My husband would say that I'm obsessed with candles, and I guess that he's probably right. I always have candles lit up in the house every evening, and I go through vast quantities of them. I especially like using scented candles and tealights to fragrance the room. However I've found that this can work out to be very expensive as scented candles are more expensive than unscented candles. I've found that to keep the cost down if I use a mixture of scented candles and unscented candles then I get the best of both worlds, I get the scent and fragrance from the scented candles, and the warmth and glow from both the scented and the unscented candles.

I especially have a lot of tealights dotted all over the house, and this is one area where I don't really mind using the unscented version. I normally buy my regular unscented tealights from Ikea, I normally buy the Glimma unscented tealights which are £1.75 for a pack of 100 tealights. This is excellent value for money, and I normally stock up with a couple of bags each time I go to Ikea. Unfortunately last time I went I had a bit of a dumb moment and I thought that I had lots of tealights left and so I didn't buy any, it turns out that I only had a handful left and so I ran out and was looking to buy some from elsewhere.

I was shopping in M&S not long after with my mum and moaning about having no tealights when she suggested that I get some from there as she always buys her tealights from M&S. I agreed to have a look and see how much they were - they turned out to be £4.50 for a pack of 75 tealights. I said that I had no intention of paying that much, and so I wouldn't bother. My mum however added 2 bags to her trolley as she said that she needed to stock up. When we were both heading to our cars afterwards she gave me one of the bags of tealights as she said that she'd bought one for her and one for me (mums hey!).

So how do these very expensive M&S tealights compare to my cheap and cheerful Ikea Glimma tealights.

A quick price calculation shows that the M&S tealights works out at 6 pence each (£4.50 for 75), compared to just under 2 pence each (£1.75 for 100) for the Ikea Glimma tealights.

The M&S tealights state that they will burn for 4 hours, I would say that I've been getting slightly longer out of them, around 4 and a half hours. The Ikea Glimma tealights also say that they will burn for 4 hours, however I normally only get around 3 and a half hours out of them. I like the extra burning time that the M&S tealights give, especially with winter drawing in and the nights becoming longer. I sometimes end up lighting two of the Ikea Glimma tealights on long winters night, whereas with the M&S ones I would maybe just use the one.

Both the M&S tealights and the Ikea Glimma tealights both burn down evenly, so no problems there with either ones.

The metal cups that the M&S tealights come in seem to be more substantial than the metal cups that the Ikea Glimma tealights come in, they don't squash and bend as easily. I can't say that I've ever had a problem with the Ikea ones though, so they don't necessarily need to be any more substantial, especially as they are hidden inside a tealight holder anyway.

Both the M&S tealights and the Ikea Glimma tealights are just plain white in colour, with a white wick. The only difference appears to be when you light the tealights, the M&S tealights always light first time, and seem to be easier to light, sometimes I struggle to light the odd Ikea Glimma tealight, sometimes the odd one will just take ages to light - for no apparent reason. Another point to add with lighting the tealights, the Ikea Glimma tealights give off quite a bit more smoke on initial lighting than the M&S tealights do. The M&S tealights basically don't give off any smoke whatsoever. The smoke from The Ikea ones disappears a few minutes after lighting though, so it's not normally a problem.

I wouldn't buy the M&S tealights again, as I just can't justify spending that much on them when I go through so many. At the end of the day I can get tealights much cheaper that work just as well. OK, so they do burn slightly longer than my regular Ikea Glimma tealights, but only an hour or so, and that's not worth paying more than triple the price for them.