 disclaimer, some of these paints are a lot older than others so I recently got this set way before I got these ones but we're just gonna test them out and see in my opinion which ones I like the most and the packaging and things like that these are all similar prices they were about 15 to 20 pounds which is using my good brain, I got it totally wrong last time, is more dollars, not less dollars so it will be about 25 dollars to 35 dollars I guess for each of these they're all from Amazon but they go out of stock and they come back in and they're all different prices, usually the Artex one is readily in stock most of the time so anyway this one is ink lab, this one is Artex and this one is Marie's paint which is probably less common, it's probably the least common you've seen, I got this one last a couple of weeks ago, this one a couple years ago or a year ago and this one a couple of years ago so they're in order of like age so let's just open them up, this one has like a chocolate lid which I like to call it because it does look a bit like a chocolate bar, I like to refer to these as foods because I just think it's like satisfying but they've dried out but we can reactivate them because they are gouache and the beauty of gouache is that they should be able to reactivate but the bad thing about gouache is that they are not very lightfast so lightfastness means like how long if you put them down on a paper how long they will survive on the page but usually because I'm an artist who makes prints and things like that they are good for me and I really like using them because they're opaque but then also you can use them as you use watercolours so you can water them down with water so I really like that and here's the Artex ones they've also dried out but these are older and they have less in them so you can see which ones I've probably reached for a bit more which is these ones over these ones loads of water in them if anyone has any other tips for like reactivating these let me know and this one is the most recent one you probably saw the video last week if you're here now and this is the ink lab one with the like the honeycomb shape and this one comes with a palette this one comes with a palette as well but I don't know where I've put it but this one also came with paintbrushes and it has a little stand for your paints this one's also cheaper than these ones but what I found when using them was that these were a little like a tiny bit more oily like the consistency was a tiny bit more oily than these ones these two are very similar I have to say but as you can see as well I don't know if it's the packaging or what it is if I've reached for this one more but this one seems to be a little bit more dried out than this one don't know if that's a fair thing to say but yeah I'm just gonna like do some swatches maybe do some painting and just so you guys can see which ones I prefer also if you're on the realms of tiktok you might have seen that I use this one which is actually like a giant beast compared to these but this is actually acrylics so you can buy these they also come as a gouache the white box is gouache the black box is acrylics I often have people telling me that is gouache I'm like no I know what it is it's acrylic and if you want to see on tiktok I am building up a giant paint mountain which looks a little bit like this so if you want to put that I will leave my tiktok down below but yeah I'm not going to be testing this one in comparison just because it's a different paint but yeah just so you know so let's see how well this will mix after adding some water seems fairly good still just needs a bit of stirring this one this one see this one is like still really gelatinous I think it needs more water actually even but yeah it's looking fine it's still usable even though it's few years old everyone always tells me they watch these videos and they always say quickly and it's like I don't know how many times I've said that they don't really do that like unless the box is broken or something these dry out just because of time but as you can see somebody said in the last video that this one would dry out and these are still really not dried out very mind that these are really old so yeah of course they're gonna dry out a little bit over time but I don't think that's the packaging's fault I think that's just the way of time just have to repeat myself a lot and I know everyone's different and I'm not directing this at you you're probably a very nice person who I was watching this right now yeah so let's just do a little bit of a scrappy test so you can see these are like well I don't know if you can't see but I'm just gonna tell you these are like a little bit more oily bit more watery then the other ones and I think it is because they are slightly cheaper they do have a different ingredient I guess in them I don't know what the the word would be I'm gonna wipe this and then try this one but yeah these ones are very similar in consistency I know for a fact that you can buy now a big version of these ones which is quite nice because I really do like I think it's really satisfying we get a massive palette of paint I don't know if it's necessary it's not necessary because truly you only need the primary colors you can mix any color you want but having a massive palette of colors is nice I think talking about the packaging all of these always come with those lids that you have to like rip off which I always find infuriating but and also like a waste of plastic I guess we can't really harbor on that because if you need it you need it right you can't really it's not your fault if a company is using plastic but and I guess that I don't know if there's any other way for them to do it because you know I don't create these things but yeah it would be nice if there was another way so we didn't use those of like plastic so here you can see this one is obviously a little bit more dry but it has a really like thicker consistency and and that's not just because it's a bit drier because I know that when I use them originally they did have a thicker consistency than these ones but these are still nice like you can still get stuff done with these and lastly let's try the hate the Artex ones which are very similar to the HI MI ones if you've seen those as well I think they're just similar packaging but different companies so they have a different makeup of the paints because they were slightly different when they originally tried them unfortunately I don't have the HI MI ones anymore because they ran out but I can tell you that they're very similar as well I'm spreading paint everywhere and that's gonna annoy people but I don't care painting does be messy sometimes okay I just dropped something as well and it was a load of paint good great yeah so this one is also like a thicker consistency than the oily one I don't know why that's oily because it's gouache it's like as if it's like an oil paint it's not so I don't know why I don't know what goes into making things I guess I can't really comment so this one is a little bit drier than that one I think maybe they don't reactivate as easily as these ones but also again they are quite old so I know that I really enjoy using them at the time I've enjoyed using all of these sets I don't have a problem with any of them to be fair so it's a little bit difficult to compare when you don't have much of a bad thing to say like I think this set is really good for its money I think this set is really nice I think this is like a really good quality of paint I think this is really good for its money as well and really good quality paints they last a long time as you can see like I've had these ones for years and they're still usable so there's always perks to having paints that survive a long time so I don't know the lightfastness of these paints particularly I know that gouache doesn't have a very good rap for lightfastness but as I said I usually use gouache for prints and stuff and I do have a so here is a painting sorry about the light that I did literally three years ago and as you can see the colors are still quite vivid and it's all fine so the lightfastness isn't just extremely awful I just think it won't last for like years and years and years but this is one I did with the HMI jelly gouache paints so you can see that's still fine so yeah I think they're relatively good also another thing I forgot to mention is the size of these pots I don't know how much of a difference that will make to your decision if you're gonna make a decision of which ones to buy these are 45 these are apparently 30 millilitres in there and then these are apparently 30 but this looks like it's more in there than there is on that one but maybe they're the same maybe it's just an illusion but yeah it says 30 millilitres 30 millilitres and 45 so these ones are actually even bigger even though they're cheaper I really like this design with the I do think these are like my new favorite I don't know they are a bit oilier that's it that's all like a tiny bit so these are how they lay it down this one is this one this one is this one and this one is this one this one came out a little bit thicker but that could just be the way that I lay it down let's just test the opacity of these paints just by like taking one color and going over the top so as you can see these ones are fairly opaque and then if you use a little bit of water you can use them kind of like watercolors where they're just mixable they also can reactivate once from the page it doesn't really reactivate super well but it does reactivate so let's just do some opacity tests and then we'll do the reactivation tests let's try and get a similar color obviously this is a bit dried out so I'm just trying to work it so it's not so dry I'm just trying to get like a thick amount on my brush so that it's a fair test or as far as it can be I guess considering so what I can tell is that these ones are slightly more opaque than these ones just from that but let me mix up the paints a little bit more and then I think it'll be fairer okay I mixed up these paints a little bit more so to make a bit more of a fair test of the opacity so there you see like the opacity or the apocreness rather of this is still really really good it covers it up super smooth so if you're like me and you make mistakes in your artwork like I do then it's good to know that you can just be like nope erase that mistake with some opaque paint and I think that's why I always really like wash because compared to watercolors it's more forgiving yeah as you can see this one's also super opaque so they're all really nice consistency I would actually say excuse a train that this one even though it's like the precious set it's still weaker than these ones in regards to like opacity so that's something to think about also another thing that I want to mention is that this one comes with two whites and so does this one one is titanium one white and one is zinc white they're slightly different depending on user one slightly cooler and I really like that because I feel like everyone uses a lot of white in their artwork so I think that's a good thing to point out like if I could I would have like five whites or like a massive pot of white would be really really satisfying okay and I'm just gonna test the reactivation of it so wash you can reactivate it I'm putting water down here on this blue paint and you can see it's reactivating a lot which is nice because if you want to just like mess around push paint around a little bit more or even out some I don't know like textures or add a bit of color to the edge or so you know it's just nice it's once you get used to it the feel of it it's a really nice thing to have sometimes you might be like oh no reactivated area that I don't want but it just just let it dry and then go over the top and it's fine so this one reactivates really nicely on the paper it also depends on the paper of course like this this is a watercolor paper but it's not super toothy I think if it was toothier it probably would be reacting like differently and this one is the Artex one which is this one just keep reminding you guys in case you know you don't realize but yeah this one reactivates fine as well you can see here like I'm just pushing out where the textures are and just smoothing it out because you can probably just add like a bit of a gradient or a smoothness or I don't know it's up to you guys whatever you do with your art like if you like it so they all kind of reactivate nicely as well which is making this decision hard because I do want it I wanted to come up with a decision of which one I like the most and I think they're all really good like they're all a really good standard of paint I would say that probably the Artex one is good probably the best for your budget and the best quality for your budget this one is more expensive but it's the same kind of quality as the Artex one it kind of depends what you would lean more towards I think probably these ones have survived a little nicer than the Artex ones but these ones maybe you'll go through them quicker it depends how you use them these ones are super nice I like these these are great they come with paint brushes and they come with these little stands and a big palette which is really nice as well and it's making the decision hard but these are slightly slightly slightly oilier but they are the cheapest so I don't know if you want a really cheap one it's a good set this is great if you want old faithful and a cheap set this is good and this one is really good as well just slightly more expensive but stayed a little bit fresher than the Artex one for longer so I guess I don't really have a decision for you guys I'm really sorry I think the Artex is probably winning slightly slightly on top just because of its style and the paint formula is slightly nicer than this one and that is just by like a sliver so if you guys are not sure which one to decide on then just listen to what I said and see what works best for you and I hope that this video has been helpful for you I hope you enjoyed me comparing these paints because people have been asking for this for a while but yeah here's the video and I hope to see you guys next time also thank you to my patrons and everyone also go check out my TikTok don't forget if you want to see paint mountain I'm probably gonna slice into this bad boy soon but we're going to 200 layers and this is only a hundred yeah so thanks for watching I'll see you guys next time bye