If this is your first bottle and you only get one, buy Rasasi Hawas. It is the one you can wear to work, to dinner, in July and in January without thinking about it — we score it 9 out of 10 for versatility against Afnan 9PM's 7. But the two bottles are genuinely tied overall at 8.0 each, and that tie is not a hedge: Hawas wins on versatility, 9PM wins on projection and value, and they are close to identical everywhere else. So the honest answer depends entirely on whether you want one bottle for most days or one bottle that gets noticed.
They are also the two bottles most often recommended in the same breath to the same person, which is odd, because they smell nothing alike. Hawas is a fresh fruity aquatic. 9PM is a sweet apple-and-cinnamon amber. Somebody told you to buy "Hawas or 9PM" and gave you a coin flip between two different genres.
The 20-second answer
- Buy Rasasi Hawas if this is your first or only bottle, you want something that works in heat and in an office, and you would rather smell clean and expensive than memorable.
- Buy Afnan 9PM if you already own something fresh, you want compliments rather than coverage, and you mostly wear fragrance in cool weather or after dark.
- Buy neither, and get Lattafa Fakhar, ifyou want a fresh bottle with some warmth under it rather than a purely clean one — it is the third bottle in this catalog's only three-way tie at 8.0, and it sits between the other two.
The specs, side by side
Everything in this table comes from the live listings, each house's own stated concentration, and our own score for each bottle. Nothing here is a lab measurement — see how we assess a fragrance.
| | Rasasi Hawas | Afnan 9PM | Lattafa Fakhar |
|---|
| Family | Fresh / Fruity Aquatic | Amber / Gourmand | Fresh / Woody Amber |
| Concentration | EDP | EDP | EDP |
| Lead accord | Fruit and water over woods | Apple and cinnamon over vanilla | Citrus and spice over woody amber |
| Sweetness | Low | High | Low to moderate |
| Season | Spring and summer, works year-round | Fall and spring | Year-round |
| Longevity (our score) | 8 | 8 | 7 |
| Projection | 7 | 8 | 7 |
| Versatility | 9 | 7 | 9 |
| Value | 9 | 10 | 10 |
| Overall | 8.0 | 8.0 | 8.0 |
Three bottles, one score, three different reasons
This is the only three-way tie in our catalog, and it is worth a paragraph because it explains why "which is better" is the wrong question here. Our overall figure is the mean of five axes — longevity, sillage, projection, value and versatility — so three bottles can land on the same number by being good at different things. Hawas gets to 8.0 on versatility and longevity. 9PM gets there on projection and an unusually good price. Fakhar gets there on being cheap and wearable with slightly less staying power.
What that means in practice: if you pick on the overall score you will learn nothing. If you pick on the axis that matters to your life, the decision takes ten seconds.
What each one actually smells like
Rasasi Hawas is a fresh, fruity, faintly aquatic fragrance with a woody-amber floor underneath it — the structure that stops it from evaporating the way cheap fresh bottles do. That floor is the reason it scores 8 for longevity, which is extraordinary for something that smells this light. It is the closest thing in this price bracket to a fragrance you can wear indiscriminately, and it is the bottle we hand people who say they want to smell good without smelling like anything in particular.
Afnan 9PM is the gateway sweet amber: apple and cinnamon on top over vanilla and a soft almondy warmth. It is friendly, legible and a long way from subtle. It projects at 8, which is the single number that decides whether you will like it — in an open-plan office or a car that is a lot of fragrance, and on a cold evening it is exactly right. We cover it on its own in our Afnan 9PM review.
Lattafa Fakhar is the one nobody mentions and probably should. It is a citrus-and-spice opening over a woody amber base — a dressier, slightly warmer take on the clean-and-sharp lane, and the cheapest honest route into it. It scores 9 for versatility like Hawas and 10 for value like 9PM, and it loses a point of longevity to both.
Which one is the better FIRST bottle
Hawas, and it is not close, for one structural reason: a first bottle has to cover days you have not planned for yet. At 7 for projection and 9 for versatility, Hawas is appropriate in a meeting, at dinner, in August and in a small room. 9PM at 8 for projection and 7 for versatility is a bottle you have to choose your days for, and most people discover that after they have bought it, not before.
The counter-argument is real though. If you want to be complimented — the actual reason a lot of people buy their first fragrance — 9PM does that more often, because sweet amber gets remarked on and clean freshness does not. If that is your goal, say so to yourself before you order, and look at our compliment colognes roundup rather than at a versatility score. Our beginners roundup ranks the whole first-bottle field, and how to choose a cologne walks through the slot-first method we are using here.
Which one is the better SECOND bottle
Whichever one you did not buy. These two do not overlap at all — that is the useful thing about the pairing, and it is why the advice to "get Hawas or 9PM" keeps circulating even though it is a bad coin flip. Own both and you have your warm-weather and daytime slot and your cold-weather and evening slot covered for less than one department-store purchase. Two bottles that each score 8.0 and have nothing in common is close to an ideal two-bottle wardrobe, which is the argument our fragrance wardrobe guide makes at greater length.
The order matters less than people think, but if you want one: fresh first, sweet second. A fresh bottle worn on the wrong day is unremarkable; a sweet amber worn on the wrong day is a problem.
The honest third option: Lattafa Fakhar
A real cohort lands on this comparison, decides Hawas is a little anonymous and 9PM is a little loud, and leaves without buying anything. If that is you, Fakhar is the bottle. It is dressier than Hawas and nothing like as sweet as 9PM, it scores 9 for versatility, and it is the cheapest of the three.
Its honest downside is the one we state wherever it appears: 7 for longevity means a working day rather than a day into an evening, and the opening is sharp for the first ten minutes. If the clean-and-dressy lane is what you are after, our Bleu de Chanel dupes page ranks it against the rest of that field across houses.
What we would actually do
Buy Hawas now. Wear it for a month. If you find yourself wishing it were more noticeable rather than wishing it were more wearable, add 9PM, and you will have learned something about your own taste that no comparison page can tell you. If you find yourself wishing it were a bit dressier instead, add Fakhar.
What we would not do is buy 9PM as a first and only bottle on the strength of how often it gets recommended. It is a very good fragrance in a narrow band of weather and occasion, and the recommendation it gets is wider than the band it covers. We compare it against the other sweet bottles it genuinely competes with in Khamrah versus 9PM and Asad versus 9PM.
