Today I got my shipment of my latest investment in gel-polish. Yet another line from yet another manufacturer.

I expect pretty much all gels hitting the market these days to be LED-curable. I still have my reasons for not being ready to buy an LED lamp yet, but I do acknowledge that it is the way of the future.

In addition to the LED-curable-ness, this particular brand is also an “all-in-one” product that requires no top or base coat gel. Just polish, cleanse, and go.

This is the first line I’ve bought that’s all-in-one, but it’s not the first one I’ve heard of.

Now, I’m not opposed to systems that are less complicated with faster application and removal times, but I wasn’t really all that unhappy with how long it took me to do a gel manicure or pedicure. I haven’t been sitting around thinking, “What if someone came up with a gel-polish line that took four minutes less to apply? Now THAT would really help me out.”

But what I do think every time I use any of the number of gel-polishes I’ve tried is, “I sure wish they could work on the shrinkage thing” or “more consistent coverage of the colors would be nice” or “Why can’t I get it to stop wrinkling up?” and, of course, “When are they going to deal with the curing-in-the-bottle problem?”

But it seems like a lot of manufacturers are bent on speeding up the application and/or removal process instead of putting some hard thought and effort into just plain basic product improvement.

Don’t get me (too) wrong, if this all-in-one formula really lasts a full two weeks and really stays shiny for those two weeks, then I’m pretty keen on saving the money for the base and top coat gels.

But what I’d really like is gel-polish that costs $10 a bottle or less, is packaged in a truly light-blocking bottle, doesn’t shrink up from the edges of the nails before I can get it cured, has beads in the bottle to help with mixing pigments (like regular polish,) and introduces new colors for spring and fall like regular polish.

My clients are sick of hearing that (insert company name) hasn’t introduced any new colors since last October (despite introducing several new lines of traditional polish in that time). And I’m sick of having to resort to gambling on different lines altogether just to get some new colors.

But in the meantime, I guess I’ll settle for faster and less complicated.