Product Review: Garnier Fructis Hydra Recharge Hair Care Line (PR Samples)

Tuesday, April 16, 2013
{Negative review alert!}
I honestly hate writing negative reviews because they make me feel like a gigantic snooty jerk, but honesty is the best policy, so let's get on with it.

What is this new Garnier Fructis Hydra Recharge line, and what is it supposed to do?



The Garnier Fructis Hydra Recharge line provides a power blast of hydration to dry hair, leaving it ultra-hydrated and weightlessly silky. Infused with superfruits, the Hydra Recharge formula actively replenishes hair for silky-soft hydration that lasts. Hydra Recharge will recharge your thirsty locks and keep your hair super silky and surprisingly weightless for up to two whole days. 


  • Hydra Recharge Shampoo is a hydration innovation; the first to feature thousands of beads that burst on impact.
  • Hydra Recharge range contains superfruits goji berry, passion fruit, and kiwi to actively replenish without heaviness.
  • Hydra Recharge 1-Minute Moisture-Plenish Treatment is a powerful deep treatment whose revolutionary lightweight creme-gel formula transforms dry hair with a surge of high-performance hydration in just one minute. 


I received these products about a month ago through BzzAgent.com, which is a pretty rad website that hooks up bloggers/vloggers/social media junkies up with PR samples. I've had plenty of time for this line to wreak absolute havoc on my hair to test this line out. As the name "Hydra Recharge" would imply, this line is focused towards persons with dry hair. For reference, I have strange frankenhair; the roots are oily and itchy, the ends are drier than a desert, and it's just all around a fine, limp, frazzled mess. I WAS hoping that this would be able to cure the bottom half of my hair of it's intense dryness, but in reality it just made EVERYTHING worse.







Hydra Recharge Shampoo experience:



The first things my brain snapped to when I saw this shampoo were those anti-bacterial liquid hand soaps from B&BW and hair gel. So was I surprised when it ended up feeling like and lathering as well as hair gel? No... not really. This bizarre consistency to the formula made it relatively difficult to work with, and it took some time to actually develop a lather. As for those magical little hydration beads bursting on contact, all I have to say is "LOL". After using this shampoo, my normally oily roots were completely stripped, dried to the dickens, and were made completely unmanageable and tangled by this shampoo.
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Hydra Recharge Conditioner experience:



This had to be the lightest conditioner that I've used... ever. One would normally associate a thick, rich formula with deep hydration, but this back-assward line thought that a very thin and runny one would be better... and it wasn't. I got little to no results from this conditioner. It felt very watered down, which made it easy to spread through my hair, but it did nothing for me in terms of hydration or detangling. My ends were left all frizzy and looked as if they hadn't come into contact with conditioner at all.
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Hydra Recharge 1-Minute Moisture-Plenish Treatment experience:



This treatment essentially performed the same function (or lack thereof) as the Hydra Recharge conditioner. There is really no reason in the world to by both.
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In summary, my locks were NOT left super silky. Instead they ended up pulling a full Hermione on me and were unmanageable, frizzy, and felt quite brittle. I'm actually still recovering from the few weeks I used these products. My actual experiences completely contrast the companies claims about the products (with the exception of weightlessness, of which I had an obnoxious amount), which lands this line with a big fat F in my book. Never have I ever dreaded showering because of a hairline before this. I would definitely say pass this line up.

Disclosure:*

7 comments:

  1. That's interesting! I have the same hair type as you, apparently (oily roots, dry ends) and also tested this out. While it didn't do anything amazing to my hair, I thought it was an okay, basic shampoo and conditioner. I got lots of lather from the shampoo and liked the treatment better than the conditioner (but it was just conditioner too, nothing special). Did you notice that it made your hair worse the first time you used it, or only after a while? Overall, I've thought that most of the Garnier products I've tried recently have been mediocre to terrible (e.g. the Triple Nutrition Miracle Dry Oil is a complete mess), but that this was okay at worst. It interesting how everyone's hair (and skin) can react so differently to the same product.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It made my hair horrible on the first go and just kept it at that state of bad after each shampoo/conditioning. And I totally agree with you on Garnier products! I've never been blown away by any of their products.

      Delete
  2. To be very honest I've always been reluctant to use any Garnier product. I've never used any & for some reason it gives me weird vibes whenever I see Garnier products on counters.

    If you need my advice try The Body Shop Rainforest SHINE Shampoo.I can see that your hair are somewhat like mine, drier at the ends. This is my all time favorite shampoo, makes hair super soft & shiny. You can follow this by a conditioner. Do get back to me after trying it out. :)

    Sarah
    PrettyGloss - beauty, makeup & a lil life

    ReplyDelete
  3. I remember using Garnier products a very long time ago. I've since stopped because they just didn't work for my hair. Sorry to hair your experience with this.

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  4. I totally agree with you! I use the shampoo, conditioner, deep conditioner and the leave in and my hair feels AWFUL!! When blowdrying it felt WORSE than it has in forever. I alson think it is stunting my hair growth. I am very unsatisfies with these products and results. I would not use this line.

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  5. I first tried the sample packets. It made my hair feel amazing. Silky and didnt weigh it down a lot. Then i bought itby the bottles at walmart. The price ($5 range) was my first clue that this couldnt possibly be the same stuff. So i tried it out and- no surprise- this was a crappy imposter.I even doubled checked the drastically different results by using another sample to compare. I would like to know where i can find the genuine superior product those samples contained(or i would settle for a lifetime supply o fthe sample packets) Perhaps they screwed up. Mixed up the 2 products
    and sent out some samples of the garbage by mistake.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I had a similar experience! I had the packets for a while and used them as travel size shampoo. My hair has never felt s wonderfully silky as it does right now, but fter reading reviews, I am very reluctant to go and buy the bottles.

    ReplyDelete

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