Hero Burberry 2022 Eau de Parfum

This is a safe, although boring woods centric scent.
You get a few minutes of bergamot and pepper, a bit of pine, but after that is all cedar. That’s it. Everyone go home.
It’s boring but I like it, it’s well crafted, not a lot of nonsense notes to mislead the customer. It’s just a nice fresh woody scent.
Projection and longevity suck, but at discounters, the price isn’t bad at all.
Recommended if you want a nice not in your face scent at a good price.

Hero Eau de Toilette was bland, boring, and totally uninspiring. Even as a fragrance for people who don't care about fragrances, it still felt like it was missing some character. However, we have a new hero in town, Hero Eau de Parfum, arguably the most popular of the series. So can it manage to do what its predecessor couldn't? Well... at least it tried.

The fragrance is essentially a sweeter take on Hero Eau de Toilette, only it still starts off pretty synthetic. As that passes, the benzoin warms things up while also providing ambery sweetness (vanilla and caramel clashing) and balsamic undertones. I even get a soft powdery edge. Then some woodiness comes into play that instead of giving the fragrance a more distinct touch and a grounding effect, turns it into sweet amberwood slop. The fresher pine touches, mildly resinous, cannot save it anymore, nor the frankincense which blends in with the amber and pine; it has taken a clear direction, and one that was to be expected. Unfortunately, not much else happens. It's pretty linear, and as the synthetic nudge in the back implies, not of excellent quality either. It does have some more character than Hero Eau de Toilette, but I feel it could've done more.

For performance, I expected significantly better projection than on its smaller sibling, yet it was just slightly better. For the first hour it held a pretty consistent 2 feet of projection, but the sillage wasn't that great. Afterwards, it would rapidly settle, being detectable only if you got fairly close, and by the 4 hour mark, it was already a skin scent. Longevity seemed significantly better, however, reaching about 8 hours on my skin.

Just like with Hero Eau de Toilette, Hero Eau de Parfum benefits from high versatility, particularly because of its mass-appealing designer scent. Apart from the warm weather, this will mostly be used as a daily scent or for casual wear during the colder months. Not really that fit for more formal ceremonies, but for a teenager without the budget, this would be their Swiss Army Knife.

It's unfortunate, but as most other designer scents, Hero Eau de Parfum falls pray to the amberwood slop curse. It is just another sweet, messy but mass-appealing blend which has the sole purpose of bringing in as much capital as possible without offering much in return. You'll smell good, yes, but also characterless and boring. And I feel like it could've been different. The notes of pine, the balsamic undertone, resinous touches - there's very few fragrances in the designer scene that offer these notes. And if Hero Eau de Parfum took a different approach and didn't just drench everything in amberwood sweetness, it could've stood out. Riskier, yes, but worth it. But alas, it's always simpler to take the easy way out.

Overall Rating: 4.9/10

A perfect flanker.

You get the edt for day in the office or outdoors and this for the cozy evening.

Benzoin sweetness with Frankincense cooling it and cedar in the background, probably my favorite out of the whole line. Sweet and cozy not particularly unique or interesting but its very nice resinous sweet frag for sure.

The opening is green, not herbal, not sharp. More like cool air through leaves. It settles into elegance quickly and stays there.

Midway through, a mineral saltiness comes in. Clean, slightly cool, doesn't call attention to itself. Nothing oceanic about it, no spray, no salt flats, just enough mineral edge to give the thing some backbone.

Lasts around five hours (on me). Projects moderately. Works in an office without fading into the furniture.

Best in autumn and winter, though it's light enough that it won't feel suffocating inside.

I'm testing the four Hero scents: EdT, EdP, Parfum, Parfum Intense on consecutive days. I came into this somewhat concerned about the cedar notes - if any of them would smell like hamster bedding or cedar mulch. I'm happy to report that none of them are that way. The cedar is there but it's blended well with the other notes so there's no hint of the mulch scent. I was also curious about the Hero line because it's frequently recommended in the Fragrantica men's forum.

Hero EdT starts out with nice citrus and some pepper. The pepper is not overly strong, more subtle. It quickly dries down into a very nice, masculine woody scent with a touch of the cedar, done just right and only very subtle sweetness. (As I said above, no overwhelming cedar mulch scent.) The scent is very pleasant - I can't imagine anyone (wearer or smeller) being offended by it - making it very versatile for any occasion, time of year, day or night. It didn't seem synthetic to me. Performance, unfortunately, is rather poor. I didn't get more than 5 hours out of it and projection was very weak after about 30 minutes. It might still be useful for a guy in a profession that only allows "barely there" fragrances such as medical, etc.

Hero EdP is very similar to the EdT, only stronger. My description of the EdT above would apply to the EdP except for the following: the EdP struck me as a bit sweeter than the EdT; it also was a clearly synthetic scent to my nose. Performance was much better with the longevity being around 7 to 8 hours with decent projection for a couple of hours. Because of the noticeable departure from the EdT in sweetness and the synthetic smell, I didn't care for it.

Hero Parfum - now here's the real winner for me. Seemed identical to the EdT, with only subtle sweetness and no synthetic smell, as described above for the EdT. The performance was much better than either the EdT or EdP. Longevity was around 10 hours with good projection for about 3 hours. Out of the four, I really liked the Parfum and it would definitely make an easy, versatile reach for any guy. I'd like to get a FB of this. Currently, at Jomashop, 50ml is going for $75 and there's even 200ml available for $100.

Hero Parfum Intense (the newest; released in 2025) does a 180 from the EdT, EdP and Parfum. It is not a woody scent but a leather scent. If you're looking for a woody fragrance, you don't have to bother with Parfum Intense. It opens differently from the others- with a strong pepper that is almost overpowering. I'd say it's a notch down from the strong pepper in Toy Boy. As it dries down, the pepper diminishes, and the woody cedar "Hero" scent makes a brief appearance in the foreground. That doesn't last and soon a dry leather scent dominates. Under the leather, there's a subtle foundation of the woody cedar and even some of the pepper, but the leader here is the leather. Performance is superb. Longevity for well over 12 hours with projection being room filling. It can be tamed by doing perhaps 1 spritz on the chest with your shirt dampening it. However, if you want noses to know you've walked into the room, you can spray away. As a leather scent, however, it didn't really make an impression.

Hero Elixir de Parfum (2026 release) was not available to me as a sample. I'll probably test it eventually however it also seems to have taken the leather route as the Parfum Intense.

Smirky's rating (as of February 2026):
1. Hero Parfum - Nice, masculine woody scent. Not profound, but easy reach and versatile.
2. Hero EdT - Same as the Parfum only weaker. Good if you need something subtle.
3. Hero EdP - Deviates slightly from the DNA. Sweeter and synthetic.
4. Hero Parfum Intense - mediocre leather
? - Hero Elixir de Parfum