I’m back!! I finally finished my exams and have taken some time to recover, hence the absence. But I’m back now and hope to keep up my previous routine of posting weekly/bi-weekly 🙂 Today’s (LONG) review is on Etude House’s newest cushion – the Real Powder Cushion SPF50+/PA+++!
This cushion claims to be a combination of a primer, BB cream, concealer, powder pact, and oil control powder, giving it a “perfect” smooth finish with high coverage. Because of it’s “5 in 1” technology, it suggests that you can use this product without having to use primer/finishing powder, and have this be your sole step in your skin makeup routine.
Etude House sent me all 3 (yes, only 3) shades of this cushion for review!
The packaging is in an updated sleek, minimalist design which seems to be Etude House’s new thing.
This picture would have looked more satisfying had the middle box had a slight darker shade 😐
Etude House is no stranger to limited shade releases when it comes to their cushions. They general range from 3 ~ 4 shades. If you’re looking for something in the darker spectrum or with different undertones, Etude is not the place you want to look. Their newest foundation line, “Double Lasting” comes in 5 shades (which will be swatched on my Instagram soon) so that might prove to be a bit more hopeful! This, however, leaves much to be desired in shade-range.
And here it is! I feel like this cushion looks much classier than their previous cushions.
The lid has a transparent bubbled plastic cover a cream/beige coloured finish and the Etude House logo.
The back is a matte beige with three little bumps to protect the bottom of the cushion from resting on surfaces directly. Not entirely necessary but a nice touch!
The border of the lid has a chrome finish. All of these different textures surprisingly go well together!
Ignoring the fact that my Any Cushion is decorated (if you’re curious as to why, see my review here), you can really see a difference in the new cushion design versus the old! I didn’t mind the previous design but looking at them next to each other, the Any Cushion looks quite cheap, plain and bulky.
Was hard to get this photo perfectly straight as I take all my photos on my bedㅋㅋ but as you can see, the Real Powder Cushion is about half the size of the Any Cushion! They’re both the same price, 18000 KRW, but the Any Cushion contains an extra gram of product at 15g vs 14g. Either way, the Real Powder Cushion wins 10/10 for me here in that it’s so slim and convenient for travel! My Any Cushion doesn’t fit in my pouch, decorated or not 😦
Unlike the Any Cushion that would open and close easily, this one has snaps so that it closes firmly into place without risk of it opening and letting in contaminants.
The puff matches the beige packing of the cushion and looks to be the same size as the regular Etude House puffs.
However I find that the texture is a bit different from the regular Etude puffs…
I might be wrong but I find these to be a bit harder/drier? More experimentation is needed but I really did not like the finish this puff gave on my face. I’m considering switching it out with another puff and seeing if I get better results with that.
It comes with a sticker to protect the product and make sure everything is sealed air-tight.
When comparing the sponge in this one to the Any Cushion, I would say this product has bigger pores.
At first glance you can see product bubbling through, which means it’s quite filled up – a good sign!
I believe the reason the pores are bigger is because this product is thicker and creamier in texture than the Any Cushion. One thing I noticed when I pressed on it is that the cushion feels very shallow and I hit the bottom after barely pressing it. This is why I’m so surprised that it’s only 1g less of product than the Any Cushion – I expected it to be half as much with how shallow the sponge is!
Like all of Etude’s cushions, you can buy refills for this for cheaper than buying the whole cushion (18,000 KRW for the full product vs. 10,000 KRW for a refill). It pops out easily when pressing on the bottom of the compact when it’s open.
•○ Swatches ○•
I was given all 3 shades for review, but naturally only swatched the shade that matched my skin the closest on my face.
As you can see here, when applied thickly the cushion has more of a wet texture, but when applied in a thin layer it dries to a matte powdery finish.
I feel like even the lightest shade isn’t a direct match for my skin tone. All 3 shades seem to lean more for warm/yellow undertones. This is a problem as I know a few pinky-toned Koreans, so I’m not sure why Etude failed to consider this undertone when they almost always include at least one “Rosy Beige” in their range of colours.
•○ 10-Hour Face Test ○•
I’m not someone who likes to wear skin makeup (foundation, cushion, etc.) all over my face unless it’s a special occasion as I don’t like the feeling of having makeup on my face and I have a tendency to get very itchy when wearing a full face of makeup. Because of this I usually just apply my Any Cushion on my nose and concealer on my eyes. However for the sake of the review I did my full face!
I forgot I was going full-coverage so I drew my eyebrows without thinking 8( This is my face before applying anything, just my basic skin care routine. I’ve had a terrible breakout from exam stress and it’s finally clearing up 😦 but here you can see the remnants (which for the sake of the review probably works in my favour).
This was taken after applying one layer of cushion all over my face (I also started on my eye makeup which, I might add, matches my pre-concealer dark circles very nicelyㅋㅋ). My first impression is that the puff caused a very strange application, in that it made my pores which were barely noticeable before look very prominent and filled with product. It also enhanced my favourite cheek crater as you see on the apple of my cheek 😡 As I don’t have this issue with my Any Cushion I’m wondering if this has to do with the difference I felt in the puff texture…
This is after finishing my makeup with blush, highlighter, and a translucent setting powder. I figured a translucent powder would help the pore situation and I was right. My pores weren’t as prominent after the powder, so I figure a pore blurring primer (like the Etude House Face Blur, which Etude themselves suggest to use before the cushion) would help avoid this problem. This is a little disappointing as they claim you do not need a primer or a finishing powder, when in my experience I find that both are needed 😦
The previous photos were taken at 8:45am, right before I left the house. I did some walking around in the humid weather and worked up a bit of sweat as you can see on my nose and around my mouth in sweat beads from hell (the bane of my existence) 😡 I sweat a LOT in Seoul’s humid weather which is why I prefer to skip skin makeup on a day to day basis as I find I sweat in a very strange way when the sweat has to break through a layer of makeup. However despite this, my skin makeup surprisingly looked exactly the same!
I had a lot to do that day, so didn’t take another check-in picture until almost 5:00PM. I decided to take some close-ups…
As you can see, there has been some fading around my mouth and my breakouts/skin discoloration are showing through more than they were at 10:00AM.
It started to fade on the tip of my nose by this point, and broke down around my nose.
However it looks about the same on my forehead! One really great thing I noticed about this cushion is that even by the end of the day I wasn’t oily in the least. My T-zone is always oily within just an hour of applying my Any Cushion but I didn’t get oily all day with this despite not touching it up at all or using my No Sebum powder. I also experienced ZERO itching, a first for me!
And back home! This was taken right before I took off my makeup for the night.
You can see it had broken up a bit more around my forehead but my pores and freckles still hadn’t entirely poked through yet, so the coverage was still there. I did notice that it liked to bunch and cling to my dry patches though 😦 bit of a minus.
A bit of redness poking through here, and some breaking down.
It broke down in the center of my chin too. However I am still really impressed with how the coverage managed to stay mostly even throughout the whole day despite me sweating and touching my face.
Before & after!
•○ Final Thoughts ○•
Colour selection: ★✩✩✩✩
Application: ★✩✩✩✩
Coverage: ★★★★✩
Price: ★★★★✩ (18,000 KRW – refill 10,000 KRW)
Overall: ★★★✩✩ + 0.5
I really loved the texture and finish of this on my skin, as well as how it controlled my oil throughout the day. The no itchy and smooth texture are a huge bonus for me! I am not a fan of how it sits in my pores and clings to my dry patches, but I’m convinced that the problem lies with the applicator (poor quality sponge) and lack of primer. Since this product claims it contains both a primer and a finishing powder and thus needs neither, it definitely got some minus points there from me. I’m going to try this again on top of a primer with a different applicator and see if it works any better!
You can find my review of the Any Cushion and two other Etude foundation products here.
If you’re still interested in buying this cushion, you can find it on Etude House’s website here(for those in Korea), and on an international K-Beauty shipping site here*.
And “that’s it” for this monster of a post! I tried to be as thorough as possible, and I feel that this format of “showing how the product works throughout the day” is better suited to Youtube videos 😦 But until I can make those, I will do my best to provide high quality photos and detailed explanations so those of you who aren’t able to test the products in person can get an idea of what they’re like!! Even if it means me being super, super wordy and overly talkative (*^▽^*)ゞ My next post will be on a brand I haven’t reviewed on here before!! Until then~ o/
EDIT 16/11/04: I used this for a few weeks after getting it, bringing it with me on vacation, and as soon as I got back to Korea I got rid of it and bought another AnyCushion! It turns out I HATE THIS THING 😂. It goes on terribly unless I am super-mega-hyper moisturized and living in a moist climate, and even if it lasts a long time and feels nice on my skin, it looks absolutely terrible! I thought I liked it at the time but the more I used it the more I disliked it…so no, do not recommend ㅠㅠ
Jasmineitor & Korea 
I really liked how detailed your post was. The pre, during and after pics were really helpful. I think I’m going to wait to see if you can try with other air puffs to see if the issue with “pore-enhance” performance it’s because the applicator or the formula itself. I had great hopes because the package looks great, so sleek and elegant, but if the formula doesn’t works good, then it’s a no for me :c
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