Regretful Purchase: Benefit They’re Real Push Up Liner

My Review & Experience

$39.00 AUD

Would I recommend? No

The hype and anticipation for this product was absolutely next level, I was literally counting down and watching every YouTube review I could find until I could finally get my hands on it.

 

The Claims: “FINALLY! the FIRST EVER lash-hugging gel liner pen! The custom AccuFlex soft, angled tip makes it BEYOND EASY to get close to your lashline for bigger, sexier eyes in seconds. It’s matte black and doesn’t smudge, budge or dry out. The closer the line, the bigger the eye!”

 

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I wanted to love this product badly, I mean it was meant to be a “game changer”, the  packaging is so cute and the concept seemed genius.

 

I have a few friends who quite like this, so I’m not completely black listing it, it must be ok for some people and may work better for people who already like using gel over liquid. I’ve also seen some reviews saying that “people just don’t know how to use it.” I find this an interesting take seeing as it was meant to be “BEYOND EASY” to use, I don’t believe it should be something you have to crack or continue to try and work out the kinks, who has time for that!?

 

Let me summarise for you my experience and the reasons I won’t recommend the Benefit They’re Real Push Up Liner:

 

• Found the gel dry, crumbly and it sort of skipped across my lid, definitely didn’t glide on and especially for someone such as myself who is used to working with liquid this was frustrating.
• Hard to work with – not build-able, had to work fast and get the exact right amount of product from the twist up otherwise it kind of flaked or cracked off in clumps.
• Wasteful – had to wind the product up to the tip and would end up wiping it away and practicing on my hand several times before touching it to my eye.
• Unable to get the sharp point that I love and can easily achieve with liquid (in fact every time I used this I ended up fixing it up with liquid afterwards).
• The AccuFlex tip protector, this is the little stop you’re meant to keep in the top of the pen to stop it from drying out. This is very fiddly and extremely unlikely that I wouldn’t lose this, which would cost me the use of the rest of the product.

 

 

Far left and middle photos:  swatch on the left is the Benefit gel which you can see is flaking off at the top. The swatch on the right is my favourite liquid liner pen to show you the difference.

Far right photo: the 2 swatches on the bottom again were Benefit gel, these swatches were done after the ones on the left and you can see compared to the liquid swatches they are uneven and crumbly.

 

However it did deliver in some areas:

 

• The packaging I really like, which is not a big surprise being a Benefit product. I always love that their cute and quirky packaging!
• The concept is great and I still am hoping they are playing with the formula of this product somewhere to work out how to really make the gel glide as I had imagined.
• It does push the lashes out of the way for very close application (I wish they would make a liquid liner with that feature).
• The actual gel is extremely black and matte which is actually the reason I continued to try and get this to work for me.
• It doesn’t budge, which is perfect if you get it exactly where you want it however if you make a mistake it’s much more difficult to fix than liquid.

 

I also used this on my sister when she asked me to do her makeup for an event and it worked much easier on another person. I’m still not exactly sure why. Maybe because I was able to keep the right amount of pressure on it the whole way along the eye or maybe because I could more easily hold the lid taught? I’m not sure but I haven’t picked this up to use on myself in an extremely long time and probably won’t try it again.

 

I hope this has been helpful and believe me I feel your pain if you have been disappointed!

 

Click here for my review on my favourite liquid liner Maybelline Hyper Sharp:

 

http://makeupismymuse.com/2016/03/24/how-to-winged-eye-liner/