the optic white stain fighter is peroxide-free so it lacks the ability to whiten in this manner.

How it compares to the other optic white toothpastes

The stain fighter toothpaste isn’t the only optic white toothpaste, there are four others. We’re going to do a quick comparison between them.

Vs optic white charcoal

The optic white charcoal toothpaste is very similar to the stain fighter in that they both only whiten the teeth via mechanical abrasion. Neither of them contain any peroxide so they can’t chemically bleach the teeth.

In terms of whitening efficacy, we would say that both are equivalent.

Vs optic white advanced

The main difference between the optic white advanced and the stain fighter is that the former can chemically bleach the teeth. In other words, it is a more effective whitening toothpaste than the stain fighter.

Vs optic white renewal

The optic white renewal is the same as the optic white advanced except it has a higher percentage of hydrogen peroxide (3% vs 2%). This also means that it is the more effective whitening toothpaste.

Vs optic white pro series

The optic white pro series toothpaste is the most potent whitening toothpaste on the market since it has the highest peroxide concentration (5%). That also makes it the best optic white toothpaste for whitening teeth.

The pro series is leagues above the stain fighter in terms of whitening efficacy.

If we were to rank all of the topic white toothpastes starting from most effective:

1. Pro series
2. Renewal
3. Advanced
4. Charcoal/Stain fighter

Verdict

In my opinion the colgate optic white stain fighter toothpaste is a good everyday whitening toothpaste that you can use 365 days a year without any issues. It is comparable to 95% of the whitening toothpastes on the market regardless of the brand.

It will remove extrinsic stains on the enamel but what it won’t do is bleach out the intrinsic stains. For the latter, you will need to use a peroxide based product but that is often accompanied by sensitivity as a side effect.

My favorite thing about this toothpaste is that I consider it the working man’s toothpaste because it is very affordable and inexpensive. It is the least costly optic white product from colgate.

Below is a comparison of it vs the pro series in terms of cost:

The stain fighter toothpaste is literally half the price and twice the size of the optic white pro series. What that means is it costs a quarter of what the pro series does per oz.

It’s good that there is an affordable toothpaste option that is available because all of the trendy toothpastes seem to want to make high end products only.

What about a toothpaste for the average joe? Well, this one may be for you.