Essie Stay Longer Ultimate Top Coat

This is a 13.5ml bottle of clear shiny top coat. The packaging is cute - I would be drawn to it if I were choosing a top coat. Its White with embossed Essie across the box, Red and silver foil accents. It says upto 7 day salon quality manicure with chip protection and lasting shine. On use the liquid and brush are easy to stroke across the nail and as mentioned the formula self levels which is lovely. It seems to hold up quite well and the shine is good. It is especially great on toes!

I had high expectations for something that has the word 'ultimate' in its name. It applies on well and it dries reasonably quick. The polish does provide a shiny finish with no sticky residue. That's about it.

I did my normal routine that included cleaning the nails removing any oils, applied a base coat and even used an Essie brand nail polish (as instructed). The coat lasted 1.5 days and it chipped big time. All I was doing was packing books into boxes!

Granted it was an older polish so I tried it again with a newer Essie polish. Again, it lasted about 1.5 days with smaller chips on the edge. In this second try, I did however do dishes and shower which can weaken the nail polish (no dishes in the previous trial). So in a way, it was stronger than the first try.

The instructions suggested to use one coat but perhaps if I had used two or more coats, it may have lasted longer. I like that it's fast drying and it was easy to apply with the brush shape. However, it looks like I'll have to venture out with gels for something to last longer than a week.

In terms of application, this nail polish was lovely to put on. It has a nice thick and glossy texture and a little bit seemed to go a long way. The shape of the brush is also quite wide and a bit angled at the bottom, so one stroke easily covered most of the nail. It dried quickly and smoothly and definitely provides a lovely shine on top of the polish. I used it on both my fingernails and toe nails - I found that the polish on my fingernails wore down a bit at the ends and had small chips in places, but I was using my hands for a lot of housework etc. To protect the polish and give it more of a chance, I'd recommend wearing gloves for dishes and cleaning!

Upon application I was so excited! The top coat was super shiny, easy to apply and the perfect consistency. As with most Essie products, the application brush is rounded making it easy to apply nice and close to the cuticle. It dried quickly and looked beautiful and shiny. It lived up to the self levelling claim also. However after roughly 48 hours it began to chip away which was very disappointing as it looked so good! I will be attempting to use this top coat again on a different polish to see if it makes a difference. Watch this space!

Nice to apply as in it goes on smooth and beautiful, lovely and shiny wet look to it and the dry time is ok , tried it on myself and my daughters and it lasted really well without chipping even on the rough 13 year olds nails

This top coat is a nice viscosity, glides on well and is super glossy when dry!! I didn’t find it any longer lasting that my other top coat - Essie from the long wear range but then again, maybe that’s a good thing! It dried fairly quick, touch dry within 10 minutes (still don’t want to knock anything!), but it did chip on day three. My nails chip super easily in the first instance so a full day wear is actually quite nice.

Overall, nothing to write home about but it’s good and does the job. I would be happy with this as a regular top coat.

I’ve always loved an Essie nail polish and this too coat certainly does not disappoint. As a Pilates instructor, I’m barefoot a lot and have to stare down at my feet more regularly than the average person so having my nails regularly painted and not chipping is important to me. This top coat was easy to apply and definitely helped my painted nails last longer without chipping and kept them looking shiny and glossy. Can definitely recommend as it’s easier to take off than gel polishes so is a good alternative if you don’t want to do gel or powder nails.

I tried this over my existing nail polish and worked well over a week. I applied 2 coats and made my nail polish look like I had spent loads of money at the nail salon and even had a few lovely compliments. Hardly any smell, dries super quick and goes on super easy with a really nice consistency. Would I use this again?? ABSOLUTELY!!!

I am a serial self-manicure kind of girl, so I am used to doing a nail paint on an almost weekly basis. Having DIY nails also means dealing with the fact it chips quite quickly. While I have also tried lots of top coats in an effort to keep my nails looking nicer for longer, generally I have found them to be lacklustre in that they either look like they have a bubbly appearance, don't dry well, or cause the polish to peel off in large sections.

Suffice it to say I was very pleasantly surprised that this product does what it says, in fact, I am still wearing the same nail polish almost two weeks on - with only the ends slightly chipped; I've never had polish last this long. I am rough with my hands too, so I would even go as far to say that if you were careful, you could get longer than 7 days. It goes on flawlessly, and you can see the nice thick clear coat that it leaves, gluing the polish to the surface better, and is also silky smooth to the touch. People who have noticed my nails, think I have had them done professionally.

I can imagine the bottle will last a good while, as I didn’t use a huge amount of product to achieve the end result. I also felt the smell was fine, and not overly strong or chemical like. I will say probably the obvious, that doing this in really good light will help, I found I hadn’t gone quick to the edge of the colour having done it in lower lighting.

This is definitely a product I will continue to purchase, and add to my weekly manicure routine.

The Essie Stay Longer Ultimate Top Coat works much better than I thought it would! I've used a few different top coats in the past that claim to make your manicure last longer but then the next day, they're chipped, all that time and effort gone to waste. This product does the trick, but I will say it didn't really last 7 days, it was more like 6, but that's with me being fairly rough with them and doing everything as normal. On day 6, I did start to notice little chips but nothing major and they didn't annoy me enough to take it all off. This product claims that it dries quickly and I was definitely most impressed by its ability to back up that claim - it dried in seconds! There's nothing worse than a thick top coat that ruins your manicure because you think it's dry, and it's really not. It goes on fairly thick so you don't need to use too much to get results, but the quick-dry thing is definitely a highlight. Overall, I'm really happy with the product and will use it again - it's great to be able to apply polish and know that it'll last about a week with everyday tasks.