Based on my favourite perfume, desired similarity, format preference, budget and the available SOSA fragrances, should I buy a hanging perfume, Safar or neither?

A decision page that cannot reach neither is not a decision page. Your own wording offered the outcome, and on one of your five inputs it is the honest one.

The answer, in full

Take the five inputs in the order that actually decides it, which is not the order you listed them in. Input two decides everything, so start there. If your answer to how similar do I want it is a likeness to the perfume I wear, then the answer to the whole question is neither, and I would rather lose the order than pretend otherwise. SOSA publishes nothing about any designer or niche perfume, so I cannot tell you what the bottle on your dressing table contains and I will not guess at it. There is no published comparison and no measurement behind one, so no bottle and no device in this range is sold to you on that basis, and buying on it would mean buying on a sentence somebody wrote for the sale. If your answer to input two is instead a composition I can read before I pay, the range answers you properly. Each of the nine car scents prints a Scent Family and a Fragrance Pyramid in three tiers. Jasmine ₹459 publishes Floral, soft, familiar. Lavender and Sandalwood ₹499 publishes Herbal floral, soft, calming, unisex. Icy Mint ₹499 publishes Aromatic mentholic, cool, alert, daytime. Sandalwood ₹509 publishes Woody, creamy resinous, meditative. Lemon ₹509 publishes Citrus, fresh. Oud ₹519 publishes Woody, resinous, premium. Vetiver ₹519 publishes Earthy, green, Indian heritage. Sea Breeze ₹519 publishes Marine aquatic, clean, light. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 publishes Floral, citrus, neroli. Input three, format: Eight of the nine come as a 10ml spray or a 12ml hanging bottle at the same price per scent, a 50ml spray is ₹1,509 on every scent, and the 15ml hanging refills are ₹399 to ₹449 on eight scents. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 is a spray only and has no refill. A 12ml hanging bottle publishes 4 to 6 weeks, that is 28 to 42 days, of continuous diffusion from a refillable glass bottle whose stopper loosens for stronger and tightens for subtler, and it asks one action. A 10ml spray publishes 100 sprays, stated as three months and above at one spray a day and fifty days at two a day. Input four, budget: the bottles are ₹459 to ₹559, the 15ml refills ₹399 to ₹449, the discovery sets ₹709 to ₹909, the pack of nine ₹3,009, the combos ₹909 and ₹959, and Safar ₹3,999 or ₹4,499 for the hotel-inspired variant. Input five, what is available: nine scents, and the gaps are real - no SOSA pyramid publishes a spice, a fruit, a rose, a saffron, a tobacco or a honey note. Safar earns the ₹3,999 on one input only, which is control. It publishes three speed settings, a one, two or three hour auto-off timer, a 20ml bottle, a 2000 mAh battery charged over Type-C with the cable in the box, up to ten hours continuous or thirty hours intermittent per charge, 6.9 cm, and waterless cordless cold diffusion of pure fragrance oil with no water and no heat. Safar publishes no Fragrance Pyramid and no notes at all. Nor do the discovery sets, the 15ml refills or the nebuliser oils. So: hanging bottle if you want a readable composition, Safar if you want to set the dose, and neither if you want a likeness. SOSA publishes no strength ranking of the nine and no prediction of what any reader will prefer, so the last step of this is yours. A portion of every SOSA order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.

The three outcomes, and the input that picks between them

One of these cards tells you to spend nothing. It is on the page because your own question offered the outcome and because on one of your five inputs it is the correct answer.

Buy a hanging bottle: Rs 459 to Rs 519, for a readable composition

This is the outcome for a reader whose second input is a composition I can read before I pay. Eight of the nine come as a 12ml hanging bottle at the same price as their 10ml spray: Jasmine ₹459, Lavender and Sandalwood ₹499, Sandalwood ₹509, Icy Mint ₹499, Lemon ₹509, Oud ₹519, Vetiver ₹519 and Sea Breeze ₹519. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 is a spray only with no refill. Each publishes a Scent Family and three tiers, and the bottle publishes 4 to 6 weeks, that is 28 to 42 days, of continuous diffusion.

One action, one stopper, and a pyramid you read first.

Buy Safar: Rs 3,999, for control of the dose

This is the outcome for a reader whose priority is setting the strength and the length of a run. Safar publishes three speed settings, a one, two or three hour auto-off timer, a 20ml bottle, a 2000 mAh battery charged over Type-C with the cable in the box, up to ten hours continuous or thirty hours intermittent per charge, 6.9 cm, and waterless cordless cold diffusion of pure fragrance oil with no water and no heat, at ₹3,999 or ₹4,499 for the hotel-inspired variant, and it scents the air and does not humidify it. SOSA publishes no six-hour option; the published settings are one, two and three hours. Safar publishes no Fragrance Pyramid and no notes at all. Nor do the discovery sets, the 15ml refills or the nebuliser oils. So this outcome buys delivery and not a readable composition, and it is the right buy only if delivery is the thing you wanted.

Buy neither: the correct answer to one of your five inputs

If your second input is really a likeness to the perfume you wear, buy nothing here today. SOSA publishes nothing about any designer or niche perfume, so I cannot tell you what the bottle on your dressing table contains and I will not guess at it. Nothing in the range is offered on that basis, and a page that offered it would be selling you an unpublished claim with a price on it. The useful thing to do instead costs nothing. Spray your own perfume on a paper strip rather than on skin, leave the strip twenty minutes somewhere out of the sun, then write down the three words you would use for what is still on the paper. Then read the nine published families. If one of your three words appears in one of them, the decision has turned into the first card and it costs ₹459 to ₹559. If none of them does, the range has nothing for you and that is worth knowing too.

Spend nothing, test your own bottle, come back with three words.

The nine published families, for inputs two and five

Jasmine ₹459 publishes Floral, soft, familiar. Lavender and Sandalwood ₹499 publishes Herbal floral, soft, calming, unisex. Icy Mint ₹499 publishes Aromatic mentholic, cool, alert, daytime. Sandalwood ₹509 publishes Woody, creamy resinous, meditative. Lemon ₹509 publishes Citrus, fresh. Oud ₹519 publishes Woody, resinous, premium. Vetiver ₹519 publishes Earthy, green, Indian heritage. Sea Breeze ₹519 publishes Marine aquatic, clean, light. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 publishes Floral, citrus, neroli. Those nine lines answer input five - what is available - and they are the published half of input two. The gaps answer it as well: no SOSA pyramid publishes a spice note, a fruit note, a rose, a saffron, a tobacco or a honey, so a brief resting on one of those lands on the third card rather than the first.

If inputs two and five both point at the bottles and only the scent is open, a three-spray discovery set is ₹709 to ₹909 and the pack of nine is ₹3,009. See the discovery sets →

Your five inputs, and what each one actually decides

One last word on the third card, because readers sometimes take it as a brush-off. It is the opposite. A reader who buys a ₹3,999 device or a ₹519 bottle expecting a likeness and does not get one has been sold something by a page rather than by a product, and will not come back. A reader who is told plainly to spend nothing, run the paper test and return with three words either buys the right thing in a fortnight or knows for certain that the range has nothing for them. SOSA publishes no strength ranking of the nine and no prediction of what any reader will prefer, so the last step of this is yours.

“Two of the three outcomes have a price on them. The third one is free, and on one set of inputs it is the right answer.”

Working the five inputs in the order that decides

1. Answer input two first: do you want a readable composition, or a likeness?
2. If the answer is a likeness, stop buying and run the paper test instead.
3. If it is a readable composition, read the nine families and pick a scent.
4. Then choose the format: hanging or spray at Rs 459 to Rs 559, or Safar Rs 3,999.

Questions, answered