It is a nice all in one base coat, yep, but it does nothing that any other base coat does that is on the market. It comes in a pretty packaged box, with the familiar essie branded bottle with the liquid itself being a pretty green shade that dries clear on your nail.
It has some hold that is a little sticky to touch once dried on your nail, and it doesn't slow down the dry time of any polish that you apply over the top of it.
Strengthening didn't experience anything to suggest that my nails were tougher, considering that nails are dead once they cross your nail bed so to able to alter their structure from that point onwards is a little mute, the only true way to strengthen nails is to eat the correct proteins and to feed the cuticle nourishment from oils and creams so that the nail is healthy when it forms. So this claim I feel is a little misleading.
Did it help the length of polish? well a little I feel it added a little strength to the polish to last the whole week before removing it at the weekend which is a weekly activity for me.
I bought this a while ago at Farmers when Farmers was still cool with their rewards scheme. I was looking for a new base coat and this seemed alright, and at the promise of being both a base coat and a top coat I was intrigued.
The green polish drew me in, but thankfully it doesn't apply green! It applies clearly and it dries in an average amount of time, I didn't notice anything special about that. Regular polish applies over this nicely and they both remove really easily.
I didn't really notice this strengthening my nails, and it didn't really work as a top coat. For the price, I wouldn't repurchase this, simply because I have found one already that I like!