Cosmetic chemist Ramón Pagán has been challenged to compare different types of eyeliners. Can he figure out which are the most expensive products? Ramón uses his high-level of expertise in visual analysis, application and ingredients to put together an extremely educated guess. How many will he get right? Watch to find out!
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00:00And smudges.
00:01Do one of these moments.
00:02That liner's not going anywhere.
00:04A brown.
00:06I'm Ramon, and I'm a cosmetic chemist.
00:18So in front of me, we have two different liquid eyeliners.
00:22What I'm looking for is A, good pigment payoff,
00:26B, how smooth it's going to glide on the skin,
00:30and then C, if it's going to run or not.
00:32So let's start first with product A.
00:34This is going to be, I think,
00:35a brush tip applicator liquid eyeliner.
00:38For this, I'm looking at A, how pointed that is,
00:41because if you want a smooth, especially sharp wing liner,
00:44that tip is going to be crucial.
00:46So now over to product B.
00:47Let's look at the applicator on this.
00:49This is a marker tip eyeliner,
00:51but with these sometimes,
00:53the tip starts to get worn out a little bit,
00:55and you're not going to get sometimes as precise
00:57or as sharp of a point as you would like.
00:59So now let's swatch the eyeliners, starting with A.
01:02Again, this is the brush tip applicator.
01:05Okay, so right off the bat,
01:06I am not getting any product out of this.
01:08Sometimes shaking it helps.
01:10Back in my makeup days,
01:11it was put the cap on and do one of these moments.
01:13You need to get the product to the tip of this.
01:16There we go.
01:17These are primarily water-based.
01:19Some liquid liners actually have alcohol in them,
01:22which act as a volatile.
01:25Volatiles are going to be the ingredients
01:27that flash off, hopefully quickly,
01:29allow the film to form,
01:31and allow the pigment in the film to set.
01:32Is that an indicator of quality?
01:34In my mind, yes.
01:35You can see it took me a while to get the pigment on there,
01:37but once it did, it came out.
01:39It's only been a few seconds,
01:40and has it dried down yet?
01:42It has.
01:43So now let's swatch product B.
01:44Once again, this is the felt tip applicator.
01:47When I touch it to the skin,
01:48immediately we have pigment.
01:51Let's give it a couple seconds to dry down.
01:54The blackness of this one, it's comparable.
01:56There you can notice they are a little bit
01:57of a different undertone as well.
02:00I've given it a couple seconds.
02:03It smudges.
02:05The tables have turned.
02:07So now let's do a water resistance test.
02:09I'm going to start with Liquid Eyeliner A.
02:11For these, what I'm going to do is take the product,
02:13draw a line on the back of my hand,
02:16and then to give them both a fair shot,
02:18we're going to give them a minute to set down.
02:21Then afterwards, I'm going to dip my finger in the water,
02:23rub that on the liquid eyeliner,
02:25and see if the eyeliner is going to stay put or not.
02:27So it's been a minute.
02:28Let's just give it a little rub just to make sure.
02:30Okay, you can see that's staying put right now.
02:32So let's do with a little bit of water now.
02:34Putting that on.
02:36Okay, so you can see I'm rubbing it.
02:38I see a little bit of wear to the eyeliner,
02:40but then again, I'm like rubbing the eyeliner.
02:42If you're just sweating or crying and not rubbing your eye,
02:45it could stay put.
02:47With the water and the friction,
02:49obviously that film and that pigment
02:50did dissipate a little bit.
02:52To me though, I'm not indicating
02:54it's a lower quality product.
02:56So I'm actually fairly content with that.
02:58So now let's move on to product B.
03:00Once again, we're going to take the eyeliner,
03:02we're going to draw that line,
03:04and we're going to give it a minute.
03:06The product did bleed a little bit on the back of my hand.
03:09To me, that is a little bit of a quality indicator.
03:11Let's do just a regular rub test first.
03:14You can see that's smudging.
03:15And then now let's do it with some water.
03:18Yeah, right away that is rubbing off.
03:21This is not a water resistant or waterproof eyeliner,
03:24and therefore I'm not saying
03:25this is a very high quality option.
03:27Letting the liner set using the water tests,
03:30eyeliner A was a lot more durable.
03:32So let's compare the ingredients list for these eyeliners.
03:34For product A, as I mentioned earlier,
03:37these are both water-based, so you see water first.
03:39That's diurene, acrylate, copolymer.
03:41That is the film former.
03:42And as you notice with the rub test
03:44and water resistance test, product A was more durable.
03:46It stayed on the skin a lot better.
03:48And that is as a result of the copolymers,
03:50those film formers that allow the product
03:52to adhere to the skin
03:53and to be a lot more wear and tear resistant.
03:56And then the last part, you see that black too,
03:58that CI 77266.
04:00That is that very, very black, jet black pigment,
04:03which is not a cheap pigment.
04:04It's not necessarily the easiest to work with either.
04:06So that right there tells me, okay,
04:07they probably put a little bit of money
04:08into the manufacturing as well.
04:10Let's look at product B now.
04:13Compared to the first products,
04:14product A had the copolymer,
04:16the acrylates as the second ingredient.
04:17If you look at the end too, also has that black too.
04:20So it also has that jet black pigment.
04:22But what's interesting is
04:23they looked very different on the skin,
04:24especially the undertones
04:25were a little bit different compared to each other.
04:28Something that's interesting is product B
04:29has parabens in it.
04:30Parabens are a preservative.
04:32And preservatives, while people are afraid of them,
04:34they are very necessary in cosmetics,
04:36especially when it comes to eye area.
04:39You have water, you have different microbes
04:42that live naturally on the skin,
04:44but you're taking an applicator, rubbing it in that area,
04:47and then you're taking that applicator
04:48and putting it back in the packaging.
04:50If the product's not properly preserved,
04:52you're essentially giving it the grounds
04:54to just proliferate, AKA multiply,
04:56and you're contaminating the product.
04:57So especially for products around the eye area,
04:59we really want preservatives,
05:01because if not, that could lead to infections
05:03and a lot of things we don't want.
05:04And seeing the film former a little bit lower down
05:06on the ingredients lists, that could be an indicator.
05:08Based off the product swatches, the applicators,
05:11and the two challenge tests,
05:12I would assume that product A
05:14is going to be the higher quality product.
05:16So let's reveal the price for product A.
05:20So that is $21.
05:22That's a pretty decent price eyeliner right there.
05:23That's telling me that is a good
05:25higher and mid-tier eyeliner.
05:27So now let's reveal the price for product B.
05:30$8.99, that's drugstore right there.
05:34In front of me, I have gel eyeliners.
05:37Gel liners are really useful when you're working on clients
05:40or if you yourself are doing your own makeup.
05:42These tend to be a little bit more water and oil resistant
05:45than your regular liquid liner.
05:46And the big difference between a liquid liner
05:48and a gel liner is that these are wax-based.
05:51Waxes, they don't mix with water.
05:52Therefore, there's a good degree of water resistance
05:55as a result of a gel liner as well.
05:56So let's start with product A.
05:58Let's look at what the product looks like.
06:01So this is a brown gel liner.
06:03It's in a pencil casing,
06:05but the formula is still a gel type eyeliner.
06:07And I can tell because it basically looks like
06:09they molded the gel part of the liner first
06:11and then put it into the casing.
06:13Product A, due to the packaging itself,
06:15it's not one where you can twist it
06:16and the product comes up.
06:17You gotta sharpen these.
06:18So now let's look at product B.
06:20Again, I'm gonna assume this is a brown gel liner.
06:22And they molded the gel liner,
06:24but they put it into one of these retractable packaging.
06:27So you twist it and the product comes out.
06:29This type of packaging is a little bit more affordable.
06:31This tends to be a little bit more cheap.
06:33It's easier to mass produce,
06:35especially if you're doing a bunch of different shades.
06:36When it comes to product A's packaging,
06:38because it is the gel liner in the pencil style casing,
06:41those tend to be a little bit more intensive
06:43to get the product in there.
06:44So just off of that,
06:45I think product A is gonna be a little bit
06:47more higher quality.
06:48Now let's swatch the gel liner starting with liner A.
06:52Once again, this is the one in the pencil casing.
06:54These are brown liners.
06:55If you love a good natural wing, a brown...
07:00You want the wax to be durable.
07:02You want it to have a good structure,
07:04but you want a good amount of emollients and esters
07:06in the gel liner to make it so that the liner isn't brittle.
07:10It's a very fine mix right there.
07:11So that's very unfortunate.
07:13The fact that that tip broke off,
07:14it's not a good indicator, but that being said,
07:16it's not gonna be like the be-all end-all indicator.
07:19So we're not gonna jump to conclusions just yet.
07:22So with product A, resharpen.
07:23Let's go again for that swatch.
07:25I'm looking for a nice smooth glide, a nice clean line.
07:29That went on creamy.
07:31That went on very easily.
07:33That glide is important
07:34because if you are applying it on your eye,
07:36you don't want any sneers or snags
07:38because that's not gonna be a nice clean line.
07:40It's gonna be like really bumpy, really jagged.
07:42Now let's move on to product B.
07:44Let's see how that applies.
07:48Not the cleanest line.
07:50I'm just gonna do a second line just for good measure.
07:54So just off that, it's creamy, like it glides on well,
07:56but you can notice between the two,
07:58product B doesn't have the most opaque,
08:01the most full coverage line.
08:02The pigment just isn't as rich.
08:04So that to me is also a big indicator of a quality thing.
08:07I'm not seeing a lot of that opacity in product B,
08:11which could be a pigment, functional filler,
08:13or other quality issue.
08:14And therefore, that to me is indicating lower quality.
08:17So now we're gonna be doing a resilience test
08:19for the gel liners.
08:20I have water here and I have squalane oil.
08:23Squalane just because it is similar-ish enough
08:27to the sebum that we naturally produce
08:29that in this situation, it could be a good indicator
08:31as to whether or not a gel liner
08:32is going to be heavy duty enough
08:33for the natural wear and tear of the eyelid space.
08:36What I'm gonna do is take each of the gel liners,
08:38draw a good solid line on the back of my hand,
08:41allow the product to set for a minute.
08:42I'll do a regular smudge test on the left,
08:44a water rub test in the middle,
08:45and a squalane rub test on the right.
08:47Starting with the regular rub test.
08:50You can see I rub that.
08:51There's a small little smudge here,
08:52but I think this is a result of a little excess pigment
08:54right in that one spot.
08:55But you can see when I rub it, it stays put,
08:57which indicates to me, for example,
08:58if you're gonna do a little bit of a smudge liner moment,
09:01you have some wiggle room,
09:01but once the volatiles evaporate out,
09:04that smudge liner is going to stay put decently well.
09:07Now let's do the water part of the test.
09:08It's gonna take a little bit of water
09:10and do the middle part.
09:12You can see the liner's not going anywhere.
09:14So that already is a good sign, but again,
09:16waxes are part of a gel liner's formulation
09:18and waxes are not water soluble.
09:20And now for the sebum part of the test,
09:22the squalane oil, get a little bit of that off,
09:24and let's just do a couple rubs here on the right.
09:29That liner's not going anywhere.
09:30So it probably is a very good crease-proof option
09:33if you got oily eyelids like I do.
09:35So now let's try the same test with product B.
09:37Start with the regular rub test.
09:41We do get a little bit of smudging there.
09:43Let's go in with the water part of the test.
09:47Okay, you can see with the water,
09:48I'm gently rubbing that on there.
09:49It's not going anywhere, which is nice.
09:51Again, water is not going to dissolve the waxes ideally,
09:55therefore I anticipate a good amount of water resistance
09:57from a gel liner.
09:59And now for the sebum part of the test,
10:00we're gonna use a little bit of squalane on our finger
10:03and rubbing that on.
10:05That came off really easy.
10:07So that tells me this is not going to be a liner
10:09you wanna reach for if you want crease-proof,
10:11oily lid-proof wear.
10:12So now let's compare the ingredients list for these two,
10:15starting with eyeliner A.
10:17So our first ingredient, the trimethylsiloxysilicate,
10:19that is a silicone resin.
10:21And what that's gonna help do in the formula
10:23is help with some of the durability and long wear,
10:25so it's what's gonna help make it water resistant.
10:28Hydrogenated polyisobutene.
10:29Fun fact, that's actually the main component
10:31of a lot of lip products, lip glosses especially.
10:34And that's just a hydrocarbon.
10:36It can help with some structure,
10:37with some spreading benefits.
10:39Isododecane, that is a volatile.
10:40So that's one of the ingredients
10:41that when you apply the eyeliner,
10:43it's going to evaporate out and allow the product to settle
10:46and form the film of product on the skin.
10:48The ethylene propylene copolymer film former.
10:51So that is going to, again,
10:53form that film of product on the skin,
10:54increase the durability of it.
10:56So we're seeing a lot of products
10:57that help with the structure,
10:58with the spreading,
10:59and with the depositing of product and pigment on the skin
11:03to ensure a little bit of durability and long wear.
11:06For product B, the first thing I noticed
11:07is it's a very long ingredients list.
11:09We see a lot of antioxidants.
11:11Because eyeliners, gel eyeliners, are anhydrous,
11:14that means there's no water in the formula,
11:16you preserve them a little bit differently.
11:18The main thing you're looking at
11:19when it comes to preserving a anhydrous product
11:22is you want antioxidants
11:24to prevent the oil-based ingredients
11:26from spoiling or going rancid.
11:28And with that, basically, it just,
11:29it starts to smell weird.
11:31This is a very long one.
11:32Pentaerythritol tetra-di-t-butylhydroxyhydrocinimates.
11:37Antioxidant.
11:38Sodium ascorbyl phosphate,
11:39that's a vitamin C derivative, antioxidant.
11:41Interestingly, if you look at the bottom part of this,
11:43there is water in this,
11:44but that's primarily because if you look around that water,
11:46there's a lot of extracts.
11:48And extracts are generally,
11:49when you get them as an ingredient,
11:51water is part of the formulation.
11:53Why is that in a gel liner?
11:55That's a great question.
11:56Mostly for marketing
11:57and to have a little bit of a story in there.
11:59Mostly, it's not imparting a lot of benefits,
12:02so it's just in there for a little bit of fun.
12:04A little spice, a little sprinkle of something.
12:05Based on the application, the challenge test,
12:08as well as the ingredients list,
12:09I personally think that product A
12:11is gonna be the higher quality product.
12:13Let's see the price for product A.
12:16This is $19, which, for a gel liner,
12:19is actually, first of all, a pretty good price
12:21for a good mid-tier, so it's not luxury price.
12:24And now let's look at the price for product B.
12:26So that's $8.49.
12:27That's a drugstore eyeliner right there,
12:29and we could tell.
12:30Do I think product A is worth the $19?
12:32If I'm gonna be real honest with you,
12:33I think that's a great price
12:34for how high quality the product A was
12:37with all the different tests.
12:38I would honestly, if I was a makeup artist,
12:40love to have that in my kit
12:41because I know it's going to perform well,
12:43it's going to wear well,
12:44and it's going to last a long time.
12:46We're talking water resistance and crease resistance.
12:49In front of me now, I have shimmer gel liners.
12:52When it comes to the reflect, the shine, the shimmer,
12:55that's a result of something called
12:56an interference pigment.
12:58And with that, I still want it to spread well,
13:01but when it comes to the application of it,
13:02I want a good payoff,
13:04I want good coverage from the liner,
13:05but I still want really good effects from the shimmer.
13:09I want that shine, I want that glitter,
13:11and that's dependent partially on the particle size.
13:13So when it comes to the actual manufacturing of it,
13:15I'm looking at a higher quality product
13:17if it's going to be a true glitter liner,
13:19maintaining the particle size of those glitters
13:21to really get that shine and that sparkle.
13:23Looking at this though,
13:24I'm not seeing like a lot of high glitter,
13:26which means I'm not looking at bigger particles.
13:28So I'm looking at probably a more metallic
13:29or shimmer finish on the skin.
13:31Let's look at product B now.
13:33It's a little bit of a darker blue.
13:35We see in this one already,
13:37this actually has,
13:38depending on how you hold it up to the light,
13:39I'm getting little sparks of a lighter blue glitter,
13:41which is interesting.
13:42I'm excited to see what this could look like swatched
13:44and up close.
13:45So now let's look at the application for product A.
13:48Again, as I saw just off the visual,
13:50I'm not seeing the same glitter reflect
13:52I saw in product B.
13:53Let's do a little line.
13:57I'm not strong or anything.
13:58It's not like I'm like doing all this force on there.
13:59So that's unfortunate.
14:01Let's get that sharpened.
14:02So once again with product A,
14:04do a line.
14:05And with this, I'm just looking for how does it apply?
14:07Does it have good glide?
14:08Again, we want something very smooth,
14:10very creamy on the eye area, especially.
14:12So I'm going to do that.
14:13Very smooth, very creamy on the eye area, especially.
14:15And that applied really well.
14:16Looking at the payoff on the hand,
14:19when it comes to formulating with blue pigments,
14:20they're very challenging.
14:21They're very high maintenance.
14:22You want really good integrity.
14:24You want really good payoff.
14:25What I'm looking at immediately
14:26is it's just not like a very consistent line,
14:29not consistent payoff.
14:30Just to do a second line again.
14:34I'm not seeing like a very, very like opaque,
14:37very high coverage line on that,
14:39but it is very creamy.
14:40I will say that.
14:41On my hands, it's coming across very metallic.
14:43So I'm not looking for like very big glitter particles
14:46or like shimmer interference particles, pigments.
14:48But all things aside, it does have decent coverage.
14:50It does have nice payoff.
14:52You might have to go over a couple of times
14:54to get very bold, bold color,
14:55which could be a quality indicator.
14:57But overall, I'm not going to discount it
14:59and say it's a bad quality product
15:01or say it's a great quality product just yet.
15:02Let's look over to product B now.
15:04Right off the bat,
15:05we know it's going to be a very different color.
15:06So swatching that.
15:08So very smooth, very creamy.
15:10That happened.
15:12Let's give it a second try like we did for product A.
15:14It's very creamy, very smooth,
15:16really nice application on that.
15:18Looking at it, it's not like opaque, high coverage, bold.
15:22Like when we see black and brown liners,
15:24like we're seeing like a very rich payoff from those.
15:27These, you kind of see like skin showing through
15:29a little bit.
15:29So you might have to go through a couple of times
15:31to get really high coverage, really high payoff.
15:33This one, as I mentioned earlier,
15:34you do see actual glitter pigments in there,
15:37which could be a sign of higher quality
15:39just because when it comes to formulating
15:42or anything that's a little bit more of a pronounced shimmer,
15:45you want to incorporate them gently into the formula
15:46just to maintain the integrity of that sparkle, that shimmer.
15:49Let's look at liner A under the microscope.
15:54So first thing I'm going to notice, first of all,
15:56is I notice what we call agglomerates.
15:58Agglomerates are basically chunks of pigment,
16:01but generally you want to avoid these clumps.
16:03It affects coverage, it affects payoff,
16:06and to me kind of indicates a lower quality product.
16:08There's a lot of things you could do
16:09when you're formulating a product
16:10to prevent that chunking, the agglomeration of pigments.
16:13Something else I'm noticing here,
16:14which is actually a very good illustration
16:16of what an interference pigment is,
16:17which interference pigments,
16:18they're used in color cosmetics and even skincare
16:21to give that reflect.
16:22And it can, depending on the size,
16:23give you anything from like a slight metallic look
16:26to like full-on glitter.
16:27One thing to note is the fact that
16:30when we looked at this product
16:30just straight up from the packaging,
16:32there wasn't any noticeable large sparkle sizes.
16:36So to me, this is going to be more of a metallic liner
16:38and therefore I shouldn't see as inconsistent
16:42size particles.
16:42I mean, this is very, very, very small.
16:45It's microscopic.
16:45So now let's look at product B.
16:48Okay, so first things first,
16:49obviously very different colors.
16:50Therefore, that indicates to me
16:52the coating on the substrate
16:54is probably a different thickness.
16:55Therefore, I'm getting a different color payoff
16:57or maybe the substrate itself
16:58is a different substrate altogether.
17:00Usually for these kinds of pigments,
17:01it's going to be mica or synthetic mica.
17:04Also notice, remember when I looked at the product itself
17:07out of the packaging, we noticed visible glitter shimmers.
17:09And as we see here,
17:10you see a very considerable difference
17:12between the majority of the shingles
17:15that are there for the glimmer versus larger particles.
17:18We do want to see that in this specific type of product
17:20because we actually do want that very noticeable sparkle.
17:23So because for the final product,
17:25we do want to see little flecks of those bigger shimmers.
17:27And in the closeup, we actually see, again,
17:30substantially larger plates.
17:31That could indicate a higher quality
17:32because when you want to maintain the integrity
17:35of those bigger shimmers,
17:36there's a special way of incorporating that
17:38into the final formula.
17:39You got to take a little bit extra care,
17:40a little TLC and going a little bit more gently
17:42because you don't want to break those up
17:44because then you're making them smaller
17:45and then you're not going to get that final,
17:46like substantial payoff from the shimmer.
17:48Therefore, that could indicate a higher quality product.
17:51Now let's compare the ingredients list
17:53for liner A and liner B.
17:55Let's start with liner A.
17:56First ingredient is dimethicone.
17:58Not a bad ingredient.
17:59They are great for spreading.
18:00They're great for also a little bit of heavy duty wear.
18:03Again, they are water and sebum resistant
18:06to some degree.
18:07Second ingredient is trimethylsiloxysilicate,
18:09which as we saw earlier, it's that silicone resin.
18:12It also gives you good wear, good water resistance.
18:15The Acrylate Sterile Acrylate Dimethicone Methacrylate
18:17Copolymer, cute name for a baby.
18:20That is, again, a film former.
18:22So that's going to affect the durability on the skin.
18:24So just right off that,
18:25we're going to get decent wear out of this product.
18:27You see synthetic fluorophlogopites.
18:31That is synthetic mica.
18:33So that could be one of the substrates
18:35for the interference pigments.
18:37We see some waxes.
18:39Those are for structure.
18:40Alumina, tin oxide.
18:42Those could be other substrates for interference pigments.
18:45Let's look at product B now.
18:46The first thing I noticed are pigments.
18:48And generally you can't gauge how much pigment
18:50is in a lot of color cosmetic products
18:51because a lot of times they'll just have them at the end.
18:53So seeing these at the front, like the very top things,
18:56it's interesting, but also it's a good visual
18:58that pigments are the primary ingredients in liners.
19:01But this does have mica in it.
19:03Straight up mica, not synthetic mica.
19:05If I'm going to be honest,
19:06I'm not entirely sure if there's a big price difference
19:07when purchasing the raw material
19:08of mica versus synthetic mica.
19:10But what that does potentially showcase
19:12is the fact that the first product, product A,
19:15maybe they didn't want to feature real mica
19:17for maybe some sort of ethical reason,
19:19which is interesting.
19:19In the cosmetic space, mica is a very hot topic.
19:22Based off the swatches, the deep dive,
19:25and the ingredients list,
19:26I'm leaning towards product B
19:28being the higher quality product.
19:29Let's look at the price for product A, $9.
19:33We were not surprised by that.
19:35I'm going to be honest with you.
19:36Just, it didn't give a lot of high quality,
19:38like a lot of effort put into the formulation.
19:40Let's look at product B.
19:42The price is $29.
19:45I mean, the ingredients told me a really good story
19:47and I knew it was going to be a higher quality product
19:49just based off what they put into the product.
19:51Therefore, I do think it does justify the price point.
19:53I don't personally think higher price
19:55indicates higher quality.
19:57As we saw in today's test though,
19:59it was pretty hand in hand.
20:00We're not about to speak down on drugstore products today,
20:03but as you did see,
20:04sometimes price does indicate
20:06a little bit extra TLC and care put into a formula.