Review: Skinfood Argan Oil Silk Hair Essence

I've been using Skinfood's Extra Virgin Olive Hair Essence for awhile now and it's been great. I have always thought that my hair was a lost cause, and that nothing short of a perm can change this dry frizzball. But then the essence made my hair silky smooth. The only problem I had with it was that I needed 9-10 pumps to get that effect and the bottle was only 60ml. This is Skinfood's other hair essence, and I know that argan oil is used in other brands to treat dry hair as well so I thought I'd try this one out.

Description (taken from eng.theskinfood.com):

• Containing 18 silk-based ingredients as well as moisture-keeping and nutrition-rich argan oil Argan oil Silk Hair Essence gives your dry and damaged hair a silky and lustrous shine.
• Argan Oil, Known as 'Oil of God', is produced from the kernels of the argan free, which is now endangered and under protection of UNESCO. It is highly rich in essential fotty acid. Vitamin E, squalene and excellent in keeping moisture that it is valued for hair care.
• Spred a modest amount through the hair or parts of it and style it as you want.
• Give a more gentle and careful massage to damaged hair. For more effective hair damage prevention, dry your hair after applying essence when your hair is still wet after shampooing.

Initial Thoughts:

It finally got delivered today and I just tried it. The texture is quite runny compared to the Extra Virgin Olive Essence. I was being conservative and only used 6 pumps compared to the 9-10 pumps I usually use with the Extra Virgin Olive Essence. My hair had a similar silkiness than when I used the Extra Virgin Olive Essence, but it feels more fluffy. That is, my hair feels more natural and not as heavy with the same level of silkiness.

Price-wise, Extra Virgin Olive Essence is more expensive. Argan Oil Silk Hair Essence costs $14.50 for 100ml and the Extra Virgin Olive Essence selling for $10.45 for 60ml. If you convert that into 100ml, it will cost around $17.40 for 100ml. Also, I didn't use as many pumps with the Argan Oil. I think my hair feels a little less silky compared to using the Extra Virgin Olive Essence but I think if I used 7 pumps it would be very close. So that makes Argan Oil an even better deal.

I will continue using this for a week and some time after make a comparison between this Argan Oil Silk Hair Essence and the Extra Virgin Olive Essence. 

My Impression:

I take it back. Maybe my hair was just performing well that day and I thought Argan Oil Silk Hair Essence worked well enough for my hair. Argan oil is good, but not good enough and not as good as the Extra Virgin Olive Essence. For the past several days I had to pump around 12 pumps BEFORE I blow-dried my hair and then another 2 pumps AFTER to get it to look similar to what it looked like when I used Extra Virgin Olive Essence. Except I needed so many pumps that my hair looks thicker and more puffy (because basically there's now Argan oil coating every strand of my hair making each hair strand thicker). And my hair is already thick enough.

Also, with this essence, even though my hair looked smoother with those 14 pumps, when I ran my fingers through my hair, it didn't have the same smooth and silkiness feeling as when I used the Extra Virgin Olive Essence.


Summary:

Effective and makes a visible difference in how smooth your hair looks--but not so much how it feels
Need 12-14 pumps to get my hair where I want it to be.. and then my hair looks really puffy and thick
Not effective enough for my dry frizzball hair
$24 for 110ml on eBay

Quality: 3/5 because it takes even more to make my hair look smooth at the expense of my hair looking really thick and puffy, but it still doesn't feel as smooth as with the Extra Virgin Olive Essence

Value: 3.5/5 because it's not too expensive, contains 100ml and does have a moderate effect so it may work for people who have hair that's not as dry and frizzy as mine

Repurchase: No, I'll be repurchasing the Extra Virgin Olive Essence or trying some of Etude House's hair products.