Omega 46001 Shaving Cream in Bowl

I had an Amazon gift card to use up and thought I'd try the whole classic shaving bit and purchased this soap. I have used it with the Omega badgerhair brush, followed post-shave by Thayer's Cucumber Witch Hazel and Trumper's Sandelwood Skin Food for about a month now. The improvement in my facial skin is remarkable. I cannot imagine going back to canned shaving cream or gels. It takes a few more minutes to lather up with the brush but the difference in how your skin feels and smells afterward easily makes it worthwhile.To be honest, I am just using it with a regular Mach3 razor and it works just fine. The lather is generous, the smell is pleasing, and the resulting skin feel is immensely better than shaving with the usual canned shaving gels. I have no comparison of this with other shaving soaps; I purchased this soap as my first shaving soap on the basis of the reviews here. But it does seem to be a good shaving soap and first-time users should be content with their purchase as I sure am.

I've been wet shaving for approx 7 weeks now, 3 weeks with DE razors and the last 4 weeks with a couple of straight razors. For all of the lather I make using soaps and creams I use a $35 Parker badger brush bought here on Amazon, and I also have a $7 boar hair brush bought at the local drug store, to get me by until the better badger brush arrived. First of all, to make good lather with Omega shaving soap, you should fill the top of the soap cup with hot water and let sit while you shower, along with your shaving brush...let your shave brush sit in your shave cup with hot water too while you shower so the badger hair soaks up the water. Leaving hot water sit on top of your Omega soap cup will allow the soap to soften so when you're done showering (I always shower before shaving my face to prep my beard), the soap will be easier to work up in your brushMake sure you fling the water out of your shave brush before you load your shave brush with soap as too much water in the shave brush will not allow the shave brush hair to pick up the soap to create lather. This is what you're trying to do, to load your brush with soap then take that brush with the soap in it to your shave cup or scuttle to create lather. Make sure you swirl your brush in the Omega soap for at least 30 seconds, so as to allow the soap to cling to the bristles (hair) of the brush. Once the brush is filled with soap, time to start lathering by swirling the brush with the soap in it around and around in your soap cup or scuttle. Ocassionally use some drops of water to mix with the brush and soap and keep working the brush in the cup until you form a nice lather. This can be done in under one minute, along with adding dribbles of hot water into the cup. You'll have to deternmine the proper ratio of water to add to your brush and soap. I like a wet lather but not so wet that the lather drips off my faceSpeaking entirely of my experience with Omega soap and a $35 badger brush, I was able to make enough lather filling the brush after swirling it in the soap cup for 30 seconds to last for a 3 pass shave with soap leftover for touch ups. The quality of the lather this soap produces allows my straight razor to effortlessly glide over the most hard to shave portions of my beard, namely my chin area. Anyways, Omega shaving soap is most favored and used frequently in my shave soap rotation. Don't let the low price of Omega soap fool you into thinking this is not a good shave soap. IMO, it is one of my better shaving soaps, edging out soaps costing twice as much. Worked properly into a lather, this is truly fine shaving soap. Remember, let the soap soak with hot water sitting on top while you shower, and make sure your shave brush is fairly dry before swirling the brush in the soap yet soak the brush in how water while you shave...and take your time whipping this soap into a lather in your shave cup or scuttle along with some water added during lathering. Shave well!

This is a good shaving soap and a great value for the price. The scent reminded me of my grandfather's shaving soap from the early 60s. Definitely an old fashioned barber scent.When I first used it, this soap made a great creamy lather even with the very hard water I had in my house. It performed daily for six months. As I neared the bottom of the bowl, however, the quality and volume of the lather began to deteriorate. The lather was thin and lacked the nice lubrication I had become accustomed to. It's almost as if the oils that form an essential part of any soap had all floated to the top when the soap was poured into the bowl, leaving the soap at the bottom to be inferior. I even installed a water softener at about that time, and the soft water did not improve the quality of the lather from the bottom of the bowl.I'll next try a hard milled soap rather than a molded soap to see if that makes a difference.

If you use a brush to apply your shaving cream/soap, then this is the best stuff. Just the right viscosity. Easy clean up.

For me, this Omega Menthol shave soap is just an okay product. When I think of Italian imports, high quality comes to mind, not mediocrity and this stuff screams ho-hum.The smell is very similar to Barbasol menthol shave cream which is pleasant enough I suppose. The odor was actually stronger when I first started using it but the scent seems to be diffusing somewhat as time goes on. The menthol does give my face a tingle and it lathers up okay but nothing special. It is shave soap, so outside of the fact that it tingles and smells fine, how does it shave? Well, not that great. I don't know anything about soap making but I'm guessing that maybe there's not enough glycerine in the soap. Whatever makes soap slick, this seems to be missing it. It feels tacky on my face and dries up quickly. Not too much of an issue with a fast shave but if you're taking your time, be prepared to rinse and repeat.I have found my two dollar Van der Hagen soap to be a much more shaver friendly product at a fraction of the cost. A really good test was just washing my hands with the "bargain" stuff and then this. The VDH soap was really slick and had a better texture to the lather compared to this and gives a much closer shave without the razor pulling my skin.I will say that the lid fits well so it would be great for travel. However, for the amount of money it costs I really was expecting more. If you want to say you only use shaving soap imported from Italy, then here it is. If you want a shave soap that produces a better shave at a lower cost, then that soap is likely available at your local WM. Overall I'm giving it 3 stars. I don't want to come across as blasting it, but I can't really praise it either. I don't know, it's just run of the mill average I guess.