Hyram changed his mind about The Ordinary's most famous serum

The skincare educator Hyram Yarbro didn't just review The Ordinary Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5 once and move on. He kept coming back to it, and over three years his take shifted all the way from a warm recommendation to a plain no. What changed his mind says less about this one bottle than about how much the whole world of skincare has moved.

Did Hyram change his mind about The Ordinary Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5?

He did, and he never hid the shift. Back in 2023 he pointed people toward it, calling it "a similar product because it's a relatively similar ingredient list but without the irritants and for like a tenth of the price." By 2024 that warmth had cooled to a shrug. "I personally don't believe that hyaluronic acid serums are necessary in a skincare routine because 95% of the products you find on the market have hyaluronic acid in them already, so there's no reason to really have a dedicated one," he said, before softening it with, "But you know, this product has a cult following for a reason and I'm not mad at it."

By 2026 the softening was gone. "One ingredient focused serums like the Ordinary hyaluronic acid serum are no longer worth your money," he said, explaining that "the skincare industry has evolved so much since these were recommended 8 years ago. Now there are a million options with significantly better formulas." Hyaluronic acid, he added, is now in nearly every formula, "rendering products like this not necessarily useless, but definitely not necessary." It reads as one reviewer honestly updating his thinking as the shelves around him changed.

Why did he turn against it?

His reason has nothing to do with the serum being unsafe or badly made. It's about the market moving on. Hyaluronic acid used to be a rare enough ingredient that buying a bottle dedicated to it made sense, which is exactly why he recommended one back then. Now that it turns up in almost every moisturizer, essence and serum on the shelf, a single-ingredient bottle just doubles up on something the rest of a routine already delivers. In his telling the product isn't worse than it was. The everything around it simply caught up, and that's what makes a dedicated serum redundant.

So should you toss your hyaluronic acid serum?

It's worth taking this as a situation, not a rule. Hyram hasn't turned on the brand at all, and still rates The Ordinary 10% Lactic Acid. And the wider panel doesn't move in lockstep with him: the serum holds a Guru Score of 71% across 15 reviewers, which puts this in Mixed territory and marks his shift as one prominent voice changing, not a settled verdict.

So there's no need to bin a cheap hyaluronic acid serum that's working nicely for you. The one thing to keep in mind is his actual point: if your moisturizer and other products already carry hyaluronic acid, which most now do, you probably don't need to go out and buy a separate bottle of it.