Review: Sigma F80 and F05 Brushes!

I've had my eyes on the Sigma F80 Brush for some time now, especially since I've seen it on numerous blogs and YouTube videos with everyone claiming that it's their favorite foundation brush. So naturally, I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about.

I went ahead and placed my order for the F80, along with the F05, as by the photos, it seemed like a great sized blush or contour brush.

Here are the brush descriptions -

F80 Flat Top Synthetic Kabuki - This exclusive flat top synthetic kabuki was designed to deliver a flawless makeup application. The Sigma Makeup F80 is a buffer brush that can be used to blend powder or liquid products. The short and dense bristles make it easy to buff your liquid foundation. The long handle adds comfort to your makeup application. The synthetic fibers are ideal to be used with liquid products and can be easily cleaned. Made of Synthetic Sigmax HD filament.

Rated 4.8/5 with a 94% re-purchase rate on makeupalley.com 

F05 Small Contour Brush - Ideal to apply, blend or contour powder products. Softly rounded dome tip smoothly blends colour into the face. (This brush is supposedly a "dupe" for MAC's ever-popular 109 brush)

The F80 in comparison to my beloved Coastal Scents Flat Top Buffer Brush - the bristles on the F80 are shorter (the brush head is smaller overall) and it's a bit more dense.

The brisles are very soft, as expected and it does a wonderful job at buffing in my foundation and creating a flawless finish.

What's fab about this brush (and the Coastal Scents Brush) is that I'm able to apply my foundation in 1, 2, 3 without having to sit there and stipple it all over my face and buff - I literally just dot my foundation all over my face, and blend in circular motions all over my face with the brush. My foundation is complete in less than a minute.

Thankfully, it's also very easy to clean. Sometimes dense brushes are a bit difficult to get completely clean through washes, but I've had no problems with the F80.

As for the F05, that's another story. Unfortunately I don't own the MAC 109 for comparison (the reason I bought this brush was to save me money from purchasing the 109). 

Because I've had good experiences with all of my Sigma brushes, I really expected the same from the F05.

When I first buy a brush, I always run it across my face as a "softness test". I was really surprised to see after running it across my face (expecting it to be soft as can be) the bristles were actually very stiff and scratchy.

So, I dismissed it and thought maybe it needs to be shampooed. So, I shampooed it, and even let it sit for a few minutes with a deep conditioner, and after it dried, it still wasn't very soft.

Now, I'm not expecting it to be as soft as silk, but the bristles on this brush just remind me of the coarse bristled brushes you'd get for free with a drugstore brush (the ones that are unevenly cut, and you usually toss in the garbage). Okay, maybe the slightest step up from those.

I find that because of the texture of the brush, I cannot use it for blush because it won't apply evenly, and it will actually botch up my foundation. 

I pretty much gave up on this brush and have only picked it up a few times to use as a contour brush, and it works okay, but I own better brushes that I'd rather use.

Overall, I'm very happy with my F80 but incredibly disappointed with my F05. 

*As a side note, I've read a handful of reviews for the F05 and the ones I read were pretty positive. I'm wondering if my brush was defective. 

Regardless, I will still continue purchasing from Sigma, but I'm going to be a little more careful with my purchases as it appears that the quality may differ from brush to brush.