This is one of Hakuhodo’s slide-up portable powder brushes, it’s made out of Sokoho goat hair.

I love this brush; it’s a work horse.

Actually, it’s so tiny that it’s more like a work falabella. Aww.

Why I like it

• It’s so easy to travel with:if I’m going away for a weekend or a few days, this is the only face brush I take because it’s so easy to pack and…
• It’s versatile: at full slide, the brush is a (somewhat small) powder brush; if you don’t slide it out all the way, the brush head is smaller and denser, so it works as a blush brush; if you only slide it out a tiny bit, it’s a very dense highlight brush.
• Um…it’s versatile: this is a different kind of versatility; even if we disregard all its transformer-esque (sans Shia Labeouf, blegh) qualities and just see it as a powder brush, it’s a very versatile one. The hairs are quite resistant against the skin so it deposits unpigmented blushes very well, but it’s still quite flexible and bendy which means it applies pigmented blush well (as opposed to stiffer brushes which can just leave two big circles of blush on your cheeks).

Let’s have a look at its special powers

Lid off

Super dense, small headed brush head for powder highlight

Still dense brush head with more flex for unpigmented blushes

Fully extended powder/pigmented blushes brush, covers a wider area and is more flexible

Using Bobbi Brown Pale Pink at varying levels of extension (l-r: slight extend, mid extend, full extend)

How it works

If you’re interested in the mechanism, here’s the brush on its side.

You can see the funny latch in the centre of the brush. Basically the lid of the brush (which is now the bottom half of the handle in the picture above), hooks on to a little sticky-outy-bit on the main brush.

The sticky-outy-bit (in the centre of the pic above) is connected to the slide that controls the movement of the brush head. Once the lid is hooked onto the sticky-out-bit, you can push the brush head up and down just by moving the lid.

Things I don’t like

• It’s not crazy-soft: Ok, I know I’m obsessed with brush softness, and I also know that some brushes are better off being…not soft. BUT because I can have so much control over the density of the brush using the slide, I feel like the H603 (a Blue Squirrel and Sokoho mix) would be almost as effective for my needs. Emphasis on that ‘for my needs’ part because I tend to use this brush for blushes and loose powder. I don’t use it for pressed powder foundation (but it would be really good for that!) because I don’t wear it that often. I doubt the H603 would be great for applying powder foundation. Yes you could slide it down a bit so it would be firmer (and therefore be more inclined to deposit the powder on your skin), but the smaller brush head would mean it would take you twice as long to apply it all.

The bottom line:

If you want a versatile brush and you use pressed powder foundation often, get this brush. If you want a versatile brush but you don’t use pressed powder foundation a lot, then I’d say try the H603.