Goodal Heartleaf Hyaluron Soothing Clear Pad Review

On Hwahae, the Korean review app where skincare reputations are made and unmade by people who read ingredient lists for fun, this pad sits at 4.7 stars across more than thirteen hundred reviews — higher than anything else Goodal makes. That is worth taking seriously, because Hwahae reviewers are not easily impressed and are merciless about products that tingle where they promised to calm. So the useful question about the Heartleaf Hyaluron Soothing Clear Pad is what those reviewers found, and whether the sixty-one-ingredient list explains it.

It mostly does. Heartleaf extract is fifth in the list, ahead of every hyaluronate, which is the highest placement the botanical gets anywhere in Goodal's range and a meaningfully different thing from the ten-parts-per-million name-checks in the line's cleansers. Sodium hyaluronate is sixth. After that comes a cluster that reads like a well-briefed calming brief: yeast ferment, hollyhock, hydrolyzed and free hyaluronic acid, centella, chrysanthemum, purslane, then panthenol, allantoin and licorice-root glycyrrhizate in the middle, a run of seven more hyaluronate species near the end, and — unusual for a toner pad — a full set of five ceramides with cholesterol and phytosphingosine at the tail. Those lipids are at low levels, but this is a leave-on, so unlike the same set in the line's foam and oil, they stay on the skin and can do a little. Ectoin and beta-glucan round it out. It is, in short, a serious hydrating-calming formula soaked into a pad, and the sheer volume of essence — 210 millilitres across seventy pads — means each swipe delivers more of it than most competitors manage.

Goodal has been one of Clio Cosmetics' skincare brands since 2010, and the Heartleaf line launched in early 2024 as its bid for the sensitive-skin shopper. This pad was the line's toner step from the beginning and became its breakout: Olive Young has run exclusive bonus-pad sets and character-edition refills around it, which in Korean retail is the clearest sign that a product has become a repeat purchase rather than a trial.

Using it is a pleasure, which is where the 'ice' in Ice Heartleaf comes in. The pads are two-sided — a smooth Tencel face for sweeping and a soft cotton-gauze face for pressing — and lift out with a small pair of tweezers from a tub with an inner lid that keeps the top layer wet. The essence is water-light with a faint glycol slip. The first pass is cold: hinoki and eucalyptus oils sit seventh and eighth in the list and produce a sharp, forest-scented cooling that peaks in a few seconds and settles into a calm, dewy, slightly tacky finish that absorbs within a minute. On skin that has come in from heat or a hot shower, the drop in visible flush is immediate. Pressing the gauze side onto the cheeks for a minute, or laying two or three pads across the face for five, turns it into a mini mask, and the tub in the fridge in July is a small daily luxury.

The oils are also the whole of the caveat. Hinoki and eucalyptus are the classic Korean 'cooling' pair, and for most people at these levels they are a pleasant sensory note. But they are essential oils placed ahead of most of the calming botanicals, and eucalyptus in particular is a recognised trigger for essential-oil contact allergy and for rebound flushing in some rosacea-prone skin. The pad is marketed to sensitive skin, and for the ordinary meaning of sensitive — reactive to harsh cleansers, prone to redness, easily dehydrated — it is genuinely kind. For the clinical meaning — rosacea, eczema, a barrier stripped by over-exfoliation, a known fragrance allergy — it is a patch-test product, and the fine tingle many users report in the first week should be read as a warning if it does not fade. A version without the two oils would be an easier recommendation, and would also be less fun.

What it does not do is anything active. It contains no acid, no niacinamide at a functional level, nothing that will clear pores or fade marks; the 'clear' in the name refers to the look of calmed skin, not to exfoliation. It is a hydrating, cooling, redness-easing toner step, and it should be judged as one.

On price, around twenty-five dollars for seventy pads from US-facing retailers — roughly thirty-five cents a pad and twelve cents a millilitre of essence — is fair for the formula and generous compared with many Western toner pads that carry a fraction of the liquid. Bonus-pad sets and refills at Korean retailers push the value further. A tub lasts about five weeks at twice a day, or ten at once.

The recommendation is straightforward for most readers: if your skin runs hot, oily or dehydrated and you want a calming toner that delivers real hydration and a cooling ritual, this is one of the best pads of its type and the Hwahae crowd is right. If your sensitivity is the clinical kind, patch test on the jaw for a week before trusting it on your cheeks, and if eucalyptus has ever caused you trouble, look to a plainer pad. Everyone in between will find a well-made, generous, slightly theatrical product that does exactly what its thirteen hundred Korean reviewers say it does.