Review: Garnier Fructis Triple Nutrition Miracle Dry Oil, Part II (The Results, with photos)

If you missed my post on the formula of this product and my expectations based on that, check it out here. This second post reveals the results I got using this product in a number of different ways.

Let me start by repeating the marketing claims made by Garnier about this Dry Oil, since that will the main basis on which I evaluate it:

According to the Garnier marketing materials, this is a combination of "three weightless oils - olive, avocado, and shea" that is mean to "transform hair and skin". It is "made for everyday use on your hair, body, and face" and "instantly absorbs in a touch with no oily residue". They claim that it is the first multiuse oil on the mass market, "making revolutionary hair and skin care affordable for everyone".

I'm also comparing this to other more basic oil products, such as olive oil and rosehip oil, which are inexpensive and readily available. I've used those and continue to use them, so I am familiar with the benefits of using oils and how to get good results with them.

So how did it work out?

The first night I got it, I tried it as a moisturizer on my dry legs before going to bed. I had showered that morning, so I wasn't freshly cleaned up. It felt oily and itched a little bit while I was in bed trying to fall asleep. I don't think it was an allergic reaction; it was just uncomfortable and distracting to be able to feel the product. The scent is okay, but it is strongly scented. It smells like something vaguely familiar that I can't place. It's sort of  halfway between a floral and sort of candy scent: very sweet.

I thought maybe the problem was that my legs didn't really need much moisturizing at the end of the day, so I decided to try it on my skin the next morning after I showered. This is when I regularly use some kind of lotion or body butter. I sprayed it on my legs and arms and tried to spread it around like a lotion. It somehow both absorbed too quickly and not quickly enough. It didn't have enough slip to spread evenly across the skin's surface. I was left with greasier patches where I had sprayed it and dry patches in between. The oily spots certainly did not absorb instantly as promised. I could still feel them much later in the same annoying way as the night before. So I would call this a failure as a body moisturizer. I think you'd have better luck spraying it into the palms of your hands and then rubbing it on your skin, but if it is meant to be used that way, you might as well get a cheap bottle of olive oil and use that. That doesn't have all the extra potentially irritating ingredients.

Okay, well, maybe this is really meant primarily to be a hair product. That would make sense with the spray packaging, right? I spritzed it on my wet hair, combed it through, and let it air dry. I used 5 squirts total, one on each side and one at the back, only on the lower 3/4 of my hair. I wasn't sure that would cover all of my hair evenly, but since it's oil, I didn't want to add any more. Then I went out grocery shopping. In about an hour, when my hair had completely dried . . . well, it looked like it was still wet. But it wasn't. It was just fucking greasy. Not pretty! It felt gross too. Here's the photo I took as soon as I got home. See how stringy that is? My hair does not normally look like that - and it looked worse in person than it does in the photo. Just awful.

This is otherwise clean hair. Not good.

So it had disappointed me when used on body and hair, but I still hadn't tried it on my face. I didn't have high hopes, and indeed, I was not impressed. As the directions instruct, I sprayed a small amount into my hands and spread it on my face from there. It's way, way too strongly scented for a face product. Having it that close to my nose was just too much. Barf. It also itched in a way that felt more like my skin was reacting to it than it had on the rest of my body. And it was in no way weightless or instantly-absorbing. I regularly use rosehip oil as a moisturizer. It takes at least half an hour to absorb. This was no faster. "No oily residue," my ass.

Okay, but I still had an almost-full bottle of this shit, and I wanted to see if I could figure out a way to make it work. I didn't want to put any more on my skin. So I decided to try it on dry hair, where I might have a better way to gauge how it would look right away. It's really hard to use less than 2 spritzes on each side of my head and get anything like even coverage, because the spray is too concentrated. I tried holding the bottle father from my face, but then I ended up with oil all over my glasses and the side of my face, and that really pissed me off. It's not easy to clean off.

I didn't take a photo of this second hair attempt, because you can just refer to the above photo. It was exactly the same. Terrible.

But I have used oil in my hair before! Usually I just put a few drops in the palm of my hand, rub my hands together, and then comb that through the lengths of my hair. So I tried it that way. It was okay? Meh. Not great. Doing it this way renders the spray bottle and extra ingredients completely pointless, though. If you can only use a few drops at a time, a spray bottle is also not the ideal vessel. I assumed that the addition of the other ingredients would mean that this was diluted enough to use more generously. I was mistaken.

I can imagine that maybe, just maybe, this would be somehow useful for people with thicker, coarser, or curlier hair than mine. But if you look at the photos in the advertisements for this product, you'll see that the women pictured have hair basically like mine, but more fluffy because it's been blown out. Nowhere on the packaging or advertising does it indicate that this is meant for certain hair or skin types. So why shouldn't I expect it to work for me? Garnier is telling me that it will! They use the word "everyone" in their marketing blabber.

In the end, I have absolutely no use for this product. Because of the smell and the irritating ingredients, it's not only more expensive than other more basic oils, it's worse. Just buy a bottle of olive oil or some shea butter or, if you want to be extra fancy, something like rosehip oil. You'll spend about the same amount of money, if not less. This is useless. The only reason I can think of to buy this instead of some other oil is that you really, really like the sickeningly sweet scent. I don't.

I'd give this 2 stars out of 5. It does in fact contain beneficial oils, which got my hopes up initially. But it has no advantages over just buying those oils themselves, and it doesn't live up to any of its claims.

Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link. I got this product free from BzzAgent.