By now regular readers of my past reviews will know that I have a bit of an obsession with scented candles and all things smelly, I use air fresheners daily in my home and light candles when I'm in as I think there's nothing worse than living in stale-smelling environment. I smoke and I have a pet dog, neither of these help to keep my home smelling fresh so I resort to tried and tested means to keep my home a pleasant place to live in.

I have a separate toilet and shower room at home and for the loo I keep an air freshener to hand to get rid of any toilet smells, sprays are fine but I find they dissipate too quickly and when sprayed in a small room they can also be quite cloying when first sprayed into the air. I used to burn candles in there but this seemed like a waste given that I only ever go in that room for the obvious reasons but still wanted something that I could have that would leave it smelling fresh and clean. A standing air freshener seemed like a good idea and having a very limited choice I ended up picking up one of these Glade Gels from Tesco and paid around a pound for it.

The Gel comes housed in plastic as shown and is free-standing, a removable cardboard 'plate' covers the Gel itself and once off there are holes in the plastic that allows the fragrance from the gel to work its way into the air. The gel is slightly moist to the touch and at first is quite strong-smelling, you'd never mistake it for anything other than a generic air freshener and even though it's supposed to resemble Lily of the Valley it is, in actual fact, simply a floral pong. I don't really like the smell of these if I'm being absolutely honest as they are really synthetic in my opinion and when compared to the likes of Yankee Candle and other more-expensive home fragrancing products they really are quite poor. I buy them simply because something is better than nothing and not having much in the way of choice in the matter I put up with these as they are a means to an end although I'd never give them a glowing recommendation to anyone else.

I find that I can get a good few weeks fragrance out of one of these, the pungency when first opened soon dies down and in a small room one has enough fragrance to be noticeable. I wouldn't use them in any other room in the house though as I doubt the fragrance would travel all that well and in any case floral fragrances aren't really my thing. They're cheap and effective to a degree but certainly nothing to write home about and even though they have been around for years (I remember my grandmother having these in her home when I was a young boy) I don't think they've changed at all in that time and are still a cheap looking and cheap smelling product.

Anyone used to the likes of Yankee and fragranced oils from The Body Shop would never accept one of these as a substitute but for the loo they're fine and until I can find something better to have in mine I'll continue to buy them. Ok but nothing special would be the best I could come up with to describe the Glade Solid Gel and my 3 star overly-generous rating takes into account that I do continue to buy them on an occasional basis.

Thanks for reading my review.