# Swissvax Onyx Test - Part 1



## Dave KG (Feb 23, 2006)

So, I'm getting myself back into the way of testing detailing products ...

The next in the series of tests is on Swissvax Onyx. This is Swissvax's entry level wax, and when I originally bought it, it was priced to undercut its main rival in the market, Zymol Carbon. For a time, these two brands had the rule of the boutique waxes category, but now there are a whole load of waxes looking to steal the crown in this category, and competition is stronger than ever! Strange then, in my eyes at least, that Swissvax's recent price hike puts Onyx as more expensive to buy than its main rival from Zymol as for me, one of Swissvax's advantages was that it was always a little less expensive than its closest Zymol counterparts... without this advantage on side anymore, Onyx must really compete with Carbon in a way to warrant the extra outlay. For comparison:

Onyx: £53 for 200ml
Carbon: £51.50 for 226g (which is more in volume than 200ml)

Of course, let us not forget other products that are competing in this segment:

Dodo Juice "Entry Level" (eg Blue Velvet, my favourite): £32.99 for 250ml
Victoria Concours: £34.95 for 6oz (177ml)

So - in terms of price, it certainly wades into battle at a disadvantage... dearer than many of its competitors, certainly its key ones! However, we all know there is a lot more to the boutique wax market than just price: there is the feel of specialness, the arguable (very debateable!) advantages in look, enjoyment and feel of satisfaction at buying something just a little special for your pride and joy. To this end, the lovely look of the black pots appeals from Swissvax, the products look classily packed (though I have to say the lids of the wax jars drive me nuts, and they seem to get worse with age for getting back on easily!). However, does the Swissvax name carry the cache that Zymol does? This will be very personal in opinion, but to me, it still lives rather in Zymol's shadow and now being more expensive than the American brand doesn't help its cause. On its side, however, there is the amazing smell - truly one of the best smelling waxes on the market, I think only Dodo Juice Orange Crush and Rubbish Boys Original smell better for me, so if smell is your think, it gets a big thumbs up!

We could discuss all the little ins and outs until the cows come home of course, and we would come to one single conclusion - personal preference (and in some cases, I would venture onto slightly riskier ground and say "brand loyalty") is the biggest deciding factor in preferences... and in the market of boutique waxes, on paper performance means a lot less for many. However, this test examines on paper performance as well, and the car of choice for this test is a friend's Vauxhall Corsa in silver lightning metallic (so we can examine whether or not this natural carnauba wax does indeed mute flake). The wax will be run on this car and durability assessed over the summer months (and autumn if it makes it that far), and it has a benchmark set by Zymol Creme: over three months durability through the winter months! A high benchmark indeed.

Application of the wax was easy - a little spreads a long way, and its oily nature makes it very easy to spread. You must keep the layers thin in order for removal to be easy - initial removal is easy regardless, but the wax is a little more punishing than others to over-application when it comes to the oils smearing and leaving the "wax holograms". Just something to be aware of, in my experience. The smell makes application a real joy, and it does feel like something special, something that is being lavished on the pride and joy rather than simply applied for the sole purpose of protection (this, it would seem, is what the boutique wax market is all about).

Results - well, this car was not prepped... it was cleaned, checked to see if it needed claying and prepared in this sense, but it had received no machine polishing (it received none for the Zymol Creme either). I don't sign up for needing to use specialist cleaners - eg, Zymol say to use HD Cleanse before applying their waxes, but any decent paintwork preparation before hand is just fine!



















If anything, on the non-machined paintwork, the wax gave a slight darkening effect. I put this down to the oils in the wax, the effect with Creme and Victoria is very similar, though Onyx does feel the oiliest of them all and if one was to squint, and in a fair wind  you may be able to argue that in terms of looks, it gave the greatest darkening effect - just! A couple of reflection shots...



















A word of warning here - the lighting conditions are perfect for reflection shots - car in the shade, reflecting sunlight objects will always give very good reflections, pretty much regardless of paint prep or product applied. So I was using the sunlight and later evening lights to assess the looks as well.

Flake muting - well, this is a controversial little topic. The theory goes that carnauba wax is opaque, which it is, and that a layer of this over the paint finish will act like a slightly tinted window to mask the flake... Synthetic sealants offer greater optical clarity and hence less flake muting. The theory is sound with one critical caveat - the thickness of the wax layer. Typically around 20 nanometers, and the likely effects of a layer so thin will be very small indeed to the point where it is quite conceivable that the naked eye cannot notice it (whereas a glossmeter can, for example, if pushed). Of course, dyes in the waxes can also make an effect but these dyes in oils may be more typically short-lived. It is certainly a topic with no solution as yet, but is certainly worth considering. For what it is worth, we saw no evidence of Onyx masking flake with one layer to our naked eye, and I put this down to the sheer thinness of the wax layer meaning that the opacity has negligible effect. Perhaps it would be more evident with further "layers", or addition of more "dyeing" oils from further application. Alongside its competition, Onyx was no better or worse at flake muting 

Finally, the water behaviour on application:





Sheeting is certainly strong and fast, very "wax-like" as you would expect which appeals to me. And it certainly matches offerings from Menzerna and Dodo Juice here though I would say that water behaviour is a little lacking compared to Zymol Carbon and Creme which seem to just have the edge on fast sheeting and also tight water beads (something which appeals to me personally, but is not to everyone's taste). Still, beading is certainly no slouch from Onyx...



















In summary so far, Onyx certainly seems to tick the boxes for boutique waxes - it is a real pleasure to use and feels special, and on application performs decently as well so it is not a case of all show and no substance. It is a little more finnicky in my experience than its rivals if you over apply - the wax is less forgiving, I suspect because of its oily nature, but if you apply nice and thin it will give you no issues. Looks wise, on application, it arguably has a very slight edge but you'd be hard pushed to notice it in fairness. Water behaviour is up there, but shy slightly of Zymol's offerings. What worries me most though is the cost - it no longer holds a price advantage, in fact it is now competing at a disadvantage here which will matter to some... its price suggests that it is the best of those with which it competes, but in reality it to me is just alongside them with maybe a whisker in front here but a nose behind there if that makes sense. The test will come from the durability assessment over the coming weeks, and this test will be updated as the test is conducted to see how Onyx will fare on an every day car.

All up, a good wax on initial impressions but maybe a little too expensive now in my opinion compared to its rivals which offer more in certain areas. Durability will make or break this wax for me against its rivals, so for now, the jury is out on Swissvax's entry level wax.

(Please note - this thread reflects the opinions of the author, and should be read as such: _opinions_  )


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## The_Bouncer (Nov 24, 2010)

Dave, sorry on a side note - you like tight beading :thumb:

Shoot me a pm, I'll send you a sample of #20 to try out.


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## Dave KG (Feb 23, 2006)

Nice pic  Will do, many thanks :thumb:


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## Dave KG (Feb 23, 2006)

Also, as a side note, to test ease of use, I had my friend apply the wax himself after I demonstrated on a couple of panels.. with the exception of getting it on a bit thick on occasions (which led to me testing the effects of this happening), he spread the wax with great ease and found removal a breeze


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## nothelle (Apr 28, 2010)

Onyx's still the best value within SV wax lineup..if only the price were a bit lower, but still it's a good wax nevertheless


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## Ewald (Dec 12, 2010)

> Flake muting - well, this is a controversial little topic. The theory goes that carnauba wax is opaque, which it is, and that a layer of this over the paint finish will act like a slightly tinted window to mask the flake... Synthetic sealants offer greater optical clarity and hence less flake muting.


I think flake muting has very little to do with opaqueness of the wax, layers are just too thin for that to be relevant.

What it has to do with IMO, is the mixture of refractive indexes in the material, that make single light rays break at many angles. This makes the light more diffuse, when it hits the flake, and diffuses it even more after it has reflected back from the flake, and passes the wax for the second time. This diffusion is what mutes the flake.

Waxes often have a range of refractive indexes, because they're a mixture of many components. Sealants, because they have far less components, are a mixture of just a few refractive indexes, if not just a single one. Because of this, sealants mute flake less than waxes do.


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## Red_Cloverleaf (Jul 26, 2009)

I enjoyed that read - looking forward to some more tests!


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## Dave KG (Feb 23, 2006)

Ewald said:


> I think flake muting has very little to do with opaqueness of the wax, layers are just too thin for that to be relevant.
> 
> What it has to do with IMO, is the mixture of refractive indexes in the material, that make single light rays break at many angles. This makes the light more diffuse, when it hits the flake, and diffuses it even more after it has reflected back from the flake, and passes the wax for the second time. This diffusion is what mutes the flake.
> 
> Waxes often have a range of refractive indexes, because they're a mixture of many components. Sealants, because they have far less components, are a mixture of just a few refractive indexes, if not just a single one. Because of this, sealants mute flake less than waxes do.


I can see that they would be a range of different materials, but considering the typical thickness of a wax layer is ten times smaller than the typical visible light wavelength, would this not suggest that the ray-optic model you've used above does not hold? Light changes speed at boundaries between different materials (diffraction), and if the light is anything other than normal to the boundary its direction will change as well - so by this thought, it will change direction at the paint/LSP boundary and at any boundaries within the LSP... but over such a small length scale, that is smaller than that of the wavelength of the light, I suspect personally that this effect will be negligible (hence the effect being negligible to the human eye in practice, certainly in my personal observations). Also, the interface will not always be normal to the flake, as the clear coat varies up and down (orange peel). Perhaps these differences in refractive index do have an effect on these length scales - but to the naked eye, diffusion or the effects of diffraction between notably different refractive indexes is easy to pick up (fish in water), and waxes applied to paintwork don't seem (to me at least) to give a tenable effect to the observed flake, both for tight packed small flake or looser bigger flake. An interesting topic of discussion however


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## CraigQQ (Jan 20, 2011)

physics teacher babble 

just kidding... its err... informative....

is it in english??

:lol:


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## Dave KG (Feb 23, 2006)

Of course, its a complicated science this waxy stuff  Stick on the motor, water beady beady  (which is about the level I'm 100% confident with, the rest I only have my own theories as to how it all works  )


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## CraigQQ (Jan 20, 2011)

lol im more of a sealants man 

"water beady beady" is quote of the day though :lol:


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## Hamish_023 (Apr 1, 2011)

Can't wait to see the results of durability. I still haven't tested my Onyx yet, Dam it smells good though.


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## Ewald (Dec 12, 2010)

Dave KG said:


> I can see that they would be a range of different materials, but considering the typical thickness of a wax layer is ten times smaller than the typical visible light wavelength, would this not suggest that the ray-optic model you've used above does not hold? Light changes speed at boundaries between different materials (diffraction), and if the light is anything other than normal to the boundary its direction will change as well - so by this thought, it will change direction at the paint/LSP boundary and at any boundaries within the LSP... but over such a small length scale, that is smaller than that of the wavelength of the light, I suspect personally that this effect will be negligible (hence the effect being negligible to the human eye in practice, certainly in my personal observations). Also, the interface will not always be normal to the flake, as the clear coat varies up and down (orange peel). Perhaps these differences in refractive index do have an effect on these length scales - but to the naked eye, diffusion or the effects of diffraction between notably different refractive indexes is easy to pick up (fish in water), and waxes applied to paintwork don't seem (to me at least) to give a tenable effect to the observed flake, both for tight packed small flake or looser bigger flake. An interesting topic of discussion however


I actually got to this theory through observation.

What I noticed, was that different LSP's have different effects on an optical illusion of size of bent surfaces. Some that I tried, like Migliore Original and Migliore Endurance Spray, give an optical illusion of the round shapes on my car being bigger. Others, like SW Onyx (on Cleaner Fluid), or Autoglym HD Wax (not on SRP), make round shapes look smaller.

The only thing that comes to my mind that can explain this, is differences in reflections, due to the refractive index of the material. The mind interprets patterns of light reflections as if an object has a certain shape and size, and this interpretation is apparently influenced by the properties of the material that determine how light is reflected.

While doing experiments with wax making, I've replicated these findings by putting different waxes and oils on a painted cylindrical object. What I find is that materials with a lower refractive index make the shape seem bigger, and with a higher refractice index, make a shape seem smaller. I've put Migliore Endurance Spray on the cylindrical object, and covered half of it with something else, and had the quite weird sensation that one half of the cylinder (the Migliore part) was thicker than the other half (at a certain distance from my eyes).

I'm noticing more than just illusions of another size. These size illusions are not clear cut. I'm seeing mixtures of these. And because I see mixtures of size, there must be mixtures of refractive indexes that I see.

These mixtures also influence how sharp reflections of objects (houses, cars) are on a paint surface with a particular LSP. When reflections are perfectly sharp, there is a single refractive index per layer. When they are fuzzy, there's a mixture of refractive indexes.

And from this, it is not a big step towards my theory on how flake is muted.


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## GMToyota (Mar 14, 2010)

Dave KG said:


> ...Strange then, in my eyes at least, that Swissvax's recent price hike puts Onyx as more expensive to buy than its main rival from Zymol as for me, one of Swissvax's advantages was that it was always a little less expensive than its closest Zymol counterparts...


Strange to read this. Zymöl has always been cheaper than Swissvax.. well over here in Holland it has been.

For example: over here Glasur and Titanium are cheaper than Shield.


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## Dave KG (Feb 23, 2006)

Wee update on this, just to say following a wash of this test car at the weekend the beading is now a lot looser and flatter and the sheeting slowed right down, suggesting that the wax layer is certainly degraded. I'll take pictures and videos next wash, but looking like durability of around 6 weeks attained in this particular test.


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## MidlandsCarCare (Feb 18, 2006)

Which isn't great for a £50odd wax is it really?

I stopped using it when it went above £40, as I only found 4-6 weeks from it myself. It's a lovely wax to use, and smells great, but like BOS, since the significant price rise, the value isn't great 

I can understand fluctuations in exchange rates etc, but the Zymol ranges prices have hardly moved in this time.

It's well documented that you like Glasur, Dave, but what do you think of the cheaper Titanium? Some say it's more durable than Glasur...


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## Dave KG (Feb 23, 2006)

RussZS said:


> Which isn't great for a £50odd wax is it really?
> 
> I stopped using it when it went above £40, as I only found 4-6 weeks from it myself. It's a lovely wax to use, and smells great, but like BOS, since the significant price rise, the value isn't great
> 
> ...


The price rise took Swissvax's main advantage against Zymol away, and in my personal opinion has sort of floored them for me - lovely to use products, yes, but for me Zymol has got a not-insignificant edge! It is not marketed as durable, Onyx, but I see so many other waxes with equivalent performance and better durability, I would find it very hard to recommend Onyx over something like Carbon.

I've only really used Titanium a couple of times, and this was some time ago - I remember it being durable, but couldn't really compare to Glasur from my memory I'm afraid... one of these days, I'll revisit it.


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