 I finally have the Huda Beauty Empowered Eyeshadow Palette in my hands. This is always one of the releases I look the most forward to every year. Huda Beauty launches one 18-pan palette every single holiday season and they tend to be my favorite that she ever launches, so I've been waiting to get my hands on this. You can pick this up right now at Sephora or Huda Beauty's website. I picked it up from Sephora, pretty good shipping. I'm very happy with it. I already did film a shop or drop on this palette when the first promo pics came out, so I go over kind of my thoughts on the color story, what I'm expecting from the palette, what I want to see from the palette, so I'll have that link down below if you are interested in seeing that. So this is like the part two to Huda Beauty where I actually have it in my hands and I get to play with it, answer my own questions and answer your questions as well. I'm always super excited about these 18-panners because they tend to be the best that she launches and she tends to kind of experiment a little bit. There are always a lot to take in because she'll throw in like an oddball formulation, she'll test a lot of new formulations in these launches as well as different kind of color stories. It's going to be a good one, it's going to be a fun one. This is the outer carton of the packaging. This palette is $67. It is also a pretty big investment palette because of the price and I can see right now, yay, the palette is made in Italy and has a 24 month shelf life. Whenever Huda Beauty palettes are made in Italy, they tend to be my favorite formulation. And then here is the palette itself, I talked about this in the shopper drop. I don't really like the eyes, I feel like in previous years, like the last two years, the packaging has been super duper cute. This one is kind of old school Huda with the eyes very simple and then here is the back of the palette as well, where it has information about the name right here, which is really cute and all of the details, social details, all of that. Very well protected, feels high quality, has a good amount of weight to it, so I'm very happy with the quality of the packaging here. I'm looking, it does not say whether or not this will be limited edition. I would say for the most part her holiday palettes do not end up being limited edition. They keep them around and then once people get tired of them, then they'll go on sale and then eventually they might be phased out of the line, but I think you'll have a while before that happens. So if you want to hold off, maybe I'm sure you'll probably be able to get these on a good discount. Okay, so let's open it up. We do have a nice mirror and the palette stands up on its own. If you need to kind of use this as a mirror to get ready. And here is the eye shadows. So like I said, this is an 18 pan palette and it has some interesting formulations in here. I think nine are going to be mattes, but they also have some metallic, some shimmers, a gel liner hybrid texture in here and then also a gel powder hybrid texture in here that we're going to mess around with. So I'm excited to swatch this. So here is the palette with the lights turned down. The interesting formulas in here are going to be these two, which is a cream formulation manifested is a kind of gel and powder eyeshadow hybrid. And then limit list right here has gold crushed flakes in there. So we're going to see how these swatch overall with the color story, I was a little underwhelmed with this. Usually she's been quite creative with her color stories for these 18 pan palette launches. This one, I feel like she kind of went a little safe and with her favorite tones, which is like warm tones and purples. Let's see if the quality is great. I can definitely look past that. I'm actually just going to go ahead and swatch the gel formulas first so that way I can clean my fingers after. So purpose is a black gel. And like I said, you can use these as eyeliners. Though I did see in her demo, these didn't seem to set down. She actually ended up setting it with a powder, which I don't love that. But we'll see if they set down. So purpose is a black hybrid gel liner shadow. And then worthy is a deep brown hybrid gel liner shadow. There's kind of swatch, Dickie. I'm putting on a little bit more for a smoother swatch. I want to see if they set down, but they don't seem deep enough for me to want to use alone as an eyeliner. Okay, let's get into it. I mean, even have a multi chrome shade right here, courageous. I'm telling you, she really plays with the textures, which is what makes her launches fun and worth it. So courageous is a multi chromatic creamy metallic. Limitless right here. We'll get into that when we get to swatches and then confident. So here's how they look on my fingers. Oh my gosh, this limitless shade. It feels like a cream. Courageous is that multi chromatic creamy metallic. It does feel really creamy, but this has quite a dark base. So it's not the most beautiful multi chromatic shade I've ever seen. I've been excited about this limitless shade because it has some gold crushed flakes in there. This is one of the shadows that she used to demo. And you can see those crushed gold flakes, but I like that it's not too sheer. You know, I mean, I'm getting some fallout. It's going to be a little bit messy, but it still gives you a strong base pigment. And then confident is a brown velvety matte. My hands look a little messy with the swatches. So if they look messy just by swatching, they'll probably be messy on the eyes with application. OK, so we're going to go into Charisma. I wonder if this one has gold flakes. Keep going and then Big Dreams. So this is what they look like on my finger. Charisma is a gold wet metallic. So it doesn't have the flakes like limitless, but I would argue otherwise. Like it doesn't have the flakes, but it still is very, very dimensional. Keep going is a latte brown velvety matte. And then Big Dreams is a purpley gray velvety matte. Oh, so this one's going to be interesting. So this like little river here is the Jowl formulation. And then you can feel the outsides are more powdery, but it feels like a true kind of cream shadow. Interesting. And then let's get into these two, which look like gorgeous, wet, metallic, creamy shades. Oh, this is a fun one. So manifest it is a copper gloss hybrid metallic. So this is supposed to look a little bit more glossy on the eyelid. But I feel like she did an awesome job with this formula, because normally the glossy ones can feel really wet and slick. I'm interested to play with this. This will definitely need to be used on the eyes today. And then we have bold moves, which is a white gold and true gold metallic speckles, very pretty, feels almost like a cream. And then do it is a copper metallic. I think I didn't dig in hard enough. That's also gorgeous as well. But these two are particularly creamy. Then we have some mattes. I'm interested to see if these all look different on the eyelid. Obviously they have undertone differences, but the question is, will we be able to tell that they're different on the eyelid? So power is a beige velvety matte, a little bit more on the sheer side going to be more of a transition shade. Get it is a soft orange suede matte. And then rebel is a burnt nude velvety matte. I think they look like they're going to be different on the eyelid. That's good. And then let's get into the final four shades. So this is a marble shade that she's launched this formula before. I'm not too crazy about, but we might test it out today. You can see it almost has like a soft shimmer satin look to it. So winner is a cool gray velvety matte. And then here's visionary, the bold and brown marble. I think she meant to say gold and brown marble. A self is a peachy velvety matte. And then legacy is a warm brown velvety matte. Well, that has a lot of pigment. And here we have it. Here are the swatches. It looks very pretty. It has a lot of richness to it, which I think those of you with medium to deep complexions will enjoy a lot. The metallics on my arm look kind of insane right now. Insanely gorgeous, very warm on the matte side. Obviously there's like this one, which is cool, but the rest are quite warm, if you ask me. And this one is cool too. Interesting mix here. I think it looks gorgeous. Swatched really nice. And it left me wanting to play because of how unique some of these textures are. So let's see if these set down. They did not. OK, interesting. Right. I'm definitely doing two different eye looks because there's a lot in here. We really want to play with as many of the formulations as we can. OK, so this first one, I am most curious about this shade. So we're going to base the look around this shade. I'm going to start off with the shade power right here. You can see we're getting a little bit of kickback, but nothing crazy. I am using my BK Beauty 201 brush and I'm tapping off the excess. And I'm going to blend this in at my crease. This is going to start off our transition shade for today. And it blends out very nicely. And then I just want to make sure it's not going to be too close in color to best self. I want to see if they each carry their own on the eyelid. Oh, forgot to mention, I do have the ABH eye primer on my eye right now. And we're going to use this on the outer half of the crease. Yeah, they look different. Best self definitely has more pop to it and more depth. I'm just using the same brush. BK Beauty a 502. We are going into legacy. So Huda Beauty loves her orangey, warm, crease shades, which I'm not always the craziest about. But I know some of you do enjoy it. I'm going to start this off in the outer corner and blend it. I wish, though, if she was going to have this many warm crease shades, maybe something even deeper would have been nice. No, I take that back. We do have confident. I mean, I know this isn't necessarily warm, but that will get the job done. Don't listen to me. So that started off a really nice blend. I am not unhappy with that. We're going to start off with Visionary. I'm using my finger. This is one of the marble shades and I'm going to place this in the center of my eyelid. I mean, I'm doing techniques that I'm very, very comfortable with so that I can really work these shades in a way that I comfortably am able to tell you the formula. And that's actually very, very pretty. It's a more subtle shimmer shade. I think it looks cooler in the pan than it does on the eyelid. But it has almost like a gold and purple shift to it. It's very pretty for every day. I'm going back into Legacy, which is the dark outer corner color that we use just to redefine a little bit. All right, let's see what Manifest is all about. I'm going to put this all over the lid and essentially I just want to see if it creases or not. So it's a little bit difficult to work out with my finger. My eyelid is so small. Doesn't that look a little weird to you? Like chunky, right? Maybe I put too much on my finger, but I'm trying to like spread it out a little bit, which is more than I would like to tug on my eyelid to do. Okay, I think, yeah, you want to go in a little bit lighter with less product because it looks weird and textured. So the less the better. It doesn't necessarily look wet like I thought it was going to. I feel like I'd almost rather just have a normal metallic shade. I'm actually going to just take my finger and get into the river part here where the actual oily part is. Yeah, see, I don't notice it giving a wet look to the eyelid. We'll see if it creases, but I don't love the texture that it laid down. I feel like, you know, if I went in with a lighter finger, I would have liked that better. It's okay. It's okay. I'm going to now use Purpose right here, which is the cream shade, and I'm going to try and use this as an eyeliner. Now, in her demo, she did set this down with powder. And if you saw, we do need to set this down with powder because they don't dry down. And unfortunately, there's not a black shadow to set this down with. You can actually probably get a really cool, smudgy look with this. So let me try that. I'm just starting it off by lining. This is an E-Sum T05 brush, by the way. And you can see as it blends out, it loses its opacity for testing purposes. I'm using an E-Sum S31. And can we smudge this out? How does this work? Yeah, see, it completely loses its shape. I don't necessarily know that I like this as an eyeliner. I'm just going to go ahead and take an angled brush from Sigma. I went into that confident shade, which is a dark purple. And I'm just going to use this as my liner. Now, you can totally use this as a cream liner if you would like and set with powder. That's not an issue at all because it did give depth. But I don't know. I'd rather just use a liquid liner. Well, the way I see it is if you want a soft liner and you want to use eyeshadow, using the cream base will really give you the opacity and depth. So that's what I'd use this as a liner. But in any other case, I'd probably just use these cream shadows as a cream eyeshadow, like base color, like the Patrick Ta. They just have so much slickness and don't set down. There's not much use for it as an eyeliner other than to define your powder eyeshadow if you plan to use it as an eyeliner that way. So there's some versatility to it, but I just don't see myself using these very often. But it is neat that it's there. When I put on concealer, I'm going to sharpen this. Just bear with me. For fun, I'm going to take some of Charisma. This is not the gold flaky one. But I want to pop this in the center of the eyelid. This one is so pretty. This one arguably might be my favorite shade in this palette. Just because it's so reflective and like micro fine sparkles are in there, which adds so much dimension to the lid, you can heavily pack it on. But you can also kind of lightly spread it out all over the eyelid. Let me put on some concealer and we'll finish up the lower lash line for this look. It's very, very simple, but it really allowed me to play with the textures. Let's finish up the lower lash line. I don't normally go as pointy with my eyeliner. Kind of liking it. It's a different vibe. Let's get into best self right here using the A502 from BK Beauty. Not going to do anything special or surprising really for the lower lash line. And then dip into legacy. And then I think it's going to be fun to go into Charisma again, which I love this shade. It's so pretty. And I'm just going to pop it like right here, the inner part of the lower lash line. You can see how it's just a sparkly shade. It's so pretty. It's a little dry, so it's not sticking to the eyelid. Amazing. But just for that little sparkly touch, right? Okay, that's very pretty. Let's just go on to the other eye. Going to apply my ABHI primer again. Okay, so the main target for this look is to go cool toned. And I really want to play with this multi-chrome shade. I think that's what we're going to do. Kaleidos S1 and we're going into Big Dreams right here, which is a nice cool tone shade. Again, quite powdery. But even though I was complaining, especially in my shopper drop, with how many warm shades there were in the palette, I'm very happy that she did add some cool tone shades as well. And that I didn't really notice as much in the shopper drop. Using this palette, I'm happy that there's these options. I'm no longer unhappy with the amount of warm crease shades. I think it's fine because we do have the cooler and neutral options. Not as many, but it's fine. That's a Hood of Beauty palette for you. Blinked Brush E3, let's go into winner right here. And I'm going to circle this in the outer corner. So this one is clearly more gray and less purple than that first shade that we used. So we like that and it's blending out really nice. I'm going to mess around with Worthy right here, which is one of the cream shades. And I'm going to focus this in the outer corner of the lash line. And I want to set it with some powder, but I want to use this for extra definition. In the outer corner and see how it performs on top of the powders with blending. Yeah, because it just, these blend out so nicely and they don't set. So I feel like utilizing this to add depth to give the dark shade something to stick to is also a good call. And then I'm going to go into Confident. I've decided that as far as the cream shades in here go, I really like the colors that she added, but I probably would have just preferred them to be matte. Just a regular powder matte shadow. It's fine. Make sure that edges are blended, but we did get some really nice depth over here. Okay, I had to see what this multi-chrome shade was working with courageous, though I don't really see much shiftiness in here. I don't think it's that multi-chrome, but I'm applying this to the center of the eyelid. It is very pretty though, and it has a very dark base to it. And it's going nice with this smoky, more purpley look. Yeah, I mean, if you want a smoky, dark purple look with this, I mean, that's really pretty, very dimensional. Not my taste, very, very dark, but it's nice. And then lastly, I wanted to see how limitless this is the chrome-flake shade was going to look, and I'm just going to pop this in the inner corner. Wow, it's a lot going on. I think this shade would be best in a large capacity instead of just, oh my gosh, I'm just kidding. I mean, I added just the littlest bit, and it's like spreading out. So a little goes a long way with this. I was just expecting to get the inner corner, but it's like the more I blend it out, the more it's giving. I guess because it was chrome-flake, it's a flake, right? And as you push it in and move it out, it just spreads out. This would be stunning all over the lid. If I had this base, I would, and a third eye, I definitely would. But that is really pretty. I actually really like this as an inner corner accent. I'm going to go back into courageous, kind of blend these together. And then I feel like I'm going back into charisma, and I'm going to use this kind of along the top here to brighten everything up. So honestly, this look is quite pretty. I mean, I know I didn't go crazy with these looks. I meant pretty semi-wearable kind of, but really pretty. Let me pop on some concealer. And by the way, I'm testing the new Milk Makeup Concealer. First time using it. I like it so far. Okay, I did do something off-camera that I didn't show you, but I just used some of Purpose, the cream black. It's my eyeliner. I didn't set it. So we'll see how it does, because the second I take a brush and blend this, it's going to soften out. So I got to be careful. So let's take some of Winter right here. The dark or gray. And we're going to start this off just to smoke the lower lash line. And then we're going into Confident, the dark purple. I mean, I'm pretty much using the exact same colors that I used on my upper eye. So nothing special. Courageous, which is the fake multi-crush shade. I want to do the chrome-flake shade. That might be messy. I'm going to use a smaller brush. Pick up just a little bit. Pick up a flake or two. And that was anti-climactic. Hold on. Yeah, with a brush, it's kind of difficult, especially since I'm not using a synthetic brush. Okay, scratch that. We're just going to go into Charisma. My favorite shade is Goldarant, doing that good with brushes on these small areas. What doesn't look good now will look good once we put liner and lashes on, because that's secret to concealing ugliness. So I'm going to finish the rest of my face and we're going to do some comparisons between this and a few other palettes. All right, so here are both of the looks with lashes. Now, I mean, I would say on a more everyday casual basis, not reviewing the products, not trying to get a feel for the textures. I'd go a different route than I went today. I feel like I can get some very pretty looks with this. But I mean, these are so cute, right? So I want to get into my comparison section because I have a few palettes that I pulled that this one reminded me of and that you guys asked for as well. And then I'll get into my final thoughts about the palette overall and if you think you need it. So the number one most requested palette for me to compare it to was the Natasha Denona My Dream Palette. And this is a brand new palette. This is one of the more popular ones at launch recently, also a very pricey palette. And it plays with those purple and orange tones. And I didn't even see that in the shopper drop. And you were like, Morgan, you need to compare those. So that's what I'm doing. The top is the Natasha Denona My Dream. The bottom is the Huda Beauty. The Huda Beauty looks much more textured and reflective and has more pops, especially with those golds. The golds in the Huda make some stand out. But these are definitely both a get the look kind of deal. So take a look. Top of my arm are every single shade from the Huda Beauty and Power Palette. The bottom are the close ones that I could find from the Natasha. And remember, there are three less shades in the Natasha compared to the Huda. They're really, really, really close. I wouldn't say they're dupes, but if you want to save money and you already bought the Natasha Denona, I don't think you need the Huda and vice versa. Very, very similar. But again, I don't think there's really dupes for dupes in the colors even like up here. You know, these are creams, these are powders. It's not the exact same palette, but you're going to get very, very similar looks with both of the palettes. Not in need if you're trying to save money. You can definitely go with one or the other. I did want to compare this to one of her own because the richness of it reminds me a lot of the Naughty Nude palette. This is the palette from a couple years ago. And yeah, you can see they're definitely different. The Naughty Nude has different undertones. But I'm going to show you them side by side. Pop is empowered. Bottom is Naughty Nudes. The Naughty Nude is definitely more purple, a little bit cooler generally speaking. But there definitely are some similarities. Dupes, no, but definite similarities. Just something to keep in mind if you have the Naughty Nude. I also thought I saw in my shop or drop some similarities between this wild chameleon palette. But honestly, they're not the same. Maybe just the gold, but that's it. But what I did do a swatch comparison for is the new LaFest palette that just launched. There were two shades, the center shade and then one of the very bright orange shades. I think this one right here. But there are similarities. This, with the exception of the two brighter shades, you can get a similar look with this palette. This is almost like the travel version, I would say, of empowered. So I mean, you can see we have the purple and we have the oranges. These run kind of similar right here. So I feel like the LaFest is almost like a mini version of empowered. So I got a lot of questions about Natasha Dino in a glam and retro. And honestly, they are more different than I expected. So let me show you. Because I thought that the empowered palette was kind of a hybrid, a baby, between the glam and retro. But boy, oh boy, was I wrong. I was going to do swatch comparisons. Couldn't find hardly any that matched. So yeah, no, maybe a couple of the shimmers, but genuinely could not find anything worth swatching. And then same deal with the retro. Though I would say the retro probably has more similar tones, right? With the dark purples. But the retro really doesn't have those orange shades. So there's not that many similarities either. All right. So let's talk about my final thoughts on this palette overall. As per usual, I think it's a really beautiful, good quality. It has very interesting textures that makes it stand out from other products on the market. And who is it a beautiful job? Getting into the specifics here. Not in love with the cream formulations. I just don't really like how they sat down. I don't find myself using cream shadows like this. So I would have just preferred them to be matched. But I can still absolutely incorporate them and get them to work. The other really unique shade is this gel hybrid. Personally, I'm not a fan. It looked really chunky on my eyelid. Less is more when you apply it if you want to get the look. But again, while it's very interesting and new, you can get a similar look but better with just a true metallic shade. But she has a lot of these palettes and are beautiful. I really do like the flake shade with the gold flakes in there. I think that one is super beautiful. And everything else I think is really great. In terms of color story, it's not the most unique from Hooda Beauty. She loves warm crease colors with purples. She has a lot of palettes that are within that family. So if you have a large Hooda Beauty collection and you're tired of the purple-orange looks, this is kind of no different in that way. I just feel like the textures here are amped up. So it's just a matter if you think you need it, if you're going to use it. But I mean, quality is really good. And overall, I think it's a solid palette. I'm very happy about it. Now it's not my favorite 18-pound palette that she's launched. I mean, I'm still in love with the one from last year. Just the last three years, I feel like she's really knocked it out of the park. You know, she went a little bit more unique and different. Whereas this year's is definitely a little bit more safe based on what she already has in her line. But I still very much like it. So I do recommend it if you're interested. I believe we do have the Sephora VIP event going on at the end of the month. So if you want to hold off to get it on sale, I think that's a great option as well. And I hope you guys enjoyed this review and found it helpful. I will update you in my monthly palette rankings on my thoughts as I continue to use this palette more. I will catch you guys in the next one. Bye guys, have a good one.