New Revlon Photoready Primer + Shadow + Sparkle Eyeshadow Palettes Review!

Hello, friends! Hope everyone's had a great holiday season. Since it's snowing buckets outside, I'll be posting about something I can do from the comfort of my heated apartment. ;)

In addition to picking up the new Revlon Nearly Naked Foundation recently, I picked up one of the new eyeshadow palettes from the Revlon Photoready line. I chose the shade Metropolitan because of all the neutrals, and I like neutrals! I found this palette at my local CVS for $9.99.

Now to be honest, when it comes to eye shadows, I pretty much will only use mid-range or high-end brand shadows. As you may be able to tell in my outfit photos, I use eye shadow almost every single day, and often with a smokier eye. Try doing a fast smokey eye with lightly pigmented, hard-to-blend shadows. You typically just get a better quality shadow when you buy from brands like MAC or Urban Decay or the Balm or wherever, so that's what I stick to. But! I do love Revlon, so I decided to give this palette a shot!

I swatched these in the order that you see them in the palette. I seriously tried really hard to get these swatches to show up well, but honestly, none of these are greatly pigmented other than the matte brown shade. The shimmery taupe shade to the left of the matte brown shade is decent quality, but still not great and seemed a little difficult to use. And you can see how chunky the glitter is in the last swatch, the gold shade. Tons of fallout as well. Not a fan.

On the back of the palette, they have a little diagram telling you where to put which shade, but I ignored that and used the shadows in the way I normally use: 

the giant rectangle "primer" shade all over my lid, 

the matte brown shade in my crease, blended with the taupe shade, 

the top light peach highlighter shade as a highlight, 

and the gold glitter kind of tapped on my lid afterward.

Here is a before and after shot, of my bare lid (with some eyeliner & mascara), and after, with all five shades used as mentioned above:

Primer shade? For all intents and purposes, it lasted as a "primer" for at least 8 hours. Which was unexpected and kind of nice. But it was nearly invisible.

Light peach highlighter shade? Invisible. 

Gold glitter? Mostly invisible and had lots of fallout. 

Matte brown shade? Heavenly! Seemed just as blendable and nice as my high-end matte brown shades.

Shimmery taupe shade? Not awful. It was rather blendable, but seemed too light be something I'd use in my crease color.

My verdict: 

Maybe this particular palette (Metropolitan) is just kind of a dud, but I wasn't impressed. Even for just $9.99. The matte brown shade was the only shade I feel I'd ever want to use again, and knowing it's surrounded by 4 "dud" shades will make it hard to come back to this palette. I've used it a few times since purchasing it and that's still my final verdict. Not impressed, Revlon! Though I may give them another chance with this line of shadow palettes, because some of the other color options look a little more promising!

Have any of you guys tried these palettes yet, possibly in any of the other shades?

What are your favorite drugstore eye shadow palettes?

Let me know!