Jumping on the bandwagon I decided to purchase the Urban Decay Naked Basics Palette earlier on the year. It contains 6 shades of which 5 are matte and 1 is satin. My reasoning behind buying this was that it's a great everyday neutral palette. Sometimes I'm a bit overwhelmed by glittery eyeshadows and find it hard to "tone" it down for such everyday wear so I thought matte shades would be the answer to my problem! After trialling this product for a couple of months and not being so "wowed" at first sight, I have learned to love this palette :)
Starting off with the packaging - it's slim, compact, light, sleek and sturdy. *hifive* Urban Decay. Compared to its well-known older counterpart, the Naked 1 Palette which is made out of a tacky 90's velvet with a magnet enclosure, its made out of a hard plastic and click enclosure. Everything that it didn't do right in the first generation seems to be well improved now for the better. In one word its minimalistic - very easy to clean, great for travel and storage.
On to the product, texture wise, I don't think the shades are as buttery as the Naked 1 (probably cos of the fact it's matte) but it has more of a finely milled, slightly powdery feel. There is some fallout but it's only little so I just ensure I tap of the excess when I use it. In saying that the pigmentation is still really great. Venus is the only shadow with a satin finish whereas the rest are matte. Venus is a silvery shimmer color great for inner highlight, Foxy and W.O.S are great for bases with foxy having more of a yellow undertone and W.O.S having a pink undertone. Naked 2 is a matte taupe and faint is medium dark brown that I prefer to use in my crease. Lastly crave is a dark matte black perfect for the outer V. In terms of longevity, these last pretty well and don't crease. They are also very easy to blend.
Overall Basics is a great au naturale palette. I think the color selection is really good and it's a staple to any collection. With that being said if you're looking for an all-in-one matte palette, I would highly recommend this! If you don't need the convenience of all these shades being in one and already have these similar shades in your collection- I'd say probably leave it.
RRP ~$30 (varies depending where you buy). I purchased this for $25.31 with a 10% code when RRP was $28.13 at Beauty Bay. We had a not so pleasant experience at Beauty Bay (read here) so I’m not sure if I'd recommend buying it from there - although there have been a lot of positive reviews from other blogs at this same website.
Let us know what's your favorite matte palette!