Review and comparison: CoverGirl Outlast Stay Brilliant Nail Gloss

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Whoops, this post has been sitting in my saved folder for a while now, after I picked some of this nail polish up on the recommendation of srizzo. Better late than never? These aren't limited edition or anything.

These CoverGirl Outlast Stay Brilliant nail polishes glosses are supposed to have basecoat and topcoat included. Look, I'll just be upfront about it: I think that's kind of bullshit. I mean, basecoat is supposed to be a layer between your nail and the polish, so how does that work? It's not going to prevent staining, for one thing. Also, I don't wear nail polish without putting a quick dry topcoat on top, because I usually do my nails less than an hour before I go to bed, and that's the only way to avoid fucking them up. There are a bunch of blogs out there where people tested these on their own, so if that's important to you, google. I'm just going to treat these like regular nail polishes.

And that's how they performed for me. They're very good, cheap nail polishes. I bought three colors: Vio-last, Out of the Blue, and Midnight Magic (which I previously posted about here, as a dupe or Zoya FeiFei). They're all really, really nice colors. Out of the Blue was actually unlike any blue I already owned, and I have an embarrassing number of blue nail polishes (I will do a blue comparison post soon). Scroll down for some comparison swatches of Vio-last below.

As for the formula, it's great. You can get away with 1-2 coats with the three shades I tried. I get about the same wear as any other polish, which on my nails, is not spectacular. With Orly Bonder basecoat and a quick dry topcoat, I get tip wear by second day, chips by third (without the Orly basecoat, it'd usually be chips by the second day). I just have flexible fingernails or something. I envy people who can make a manicure last for a week. On my toes Vio-last wore for a respectable 2 weeks without chips, which is also typical for me.

I'd definitely recommend these polishes, especially if you can get them on sale, which you probably can. Right now drugstore.com has a coupon for 20% off one CoverGirl item or 40% off three.

Here's a comparison of CoverGirl Vio-last and two other polishes: Wet N Wild Megalast On A Trip and Color Club Pucci-licious. Looking at the CoverGirl and Wet N Wild in the bottle, I thought they were pretty much identical. Pucci-licious looked pretty close in the bottle too, so I thought I'd add it to the comparison.

They're all actually quite different. Vio-last is quite a bit darker than the other two, definitely a purple, while On A Trip is lighter, more on the periwinkle side. But a purplish periwinkle rather than a bluish one, if that makes sense. Pucci-licious is closer to On A Trip, but brighter, since it's a neon. That's also why it's matte, as neons tend to be.

The formula of the CoverGirl was by far the best of the three. It was much more opaque. You could maybe just do one thick coat, or definitely two thin coats. The swatches below are two thickish coats of each. You can see that the Color Club polish is still a little streaky.

Left to right: Wet N Wild Megalast On A Trip, CoverGirl Vio-last, Color Club Pucci-licious.

Left to right: Wet N Wild Megalast On A Trip, CoverGirl Vio-last, Color Club Pucci-licious.

Do you have any CoverGirl nail polishes yet? Were you as impressed with them as I was? Any other colors you'd recommend buying - or avoiding?