We have battled year upon year with a base for our Christmas tree that was a second hand one, given to us by my wife's parents. Plastic and rudimentary, it took a long time to get the tree straight and even longer to keep it there, needing to make sure our kids don't go near it and we don't touch it. It was always a fine balancing act.

This Christmas however, we'd had enough of the frustration and inevitable arguments with trying to get this one to work, and decided to buy a new one. This one was available from Homebase for around £35, but you got £10 off if you bought it with a tree. I took the discount.

It's squat and wide, which already is an improvement on the previous one which was flimsy, tall and thin. Having seen the demonstration video in store and has a mini play with it before buying, the one thing I hadn't managed to do is test it properly with a tree. What you get is basically a fat wide plastic base with a gap in the middle which is just large enough to accommodate a Christmas tree's base. I couldn't quite get my head around the science of it, and was desperately hoping it would work, especially for the price tag!

The way it works is that you put the tree in, and there's a spike on the base of it that sticks up into the bottom of the tree, keeping it in place. There is then a contraption around the opening of the base that consists of what seems like a think steel cable fed through the four corners, which you can tighten and release with the use of a pedal that is at the edge of the base. Once you've popped the tree in and tightened it, I have to say that the results are amazing. It didn't move at all. We had to adjust it slightly to ensure it was straight and this was easy enough, you just have to life the pedal as opposed to push down on it and this completely releases the mechanism and you can start again.

I will say that as a word of warning to be careful with releasing it as it is instantaneous and quite snappy, if you don't have a good hold of the tree it may fall! However, as long as you know this then it's fine, and this is not a criticism of the base at all, just something to be aware of. The pedal also has a little switch on it that locks it into place so that you can't accidentally unlock it while you're not holding it. That really wouldn't be good!

The base can hold plenty of water, and I suppose like all Christmas trees you just need to make sure there's enough in there. As a comparison though, with our old base, we were filling it up quite a bit as it wasn't really reaching down to the bottom, while this one we only had to refill once in the couple of weeks that we had the tree up for.

After Christmas is all over and you put everything away, the base is actually pretty easy to clean as well. You can get inside and wipe it out, as there'll be sap etc in there, and it stores neatly enough as it's quite flat. We're very happy with the purchase, and we just know that it will last a good few years and be well worth the money. It may cost quite a bit to start with, but the ease of use and the hassle free nature of it compared to our old one is easily a justification of spending the money. Highly recommended.