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

{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.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.
--------------------------------------------------------

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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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 Drugstore, Garnier, Hair Care, Review