I paid my attention to the brand a long time ago. But I didn’t want to spend 50 bucks on the palette, which I don’t know quality-wise.
That’s why I was living my life, being sure that I would never buy a palette from them. But here, I found out that these palettes were discounted at the local beauty store. It was a sin to ignore that. And I bought one palette for me. 
At the store, there were two palettes which caught my attention. They were orange-red and nude matte. The first one was out of stock, that’s why it wasn’t difficult to make up my mind.
This palette isn’t big, though. It’s even smaller than the Sleek palettes. Besides, my attention was caught when I saw no cover on it at all. I mean it’s pretty easy to open the palette at the store and swatch it. Some people do so. I read a pile of reviews where the girls mentioned they bought a new palette which already had fingerprints on the refills.
This is so unpleasant, isn’t it? Especially for such a trusted brand. That’s why I highly recommend you ask the sales rep to open the palette that you’re going to buy together to check out if it’s really brand new and doesn’t have any fingerprints on it (well, yeah, I watch too many detective stories).
As for the quality of the palette itself, I mean the compact, here I have to say something.
This shiny top lid is definitely beautiful but this picture is actually glued and it’s sticky at one of the sides to my fingers if I touch it. Such drawback makes the brand appear cheaper. Even the Sleek palettes are better quality-wise. They are made of plastic and have a protective tape.
By the way, as for the tapes, here we have only the mirror protected with the tape. I appreciate it. So, it’s time to pass over to the contents.
The palette consists of 8 refill pans, which offer matte finish. They are divided into two quads, which are warm- and cool-toned. The left quad offers warm shades:
beige, sandy, fair brown with red notes and a brown color, which looks like milk chocolate. The right quad comes with ash pink color, (fair pink), ash pink but this time with a more lilac undertone and a black shade.
Visually I’m more into the cool-toned colors. They seem to offer more variety, rather than the warm shades. However, I still use all the shades and I like the way all of them look on my eyelids.
Pigmentation-wise all the colors are pretty well pigmented. If I were to compare them with the Sleek shades, I’d definitely say that the Smashbox palette wins here, even though I managed to buy them for almost the same price. When I use a primer, all the colors appear even bolder and they pack well. They can be a little bit dusty when I pick them up with a brush, but still, it comes only to the dark shades (they are the most dangerous here, I’d say) .
A lot of people claim that these are difficult to blend out. I agree. But, recently I found out that if you apply the basic beige color first and only after that start applying all the other colors, the blending will be much easier and smoother.
Some makeup looks which I managed to do while testing this palette:
And my favorite smokey eyes.
Some words concerning the staying power: I have a bad eyeshadow primer. So, when I use these products over that primer, they still hold on well, though there’s a hint of creasing, which still doesn’t appear for hours. They hold on through a study day even over that shitty primer. The Sleek eyeshadows are different, they don’t hold on so well.
I take off a star for flimsy packaging however, I do recommend this product for purchasing because their quality is very good!
Thanks for your attention!
