Doing various DIY and decorating jobs around the house, I'm always using various bits of sandpaper to rub this, that and whatever down. Sometimes I need a course paper to remove a lot of material quickly, other times I need a finer paper to finish things off to a smooth finish. But I do begrudge having to spend a small fortune on multi packs of various grades of sand paper when I have purchased them from the likes of B&Q or Homebase. Hence, when I was shopping in Tesco and saw this Tesco Value Sandpaper 10 pack of various grades for only 59p, I thought it was at least worth a try, and hence, purchased a pack. However, I note recently that the price has risen to a heady 96p - still a dam sight cheaper than the few pounds that I was paying from the main stream DIY stores.

In my experience, Tesco Value products can be a bit hit and miss, but you never know until you at least have a try, and to be honest, buying 10 sheets of sandpaper for 56p compared to a few pounds that I was paying before, I wasn't really expecting much in terms of quality or durability of the paper.

The pack itself comes with a total of 10 sanding sheets, giving you a mixture of course, medium and fine grades of sanding paper. For the exact technical specifications, you get 4 sheets of the P60 grade (coarse), 4 sheets of the P80 grade (medium) and 2 sheets of the P100 grade (fine). Obviously course is for rough working to remove a lot of material quickly, working down to the fine grade which is more for smoothing the surface down ready for painting etc.

The sheets themselves are a little smaller, at 21cm square, than the more expensive sanding sheets that I have previously used from B&Q, which may account for the cheaper cost. However, I can still cut a sheet down and get it to fit comfortably in my electric sander for when I want to sand down large surfaces for decorating or painting. When used in this mode, it does seem to last well and doesn't easily break apart at the cresses around the sanding pad.

The other real testing time that I find for sandpaper is when you use it to sand something down by hand, that is to say, you fold a bit over and press it on to a surface with your fingers to rub it back and forth. In the past, I have used value sandpaper from the likes of Poundland, and found that their paper very quickly loses the grit and falls apart when used in this manner. But this Tesco version doesn't appear to suffer that same fate. The paper itself doesn't actually feel any thinner than the more expensive brands of paper, and when I've used it to rub down by hand, the grit appears to have lasted well, still giving me a good rough sandpaper surface for quite a while of operation.

I've now been using these Tesco Value sheets for quite a while now for many different and varied projects, from simple decorating around the house and rubbing down walls, to more intricate work rubbing down spindled dining room chairs etc and managing to get in to the various creases and recesses around the wooden patterns. In every case, this sandpaper has performed consistently well and never really let me down.

In summary, for the cost I was previously paying for a 10 pack of sandpaper, I could get almost 5 packs of this 59p Tesco Value Sandpaper, giving me 50 sheets in total. But the beauty is that this Tesco Value version is rather good quality and quite durable. So for the price and the quality, I am now sort of hooked on using this paper rather than my previous expensive versions from the main stream DIY stores. Hence, for me, Tesco Value Sandpaper comes with a 5 star recommendation.