Review - CarPro Essence

[Audios S6]

Essence has been getting a lot of attention since it's release and rightfully so. It claims to offer huge benefits and have several potential applications. I was very excited to get this and although I missed out on getting the 5oz SEMA edition, I was able to get an 8oz bottle upon release. I haven't had a chance to utilize it yet as my recent booking have been entry level winter prep. But today I had a chance to try it out on a 2014 Subaru Impreza wagon in Deep Sea Blue, perfect opportunity to see what Essence could do on relatively soft paint that was in very rough shape.

Copy from another retailer

CarPro is turning the wheels of innovation once again!! CarPro Essence is a unique blend of nano-tech Quartz, high gloss durable resins, and fine abrasives that are blended together at a microscopic level to form something truly ground breaking! CarPro Essence leaves an amazing high gloss finish with semi-permanent fillers and protective capabilities all built in!

Paired with a microfiber cutting pad Essence is capable of unexpected cutting power, while a CarPro gloss pad armed with Essence provides gloss we could only dream of until now! But this is not simply a polish…

In less than the time you take to polish a car with conventional products, CarPro Essence is capable of removing swirls, building your clear coat thicker, leaving higher gloss, and laying down a semi-permanent coat of protection! Oh… and it wipes off like a dream!

Incredibly Essence also leaves a perfectly smooth, deep, reflective, primed layer to build on with CQuartz or Reload! The primer attribute in Essence makes application of CQuartz easier than ever and bonds together seamlessly, forming a shell of Extreme Gloss and protection!

So it cleans, cuts, builds, primes, protects and makes an awesome turkey sandwich. I found it fell short on the turkey sandwich, and have not been able to independently verify that it builds, but based on Joe's testing that would seem to be true. That's a whole lot of stuff it's doing in one bottle. Most AIOs tend to excel in one facet and lack in others or just be OK at everything, and that is accepted as the norm. I do think Carpro may have broken that mold with Essence.

I've said it with a number of products their and I'll say it again, I don't look to carpro to have the best smelling products and frankly Essence does not smell very good. After leaving for dinner to allow it one hour cure I returned to a garage that had a faint body shop odor, partly due to the paint touch up, but I'm also looking at Essence for this. When smelling the actual pads, it smelled a bit like HD Adapt but much weaker 'rotten' smell. Honestly, I wish it smelled good, but Essence is not messing around, it's got a big job to do and there's no room for fragrance in the bottle. Perhaps they could make the bottle a scratch-n-sniff at the premium cost of $25 for 8 oz?

I feel like the Subrau is a great candidate for Essence. Soft paint, dark color and in this case an awesome combination of abused and neglected. The owner is a good friend and thought the paint was in very good shape except for a couple chips. Then I put the swirl buster on it and that told a different story.

Essence was very easy to work with both on the 21 and the 3401. On both machines I used cheap HF blue pads as I want to see what happens to them in a few days without cleaning and did not want to waste a good hybrid or rupes pad on this experiment. I'll try to update after a few days to week.

With the 21, 4 pea size drops were spread at speed 1, worked for 2 slow passes at speed 6 with medium pressure them worked for 1 slow pass at speed 3 with machine pressure. With the 3401, 4 pea size drops were spread at speed 1, worked for 3 slow passes at speed 4 with medium-heavy pressure then worked for 1 slow pass at speed 2.5 with machine pressure. Both gave the same results, but the 21 was obviously a bit faster.

After 1st high speed pass along with extra pass at edges




After second high speed pass along with extra pass at edges



After slow speed pass, it's pretty much gone and wiped off very easily



the 50/50 is clear on the far side of the hood in the bove pictures, but here's a couple more of the 50/50. Very gooc correction for just polishing and no marring at all on the soft dark paint.







I really liked Essence a lot for this application. The owner spent most of the time working with the 3401 and after watch me do one panel and a little coaching on his first panel, he was able to do the fenders, bumpers and tailgate without any issues, so it's easy enough even for a true beginner that's never picked up a polisher before.

Pros
Very easy to use
Looks great
Good correction

Cons
Cost (but it's doing a lot, so to me the most is justified and wll worth it)
Smell (again, it's a very specific product and I tend to give it a bit of leniency here)

Questions
Does it really build?
What is the durability?
Will it really play nice with other coating?


A few final shots after correction with Essence and them topped with Gtech C2v3, we'll see how that holds up.










I've got to play with it some more, but all indications are that when this bottle runs out, I will be buying more.

[2shiny]

Given that subaru's tend to have softer paint, I would have expected a bit more cut tbh.
Finishig results look good. Keep us updated on how the C2v3 holds up

[Mike@DedicatedPerfection]

Nice one step results. Thanks for sharing the review with us.

Looking forward to hearing about pad cleanup after a while.

[Danny9447537]

Given that subaru's tend to have softer paint, I would have expected a bit more cut tbh.
Finishig results look good. Keep us updated on how the C2v3 holds up

I agree with you on that one. I expected it to have a bit more cut to remove those nasty swirls.

[Audios S6]

Given that subaru's tend to have softer paint, I would have expected a bit more cut tbh.
Finishig results look good. Keep us updated on how the C2v3 holds up

I work almost exclusively on German paint so this car is out of my norm, but I was pretty impressed for only 2 correction passes with a very soft polishing pad and a product with a reduced abrasive loading. Corey has recommended a MF pad for correction, which leads me to believe Essence is relying heavily on the pad for the majority of defect removal. I imagine with a MF cutting pad I'd be seeing some serious correction, but no idea on the finishing.

I used C2v3 in lieu of Reload specifically to see how essence plays with another brand of topper, so I plan to monitoring and update when possible.

The photos look much lighter on my computer than on my phone. I'll also see if I can lighten those photos a bit, as the right side does actually look much better than the left, but in darkness, one may assume the lighter defects are still there.

[Audios S6]

Nice one step results. Thanks for sharing the review with us.

Looking forward to hearing about pad cleanup after a while.

Thanks Mike!

[Sicoupe]

Awesome review buddy! Looks sweet! Kyle

[craigdt]

Very nice- thanks for your input on this interest product.

Can you maybe describe the smell of the product for someone who hasn't used HD adapt? I'm one of those who is super sensitive to smells. :S

[Audios S6]

Very nice- thanks for your input on this interest product.

Can you maybe describe the smell of the product for someone who hasn't used HD adapt? I'm one of those who is super sensitive to smells. :S

HD Adapt is often described as having the smell of rotten fish or dirty socks. I'm terrible at describing smells, I'd make a horrible wine reviewer but I'll give it a shot and revise this evening when i can smell it again. There is a faint smell of carrier solvent, although it seems to be highly refined. Not the same solvents as CQuartz as far as I can tell. I think the 'rotten' smell is the resin component; think of something like a very mild resin type glue smell with some musty & sour notes.

Perhaps someone with a better nose could elaborate.

[zmcgovern45]

I bet you would have been very impressed if you had done some testing with Essence on a MF cutting pad.

If you've seen my review on Essence, I have a photo showing the defect removal I was able to achieve on harder Audi paint with this combo. It was great for a finishing polish, and the clarity was also impressive.