Like a lot of people I know, I have a love-hate relationship with Pantene hair products. Growing up it was amazing for my hair, then one day the love built up to frustration (pun intended) and I stopped using their products. Since then with a slew of new product lines out on the market, I have started adding some Pantene products back into my bathroom cabinet.
And then came news that Pantene’s Clinicare line featured a Split End Fuser, a leave-in treatment that supposedly repairs and binds split ends back together and strengthens hair to protect against future damage. My initial thoughts were… ‘how can the product tell a split end apart from two separate strands of hair?’ and ‘does it really work??’
We knew we had to do a one month trial of this “miracle” product, so before we searched our own head of hair for a split end (and found several — it had been a good 5 months since our last hair cut) and the results weren’t as stunning as the packaging would lead you to believe, but they weren’t completely disappointing. Check out our review and photos below…
Our Pantene Clinicare Split End Fuser Trial #1
We found a split end that measured over 1 cm long (with a few mini splits along the hair shaft where the split occurs) and then covered it in Pantene Clinicare’s Split End Fuser for a few minutes before wiping off the excess product. As you can see in photo C, the hair is now visibly straighter and the two splits have seemingly combined into one. Or so we thought. When the hair dried, it actually looked more like picture D where the split end is visibly shorter, but the mini splits virtually disappearing.
Our verdict?
It isn’t the miracle cure that the packaging suggests it is, but the product has some merit to it. And as Pantene’s old slogan once said… It doesn’t happen overnight, but it will happen. So we ran the trial four more times on the strand of hair for your viewing pleasure.
Our Pantene Clinicare Split End Fuser Trial #2: The once a week test
It didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen. I think the photos speak for themselves as we noticed the split end get smaller and smaller. The ‘extra’ feature was that Pantene Clinicare’s Split End Fuser also smoothed the strand of hair out over time, with the visible wave smoothing out.
Our final verdict:
We had pretty good results after four usages, spread out over four weeks. But if this strand of hair was our whole head of hair, I would have just gone to get a hair cut and chopped those nasty split ends off. It’s not a product that you should rely on to help keep split ends at bay or re-seal split ends. After week four, we decided it was time to try it on our hair, hoping for a smooth finish, and it wasn’t bad. The little 5ml tube had enough product in it for the last 1/8th of my hair (which is medium length and thick), which spread easily on to our hair without leaving a heavy product finish.
Would we use it again? Maybe, I am in love with several rinse-out treatments right now that I probably wouldn’t replace them with the Split End Fuser, but if I were a few weeks out from my next haircut, this would be a handy product to keep in the bathroom cabinet.
The details:
Pantene Clinicare Micro-Repair Revitalizing Split End Fuser comes in a pack of 10 x x 5mL tubes with a RRP AUD$19.99.
The product was given to us for editorial consideration, all thoughts and comments are our own.
Wow, this is an interesting new product. I haven’t used in Pantene for a long time but I would pick it up from the supermarket if I saw it.