As much as it seems like a rather boring and mundane item to review, things like household cleaners and similar items are probably of as much relevance to consumers as food items and more exciting things like books or films. (I like to think so anyway!)

Anyway, I regularly buy the cheapest toilet cleaner available at whatever supermarket I happen to be doing my shopping in. This is often a value product, such as the "Tesco Value" toilet cleaner.

Whilst I was in my local Tesco store recently however, the 'Value' toilet cleaner was out of stock, so much to my annoyance, I had to pick an alternative (and more expensive) cleaner as I had ran out completely, and it is one of those items that I prefer to have in the house at any time.

The cheapest toilet cleaner that I could find was the "Tesco Active Toilet Gel" own branded toilet cleaner. It was a much cheaper option than rival cleaners such as "Toilet Duck" and the like. I think that the bottle cost me in the region of 60 - 70 pence, which is pretty much the maximum amount that I would spend on such a product.

With the bottle of cleaner now almost empty, I feel that I am in a position to comment on this product fairly and write a review about it.

I will start off by saying that the design of the plastic bottle is much superior to that of its "Value" rival. Whereas a huge flaw the 'Value' product has is the poor design of the bottle, this Tesco toilet cleaner has a perfectly angled 'neck' that allows you to dispense enough liquid (by squeezing the bottle) under the rim of the toilet pan, thus giving you the impression that it is a little cleaner and more hygienic by doing so.

The smell of the gel cleaner is very powerful, and is evident as soon as you have squeezed the liquid from the bottle. I find it to be a very over-powering smell, and almost catches in my throat when I am using it, although to be fair I do find that this is the case with all similar toilet cleaners that I use.

The colour of this particular gel cleaner is a bright blue colour, and I find that if I am not careful to scrub the cleaner away properly, it can stain the sides of the toilet bowl. It has not actually stained it permanently, but I have witnessed a few stubborn blue marks from time to time that are rather annoying. I feel sometimes that I need to clean the loo a few times just to remove every trace of the gel cleaner... this makes this product far from perfect, for me at least.

All in all, I do find that the gel cleaner is effective at removing dirt and cleaning my toilet. I find that after several flushes, there is still a faint whiff of the smell of the product which is a trait that I quite like. I also found that this particular bottle of cleaner lasted slightly longer than its 'Value' rival, but this is probably due to me not using as much of it because of the extremely over-powering smell, rather than the product itself being MUCH more effective.

It probably is a little more effective than the 'Value' cleaner, but not so much so that I will continue to buy this gel cleaner in place of the 'Value' one.

All in all I would award it three stars, and cannot recommend it EXTREMELY highly. It is a good stand-by, but nothing more than that, to my mind at least.

Not the worst, but not the best either! :-/