In my first proper makeup review in a long time, I would like to present to you: the Essence Wow What a Brow eyebrow pencil. This is available in 4 shades and part of Essence’s fall/ winter 2022 drop.
Yes, yes, I know. I haven’t been posting many reviews. As I was ill for part of December, I fell behind posting videos so I opted to post those first and go back to reviews in January. I hope you missed these as much as I did!
Review: Essence Wow What a Brow Pen waterproof 01 Light Brown
By now we all know about Essence’s affordability. I wouldn’t necessarily call it cheap, but if you are looking for a brand that is easy on the bank account, Essence is a great first stop. At just €2.95 this product is very much in keeping with Essence’s affordable outline.
What does this product have to offer?
The Essence Wow What a Brow pen is a triangular shaped eyebrow pencil. The promise is that this is waterproof and it comes in 4 shades ranging from light brown to brown and dark brown to black brown. One end comes with a spoolie for easy application. It should create a natural finish.
How does the brow pencil swatch?
I struggled with this pencil a lot swatching it out. As you can see the shade light brown is actually quite pretty and cool toned. Some lighter brown brow pencils can pull quite red, which greatly clashes with my natural brow hair color. This one doesn’t so that is a plus.
What I disliked about this pencil is how imprecise it is. This promises to make natural brows easy to achieve, but I found the triangular shape not helpful at all and I couldn’t create anything resembling a brow stroke. All this does is fill in large patches, but not create actual brush hairs.
What does this look like in the brows?
Once applied I don’t find this too offensive, but I hope you can see what’s wrong with it. This is far too dark to look natural. I was able to tone it down by brushing it through with a spoolie, but this is not the natural brow look I had in mind.
On top of that, the brow pencil is too thick to nicely fit my brow shape. I struggled getting this to go on where I wanted it to and I had to use my fingers to clean things up every time I used this.
Should you buy the Essence Wow What a Brow pen?
For how affordable this is, I think this can be a nice product for many people. I just needed a shade that is lighter than this with a finer pencil shape. What I did like here was the formula. It is a rich and creamy formula that is easy to blend out if you do apply too much.
A downside to the soft formula was that it lead to my brows looking blocky and my needing an extra tool to brush out my brows. If I didn’t I ran the risk of having 2016 brows and that’s never been a brow look I wanted to go for, even when it was trending.
This promises to be waterproof, but personally I didn’t notice much of a difference in wear time between this and other brow pencils I have tried. It is removed easily and doesn’t leave a stain behind.
Overall, this product is cheap and cheerful and easy on the back account but I personally know I won’t be getting more use out of this. It was just a bit too cumbersome for me to use on the daily.