Beauty Blender For Less?

I'm pretty sure that by now you all are familiar with the famous Beauty Blender, the "magical" sponge that gives foundation an air-brushed finish. Many makeup lovers swear by it but I still haven't tried it and the reason for that is simple, I can't justify paying $20 for a simple sponge no matter how good it might work. I don't know maybe in the future when I will have some money that I will want to "waste", I'll buy it.  

I didn't have a good experience with sponges in the past. I never actually liked using makeup wedges and when I once bought a similar sponge from H&M I hated it; it was very stiff and I didn't like the way my foundation was applying. 

Couple months ago I was browsing eBay and stumbled across this makeup sponge. It's was super cheap, like $2 including shipping, so I thought I would give it a go. To be honest I did not expect it to be even something I would wanna try moreover something I would actually use and write blog post about. I thought it would be a hard, spongy thing that would smell like plastic or rubber and boy I was wrong.

On eBay you have couple color options to choose from but I was kinda drawn to pink so I bought it. When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised and just to let you know the one in the pictures is my second and I already bought a backup.  Unlike of what I expected it's a very soft, squishy sponge which didn't smell like plastic.

If I'm not mistaken Beauty Blender becomes almost double the size when dumped which is not the case with this one. As you can see in the second picture, the sponge on the left is dry and the one on the right is dumped, there is a small size increment but nothing too obvious. For me this is not a problem because the size is big enough for my face and I can easily reach all of the areas of my face including under eye area thanks for it's point side. 

Now as far as it's 'performance" I have to say that I more than pleased with it and I actually stopped reaching for my trusty Sigma F80 brush as much as I used too. It does great job with foundation application and if I overdo a bit with foundation  my face doesn't look so cakey. I also like using it to apply my concealer and sometimes after I powdered my face to make that powdery effect less noticeable. 

Even though I really like this makeup sponge as I said, I have two complains. The first is that sometimes I have the impression that it absorbs a bit more of the product that I would like.  The second one, which I think happens with Beauty Blender too, it's kinda hard to clean specially after using long lasting products such as Revlon Color Stay. I found that using a olive soap bar for cleaning gets the job done.

So is this a Beauty Blender dupe? I can't say for sure since I don't own it to compare but it's definitely a good, extremely cheap alternative. If you haven't tried the Beauty Blender and have couple spare dollars I would suggest you to try because you never know, you might actually like as I do. Have you tried this sponge? Do you own thBeauty Blender? Let me know in the comment below! Till next time, love Anna.