Opti-Seal

Opti-Seal is awesome. I had heard about it for a long time, but only recently tried it. It's applied a bit like a ceramic coating (you just wipe it on). It's not as permanent as ceramic coatings, but it lasts for months. It only takes a few minutes to do a whole car and has better shine and durability than regular waxes and polishes that take much longer to apply, then buff off. Unlike waxes and polishes, you also don't need to worry about getting it on the surrounding rubber or plastic, Opti-Seals works great on those surfaces also and it leaves no residue. I have no association with this product, just passing along my new favorite:

 

These new products are amazing in terms of ease and use and what they do. I do the same thing -- use them on the daily drivers first to check them out. I actually like that they aren't permanent (unlike ceramic coatings) because the best products come and go. I did us Opti-Coat (Optimum's permanent ceramic product) when I had 5 miles on our Audi immediately after driving home from the dealer. It was really good at protecting paint from bird dropping versus regular polishes, but the shine didn't last forever but I never used Opti-Seal on top of it. What caused me to think about Opti-Seal was that I noticed the car had a really nice shine and stayed cleaner after using Optimum No Rinse car wash. The car wash has very little "Seal" in it, but it still had a really nice shine and kept the car cleaner. The straight Opti-Seal (and similar products) is amazing.

Zaino introduced a "clear CS" product that was similar in application to Opti-Seal several years ago, but as much as I love Zaino (and still use it for non-dailies), their CS stuff didn't work nearly as well as Opti-Seal (and I assume HydroSilex based on your comments).