Hera is one of Korean high end brands that I've always wanted to try. I heard great things about this brand, from their lipsticks to bb cushions since 2 years ago. Last year, I decided to try their eyeliner because I'm quite an eyeliner addict, I always want to find new eyeliners that might stay on better on my eyes. I had good experience with IOPE eyeliner, so I always want to try other eyeliners from similar brands like Hera. I was totally excited to try this product, especially because this eyeliner has a quiet unique mechanism which I will show you more in this post.
Keep reading if you're interested to find out more about this product.
Except for the product name, almost everything else on the box packaging is all in Korean.
They include a piece of paper that explains how this product works. It's in Korean but there are some pictures on the side that's pretty self explanatory.
The first time I received this eyeliner and opened the cap, the brush tip was all white. There's the twist on the upper part of the pen, and once it's twisted, the product comes out of the brush. Be careful, if the brush is not white then it's not brand new.
Like this. This was when I was so noob I twisted too much, not knowing the liquid liner would pour this much. So 1-2 twists is all you need, really. After that the brush will dry out but that's okay cause when you twist again, the liner will come out again on the brush tip. This kind of mechanism is actually quite nice and convenient for eyeliner. There are some eyeliners that dry out so fast even when the cap is closed and the product is unused. I had a couple of eyeliners like that and it was pretty frustrating. However, this Hera eyeliner didn't really amaze me in terms of its ink pigmentation and texture.
I don't know if it's just me or that this particular product was a bad batch, and in this test photo I did it was still okay ish. But I can't use this eyeliner fully because sometimes when I twist the pen, it's like too watery and not even black watery but looks like some weird colored liquid with some black ink, if that makes sense. It's not drying out, it's still very much liquid-y, which is good for how long I have it in my drawer. But it will never be thick black like how I wanted my eyeliner to be. I really hope it's just a bad batch that I received though. I mean, its price range isn't that affordable (affordable is like $10-15 to me), so it'd suck big time if the others are the same as this one.
As usual, I wet my hand with water and rub it hard. Well, part of the liners gets smudged and fades. With max rubbing, it's nearly gone so while I need hard rubbing to make it disappear, it's still not 100% smudgeproof when it's wet, like most felt tip liners I had used before. When it's dry it's a bit harder to vanish with minimal rub or touch.
PROS
- Quite interesting twisting mechanism
- Product doesn't dry out fast
- Buildable
- Nice packaging
- Soft brush bristles
CONS
- Not pigmented enough
- Less precision - kinda hard to draw winged liner
VERDICT 3/5
As eyeliner is one of the huge part of my makeup, the pigmentation and ease of use are really important for me. And quite frankly, this one doesn't deliver as much as I hoped, in my opinion. For daily use when you don't need much eyeliner maybe, but this is not for me. The brush tip isn't exactly precise. I always need to draw my inner corner very sharp to make fake inner eye corner and this can't do that. The winged liner I draw with this Hera eyeliner always turns out pretty fail :( This eyeliner doesn't dry out though, it's liquid-y and with the twist it's easily liquid even after months of not using and opening it. Once again, I really hope the one I got is just a very bad batch. It's just a disappointing product for me cause I had high expectation for this to be at least like IOPE eyeliner, but it's not even close. So I had to give a very low score. But again, tbis is just my opinion based on my personal experience of the product I got. I really hope the others in the market don't turn out like mine though.
WHERE TO GET
Jolse for $21
Disclosure: The product mentioned above was sent to me for review purposes. However all thoughts and opinions expressed are honest and entirely my own. I do not get paid to write this post.