Review (4/5): Works great!
Top it off (gloss) is a big hit. It does a great job with sealing your gel manicure and lasting a long time. I appreciate that isn’t too thick and gloppy.
The matte top coat is an odd duck. It’s not suuuuper-matte, but it works really well for my purposes. I have a crazy nail (after a little accident) with a thin vertical strip that constantly splits. If you imagine that would be painful, you would be correct, so I cover that nail in clear gel polish. The matte-ness is pretty close to the sheen of a natural nail so it’s not immediately obvious unless you look super close (and even then). So I don’t have to wear nail polish if I don’t want to, but if I do, I can just paint regular polish over this. And if you use a non-acetone polish remover, you can even switch shades without this coming off.
The only reason I knock off a star is because the matte isn’t impervious, and it will pick up fabric dyes and other colorants fairly easily. Sometimes I’ll look down and notice that one nail is looking pretty grey (like the lenses on sunglasses), which is frustrating.
Take off is not too bad. Those crazy clips that hold cotton pads to your fingertips and some acetone will make short work of this in about 15 minutes with no scratching that damages your nail plate. People whine that gel is bad for your nails, but if I remove it properly, it doesn’t hurt them a bit, at least not in my experience. In fact, my nails grow pretty long and strong with this on.