Confessions of a Nail Polish Newbie--OPI Topcoat vs. Essie Faceoff Results!

If you'll recall, earlier this week I decided to see if recent issues with nail polish chipping were related to the OPI for Sephora topcoat I had been applying.  Prior to this endeavor I'd put on three coats of polish and one of the topcoat around two hours before going to bed at night.  I'd been seeing chips within 24 hours, even when using brands that usually lasted much longer for me.

Results:  Right Hand (featuring OPI for Sephora topcoat on top of three coats of Essie)

Note the gargantuan chip on the tip of my index finger--this started less than 10 hours after applying the polish, and just got worse over the next 60 hours.

Left Hand: Essie Highly Structured (3 coats) with no topcoat

You can see that I had a small amount of peeling on my pinky cuticle (and some weirdness around the ring finger cuticle as well) but only minimal tip wear.  Moreover, NO CHIPPING!

Now, I'm not ready to completely throw in the towel on OPI topcoat yet, but consider this experiment Exhibit A in OPI's keep or toss trial.  At a minimum, I'm venturing to say that this topcoat doesn't work any better than polish alone on my fingers, and may very well cause premature chipping.

Stay tuned, and in the meantime, if you have any must-try top or basecoat recommendations for me, I'd love to hear about them!