There are many good products out there for trim protectant. And with any automotive surface one has to know what the problem is, have an idea of wanted end result and find the product that best suits the need. Faded, dried out trim will need different products then new trim that just wants to be maintained.
I've found there to be basically three levels, if you will, of car care products out there. First is professional grade products that can only be obtained online or thru high end shops if you're lucky enough to have one near by. Even some of the professional products can't be obtained unless you have a detailing business or something similar. The next level would be prosumer products. A few of these will be found locally but mostly they are online sort of things from the like of Detailedimage.com, autopia-carcare.com and autogeek.com to name a few. The lowest level is what I call "Over the counter" products and they make up about 95% of what you will find at autozone, Walmart, etc. The OTC stuff is mostly, Armourall, turtle wax, black magic, that sort of thing.
Now Meguiars and mothers are a bit of a different animal as they both have many different product lines, some of which fall in the Prosumer category and others that fall in the OTC category. I'm more familiar with meguiars products so I'll use them as an example. Meguiars cleaner wax and scratch X can be found almost anywhere, OTC product, and they are basically polishes and compounds. They will do a certain job but I feel megs has better products than both of those. M105 and M205 are much better compound and polish if you as me but they are much harder to come by from local stores. Although those two are probably the two most common Prosumer products you can most likely find them near the body refinishing section (i.e. sandpaper, bondo) at most auto stores.
Many of meguiars OTC products as well as mothers are a step ahead of turtle wax and armouralls of the world because of there extensive back ground in higher quality products. 3m also falls within in this category as well.
It's not to say that everything OTC is garbage, there are a few gems out there to be had. Turtle Ice wax for instance is a great wax that's easy on and easy off and won't stain trim as well as lasts quite long.
As far as trim coating and restoration goes there are numerous products out there. So much so that you can get paralysis by analysis. First figure out what you want to achieve with a certain product, restoration or protection? Then pick a product. Some that I like for the trim restoration is turtle wax jet black trim coating and meguiars ultimate protectant and Ultima Trim and Tire guard. These products will help restore faded trim back to black. I find mothers back to black washes off quickly and doesn't last so I don't use it anymore.
To take it the prosumer level for your trim Gtechiq C4 trim coating, CarPro DLux plastic and trim coating and Optimum Gloss coat are all very good products.
Currently I have Optimum Gloss coat covering the entire exterior of my CX-5. If this is something you are thinking of doing I highly recommend it. Any of the painting coatings are great, Optimum, Carpro, gtechinc, 22pple, are all good buys. The only thing with coatings for the paint (they also work on trim) is that the paint has to be perfect before application so it often requires a full polish of the car before hand.
