Barry M Gelly Lychee vs OPI My Vampire is Buff - comparison and review

Hi everyone!

I hope you are all doing really well.  I've finally made it to my week off work, am off on my hols tomorrow woohoo!  Of course I'm taking my laptop so I'm hoping I might even get some cheeky blogging in   :-)

So, I was having a rant a while back on Twitter about my work printer taking a million clicks to print one page, and I called the printer a "beige git".  I finished this with a disclaimer stating I wasn't beige-ist, which led to a bit of a discussion with Liloo of Le Petit Jardin of Liloo (link) about whether I was beige-ist or not, all tongue in cheek of course!  If you haven't checked out her blog before, you should give it a look, especially if you're into make-up as well as nails, it's fab, and she's beautiful inside and out, I love her and her blog. :-)  Anyway, this conversation led round to a chain of thought, because I'd bought Barry M Lychee the previous week and not used it yet, and it's kind of beige. 

I got to wondering how close it was in colour to My Vampire is Buff by OPI.  And usually, if I've wondered it, other people have too.  And because I own both I thought I would do a quick comparison and review for you.

So here we have the polishes side by side:

You can immediately see that they're close, but in no way dupes.  The Barry M is more of a taupe, whereas the OPI is whiter and pinker, although the pink hue doesn't come out very well in photos, it is there in real life, just the slightest blush tone.

So here they are side by side on my nails:

Lychee is on my index and middle finger, and My Vampire is Buff is on my ring and little (pinkie) finger.  Both two coats.

I think this shows the difference in tone better than it shows in the bottle.  But of course, if it was just a case of choosing which colour we like best, there would be no need at all for nail polish reviews, would there?  So how do they compare in application?

MVIB: First coat a bit streaky and still some visible nail line
Lychee: Not as streaky and shinier

MVIB: Consistency just right, easy to apply
Lychee: A bit runnier, need to be careful about leaving polish on stalk as it could drip, but still easy to apply

MVIB: Not as self levelling as some Nails Inc cremes but still OK
Lychee: More self levelling, pretty good

MVIB: Brush typical OPI brush, just right softness, nice shape
Lychee: Main let down, too square at top so made shaping at cuticles more difficult, and a bit too stiff, although released polish well

MVIB: One coat touch dry time 3 min 45 sec
Lychee: One coat touch dry time 3 minutes

MVIB: 2 coats left only very slight nail line
Lychee: 2 coats left no nail line, could be a one coater with medium thickness application

MVIB: £7.85 from Amazon UK (link)
Lychee: £3.99 from Amazon UK (link)

So lets have full swatches then.  Here's Barry M Gelly Lychee swatched on all fingers:

And here's OPI my Vampire is Buff swatched on all fingers:

So which is the winner?  Lets recap:

Barry M Gelly in Lychee dries faster, is more opaque, is more shiny, and importantly it costs less. 
 
OPI My Vampire is Buff has a slightly better formula and much better brush.  So there's pros and cons to each.

At the end of the day then, for me it comes down to which colour I prefer.  I personally prefer My Vampire is Buff, because I like white-based polishes, and I find Lychee a little bit uninspiring. 

However, the happy news is that to polish nuts like me, they're different enough to justify owning both, which is always a good thing.  They're not the same, they're SIMILAR  ;-)

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~