Review: Freshlook Illuminate Contact Lens (Rich Brown)

This is my first time trying a contact lens brand other than Acuvue, but it's cheaper so I've always been tempted to try it. Doing some digging, it looks like Ciba Vision is associated with Alcon, which is a company of Novaritis Pharmaceuticals. I've heard of Novaritis before from prescription medication, so that's good enough for me!

Description (taken from googling):

• Diameter: 13.8mm
• Base curve: 8.6mm
• Daily contacts; each pack comes with 30 contacts (15 pairs)

My impression:

These lenses are only available in Asia, so you have to order it online (I'll write a review soon on which websites I've tried to buy these contact lens from). There are 3 colors: Rich Brown, Light Brown, and Jet Black. This review is for the Rich Brown.

It states that the diameter is 13.8mm, which is 1mm more than Acuvue Define Vivid which has a diameter of 12.8mm, so you would expect this to enlarge my eyes more than Acuvue Define Vivid. Well, we'll leave that to the pictures. Here's a photo of my left eye with Freshlook Illuminate Rich Brown, and my right eye without.

Right eye without contact lens, Left eye with Freshlook Illuminate Rich Brown

I've also attached a photo of Acuvue Define Natural Shine directly below and Acuvue Define Vivid in the lowest column for comparison.

Right eye without contact lens, Left eye with Acuvue Define Natural Shine

Right eye with Acuvue Define Vivid; Left eye without

From these photos, I would say that it enlarges my pupils LESS than Acuvue Define Vivid. In fact, it might even give less enlargement than Acuvue Define Natural Shine, because I can't really find a difference in the size of my two eyes from the first picture, but I can tell more of a difference in size from the second picture, which is Acuvue Define Natural Shine. Furthermore, Acuvue Define Natural Shine gives a nice pattern to my pupil, whereas this one just enlarges, if you can call that enlarging.

Comfort-wise, these contact lenses are thinner so they are more comfortable upon application on my eye. I've read some reviews that they are hard to take out because they are so thin but that wasn't the case for me. I think they hold around the same moisture, though Acuvue may have a slight edge in that area. They also don't deviate around my eye when I am looking off to the sides, and the colored ring is wider, so I get less to almost no blurry vision with this. There was no irritation to my eye while wearing this.

I don't think I'll repurchase this though. It has minimal enlarging effect, in fact I can barely tell which eye is wearing the contact lens. It also doesn't give my eyes a nice pattern like Acuvue Define Natural Shine does. I guess the cheaper price is for a reason.

Summary:

Barely any enlargement (see photos above)
More comfortable than Acuvue Define Natural Shine and Acuvue Define Vivid
No blurry vision or deviating of lens when I look to the corner of my eye
$25 for a pack of 30 lens (15 days worth) on various websites

Grade: 2.5/5 because it works well as a comfortable set of contacts but it doesn't do any enlarging which is what it's supposed to do

Value: 3.5/5 because at $25 per pack, it's almost the same as your normal daily contacts, so might as well get this and get...1% enlargement?

Repurchase? Nope, will be sticking with Acuvue