The verdict
A properly good colour brand that happens to sell in drugstores. Epic Ink Liner and Butter Gloss are both best-in-category at any price, and the shade ranges are broader than most prestige competitors manage.
What works
- Epic Ink Liner is a felt-tip liquid liner that outperforms most $28 equivalents
- Butter Gloss is a non-sticky, well-pigmented gloss at around $6
- Fat Oil Lip Drip is a genuinely good lip oil at a third of the price of its prestige rivals
- Shade ranges in complexion and lip products are consistently broad
What does not
- Eyeshadow palettes vary widely in pressing quality within the same product
- Complexion longevity is decent rather than long-wear
- Product churn is fast; discontinuations are frequent and unannounced
- Not cruelty-free certified as a L'Oréal brand selling in relevant markets
NYX was founded in 1999 by Toni Ko, who named it after the Greek goddess of night and priced everything so that a working makeup artist could build a kit without a professional discount. L'Oréal bought it in 2014.
Twenty-five years on it is still the drugstore brand professionals reach for, and the reason is a handful of products that are genuinely category-leading.
Epic Ink Liner
A felt-tip liquid eyeliner, around $10, and it is better than most liquid liners costing $28.
What makes a liquid liner good is the tip and the pigment load. The tip needs to hold a point through repeated use without splaying, and the formula needs to lay down opaque black in one pass without skipping. Epic Ink does both. It also dries down waterproof and does not transfer onto the lid.
Professionals use it because it is reliable, and because at $10 you can keep three in a kit and throw one away rather than nursing it.
Butter Gloss
Around $6 for a non-sticky, well-pigmented lip gloss in a shade range of over thirty. The formula is a genuine achievement: most cheap glosses are either sticky or sheer, and this is neither.
It is not long-wearing — it is a gloss — and that is the only thing you give up.
Fat Oil Lip Drip is the newer star. Lip oils became a category around 2022 with Dior's Lip Glow Oil at $40 and Clarins' at $30. NYX's version, at around $11, is a properly good lip oil with a cushion applicator and a comparable finish. It is the clearest current example of what this brand does.
Complexion
Bare With Me Blur Tint is a light-coverage skin tint with a decent shade range. Can't Stop Won't Stop Full Coverage Foundation is the long-wear option, with over 45 shades — a range most prestige brands would be pleased with — and wear that is good rather than exceptional.
Can't Stop Won't Stop Contour Concealer is a reliable, high-coverage concealer at around $9.
The honest assessment on complexion: NYX foundations are good for six to eight hours, not twelve. If you need genuine all-day wear under lights, this is where a prestige formula still wins.
Where it is inconsistent
Eyeshadow. NYX palettes range from very good to distinctly chalky, sometimes within the same palette, and the pressing quality is the least predictable thing the brand makes. The Ultimate Shadow Palettes are generally the safest.
The other frustration is churn. NYX discontinues and reformulates quickly, and a shade or product you rely on can disappear without notice. That is a consequence of the price point and the retail model, and it is genuinely annoying.
Transparency and ethics
Transparency is reasonable at 7.5 — complete ingredient lists, clear product descriptions, honest claims about what things do.
Ethics scores lower at 7.0. NYX is a L'Oréal brand and is not cruelty-free certified; L'Oréal sells in markets where regulators may require animal testing. The brand does not hide this and does not claim otherwise, which is why it is not scored lower.
The professional kit argument
The word "Professional" in the name is not decoration and it explains the range's shape.
A working makeup artist needs breadth rather than depth: every shade of concealer for every client, enough lip colours to match any brief, liners in several colours, and the ability to replace anything that gets contaminated on a job. A kit built from prestige products costs thousands of pounds and cannot be replaced casually.
That requirement drives specific product decisions you can see across NYX's range: unusually large shade counts, a lot of single pans and singles rather than curated palettes, hygiene-friendly formats, and formulas built to be mixed. The Concealer Jar range exists so an artist can custom-blend. The Jumbo Eye Pencils exist because a cream base that works on every skin tone is more useful than six finished looks.
It also explains the gaps. Nobody puts a mass-market eyeshadow palette in a professional kit, which is exactly the part of NYX's range that is least consistent.
Other things worth knowing
Micro Brow Pencil is a legitimate competitor to Anastasia's Brow Wiz at a third of the price, with a narrower shade range and a slightly firmer tip. Setting Spray in the matte and dewy finishes is decent and cheap. Lip Lingerie XXL is the long-wear liquid lipstick, and it is drying in the way all of them are.
Price
$6 to $20. This is the price band where experimentation becomes possible — you can buy a colour you are not sure about, and if it is wrong you have lost $8 rather than $35. That is a real benefit that the value score is trying to capture.
The verdict
Buy Epic Ink Liner. Buy two or three Butter Glosses. Buy Fat Oil Lip Drip instead of the $40 version.
Be more careful with the eyeshadow, and do not expect the foundations to survive a wedding.
Prices, formulas and ownership were checked against the brand's own site on July 21, 2026 and change without notice. Screenshots in this review were captured by Shelfproof from public pages. Cosmetic ingredients affect people differently — this is consumer research, not medical, dermatological or legal advice.
