Boxycharm vs. Sephora Play: Which Beauty Box is Better?

This month’s Boxycharm and Play! By Sephora boxes brought surprise, to say the least. Boxycharm, in all its big-sample glamour faces off with Sephora’s new beauty box. Including the fabulous, the bad, and the ugly, here’s our comparative review of Boxycharm vs. Sephora Play.

Boxycharm vs. Sephora Play: The Products

BOXYCHARM

Boxycharm tends to include bigger samples or just full-sized products. They also tend to include a great variety of products that are all high quality and worth a good amount of money. They usually pay attention to what they’re including as far as repeating product categories go.

• Luxie Beauty Eye Blender Brush Pack (3 brushes: Luxie 229 Tapered Blending Brush, Luxie 237 Blending Brush, and Luxie 205 Tapered Blending Brush) | $36 value
• IBY Beauty Three’s Company Eye Shadow Trio (full-size) | $19 value
• Starlooks Ultra Matte Lip Paint (full-sized) | $19 value
• TEMPTU Shimmer Bronzer (full-size) | $30 value
• Briogeo Blow Dry Perfection Heat Protectant Creme (full-size) | $24 value

Play! by Sephora

This is my first month receiving a Play! by Sephora box, and I have to say, overall I’m not pleased. The bag may have been super cute, but their samples were tiny, they gave two lip products (that were similar shades), and I only received one of the products advertised for this month’s box on the site (the box isn’t supposed to be personalized, but a quick dig into their FAQ section tells me that the products I receive are based on my profile I filled out when I first created my Sephora account; but it only covers the basics, like hair, eye, and skin color).

• Smashbox Always On Matte Liquid Lipstick in Driver’s Seat (roughly 0.043 oz) | approx. an $8 value or $24 for full-size (.13 fl oz)
• Too Cool For School Egg Mellow Cream (0.21 oz) | approx. a $5 value or $36 for full-size (1.76 oz)
• Verb Leave-in Mist (1 fl oz) | approx. a $2 value or $14 for full-size (8 fl oz)
• Nudestix Intense Matte Lip + Cheek Pencil in Belle (2.5 g/full-size) | $24 value – the pencil sharpener and box
• Skin Inc. Pure Revival Peel (0.17 fl oz) | approx. a $5 value or $17-55 for full-size (0.68-2 oz)
• Tom Ford Oched Soleil (0.05 oz) | approx a $4 value or $82-168 for full-size (1-3.4 oz)

Boxycharm vs. Sephora Play: The Value

• Boxycharm ($21/month) totals up to about $128 worth of beauty products.
• Sephora Play ($10/month) only totals to about $48 worth of product, even though there are more products than there are in Boxycharm.

Even though Boxycharm is twice as expensive per month and included one less product, their box’s worth is almost three times as much as Sephora’s.

Boxycharm vs. Sephora Play: The Verdict

Overall, if I could go back and choose a box, I would choose Boxycharm for several reasons. Even though the box was a little more expensive to subscribe to, the worth of the products they sent far outweighed Play by Sephora’s value. All the samples were full-size, and they didn’t send two of the same thing. The only product I was unsure about was the bronzer because I wasn’t sure if it would match my skintone (and it totally didn’t) but it makes for a great highlighter. The rest of the products are useful for my everyday makeup routine.

On the other hand, Sephora Play really let me down this month. They sent two lip products, very small sample sizes for very expensive products, and a perfume that smelled like my grandma’s dirty clothes. I do like the Smashbox Always On Matte Liquid Lipstick, the Nudestix Intense Matte Lip + Cheek Pencil, and even the Verb Leave-in Mist, but even so, Boxycharm blew Sephora Play out of the water this month.