An affordable under eye hydrator that should help with dry under eyes? And it’s by one of my favorite drugstore brands: Essence. Sign me up! The minute I spotted this product as part of the Essence Spring/ Summer 2022 collection update, I knew I wanted to try it. It took me some time to get to it (as I do with skincare as I can’t change it up too often), but now that I have given it more of a chance, I can give you my full thoughts. And those thoughts aren’t all that positive as this sadly wasn’t good enough to hydrate my crepey, dry, fine-lined under eyes.
Skincare Review: Essence Hydro Hero Under Eye Stick
Let’s kick this review off with the good news: this is affordable. As far as under eye hydrating products go, this is quite possibly one of the most affordable ones I have tried. It retails for just €2.95 for 4.5 grams of product. It comes in a cheap looking pink, plastic stick with a lid and it is just a bit of a weird one for me. Why? Keep on reading.
What does this product have to offer?
The packaging of this stick says it is deeply hydrating and caring and that’s also what the Essence website claims this does. It should be like a drink of water for your eye area, but also include some good ingredients such as niacinamide. It comes in a stick which is a format I have never tried. I have used mainly gel textures that come in a pot, a pump or a squeezy tube when it comes to something that works on my under eye. The stick itself is a light blue shade which made me expect this possibly having a cooling effect, but that isn’t claimed by any of the information I could find anywhere.
What is the ingredients list like?
So the ingredients are as follows:
INGREDIENTS: PROPYLENE GLYCOL, AQUA (WATER), GLYCERIN, SODIUM STEARATE, NIACINAMIDE, ALOE BARBADENSIS LEAF JUICE, PANTHENOL, ETHYLHEXYLGLYCERIN, PHENOXYETHANOL, POTASSIUM SORBATE, SODIUM BENZOATE, CI 42090 (BLUE 1).
All in the all the ingredients list isn’t too bad. It is short, it indeed has the ingredients the brands boasts about and it really doesn’t contain anything too offensive. Granted, I am not a cosmetics dermatologist, let a lone a cosmetic chemist, so I am just going off my experience using skincare here. And my experience here isn’t great: it did absolutely nothing. I would apply this and by the time it was absorbed by my skin, I felt I hadn’t applied anything at all. And I tried everything in terms of ways of application: warming it up with my fingers, straight from the stick, with a brush. You name it, I tried it. I felt I needed quite a thick layer for this to do anything at all and that meant several layers which I had to let sit and then go in with a new layer of product. Not that quick and easy to use.
How does this product work?
So with skincare reviews I often get people responding when something doesn’t work for me saying well ‘duh, it’s because it has ingredient so-and-so’. And I would again like to remind you that whether a product works or not usually doesn’t come down to one particular ingredients. It comes down to the concentration of the ingredient and how it plays together with the other ingredients in the product. So while this has niacinamide (one of my favorite skincare ingredients) it is not in this in any kind of concentration that this works for me.
My final thoughts
I like how Essence is doing some more skincare products by now. While a lot of them sound promising on the surface, my experience is that they are okay products if your skin doesn’t have too many needs. So if you are a teenager or in your early 20s, you may like these. But for my more mature, late 30s skin, it just isn’t giving me enough to make my makeup sit well over this, let alone that this is hydrating enough for my eye area in the night time. On top of that, the stick is also a bit too big to fit neatly on my under eye area which also makes it less perfect for me.
Would I recommend the Essence Hydro Hero under eye stick?
While this may be nice for some people, I have tried other eye creams that just do move for me that are only a bit more expensive than this is. De Tuinen (Dutch Holland & Barret) has a great aloe vera eye serum in their name brand line that comes with 50 mls of product (that’s a lot for eye cream) at only €12. It literally lasts me months when I use it and I can use day time and night time. So I would recommend that over this.