Good bottle, shame about the smell, colour and excessive skin-drying action of the contents (Radox Clean and Protect Antibacterial Handwash)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Radox Clean and Protect Antibacterial Handwash
Date:	26/08/09 (54 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Handwash bottle is sturdy and of a good, compact, reusable design

Disadvantages: You've got to find some use for the stinking handwash to get the bottle empty in the first place

Radox antibacterial handwash retails at about the £1.50 mark usually, and as a confirmed cheapskate, it's not something that personally, I usually buy.

As it is currently (in Aug 09) selling for a quid a bottle at Tesco's and as there are a couple of features about it I like I recently purchased some. The variety I bought - despite being a slightly alarming shade of pale crystal blue (as in: "this colour says 'aqua' to me" - if you happen to be a fan of the TV character Alan Partridge) - has got thyme extract and tea-tree oil in it that'll (presumably) contribute to its 'natural' antibacterial action.

It smells, however, neither of thyme or tea-tree, but prevalently and very strongly of those unfortunate 'sea-mineral' inspired shower gels and body washes they first brought out in the early 1990s. Hence the particular shade of blue they've coloured it, I guess. If you really want to go about smelling like the kind of cheap aftershave preferred by teenagers and used car salesmen then this is likely to be the handwash for you.

Also, since I started using it, the skin over my knuckles has gone all dry, and has started splitting to reveal myriad raw and painful little open cracks. While I'm not 100% sure it's this antibacterial handwash that caused the problem in the first place (as I had some awful cheap handwash from Asda I was using recently that I've had to throw out) I do seem now to be reacting agasint the Radox stuff as well and it's definitely not helping: there seems to be some kind of active agent in the product that's overwhelmingly dessicating to my hands. Normal moisturising cream doesn't seem to make the slightest difference to this new and alarming dry-skin problem, and I've had to fork out for some of that industrial-strength Norwegian Fishermans' expensive Neutrogena stuff to try and sort it, as it's proving difficult to shift.

So this most recent Radox handwashing experience has reaffirmed for me again the reasons why I rarely if ever buy it. Other negative points include the fact that the hand-washing gel is really, really thick and so absolutely loads comes out with each depression of the dispenser head. I am toilet training a toddler at the moment so admittedly we're both washing our hands using the gel quite a bit, but even so I was surprised to see that after only a single day's use of the new bottle, about 1/4 to 1/3 of the Radox hand-gel had already gone. At that rate it's not going to be good value at all either.

On the other hand, what I do like about this product very much is the bottle. It's of a good sturdy construction as is the applicator head, which means you can refill it and reuse it again and again; also the 'footprint' of the bottle is unusually small for this type of product, which means it takes up less space on the bathroom sink. I'd like to claim that the repeat-refilling of the Radox handwash bottle that I do is motivated by concern for the environment, but it's not that at all, it's just general skintflintedness - since what I use to refill the handwash bottle I've got in the kitchen for example is cheap shower gel from Lidl or Aldi. That costs me about 50p per refill, the gel isn't a stupid irritating shade of 'sea-mineral' blue, it works very well as hand-wash, smells better than the more expensive Radox stuff and it doesn't dry out my hands to excess. Jobs a good 'un.

Summary: A product that personally I dislike that comes in a bottle I don't