Having been really impressed by another Sistema product, a drinks bottle, when I saw this lunchbox, which is a normal lunch box with more compartments, one housing a small bottle, I had to buy it. In actual fact I bought two - one in this colour and one in bright pink. It's also available in bright green. I like Sistema products as they are BPA free and my experience told me they are normally well designed, sturdy and practical to use. This particular item has proved to be a useful and popular item, but not without its downsides.

The lunchbox itself is 22cm by 15cm and 9cm deep, so a good size for containing everything. The top houses three compartments whilst the bottom is a slightly larger compartment. I find that you can easily get sandwiches and a bag of crisps into the bottom part without them getting squidged. All the compartments open separately and seem to stay firmly shut to contain the contents whilst not being too hard to open for adults and children alike. The bottle that comes in the larger compartment is 11cm high and big enough for that lunchtime drink -it's screw top and not particularly brilliant to drink from but it does the job. I like the idea of the compartments as it's fun to work out what little bits and bobs to put in them, bento-stylee, and it saves on using cling film and adds interest to a packed lunch. You can easily get some carrot sticks or grapes or even a small cake into the top compartments, and everything is kept secure and enclosed.

So far so good.

While another reviewer has said that their box was not well made, I haven't had this issue at all. I've used a box myself and the other one has been used for school lunches; both have proved durable. The issue I do have with this is how hard it is to clean. Though dishwasher safe, you can't actually clean it in the top rack of a dishwasher as advised due to its design, if you open it up to clean everything water will pool in the compartments, it just doesn't work. It's a bit of a pain to hand wash too in all honesty - there are just lots of nooks and crannies and you can't drain dry it. Obviously this being a food container hygiene is a priority and I just feel there are too many little bits to this to be absolutely sure it is squeaky clean and it's just not quick to wash or wipe dry, I would prefer it if I could bung it in the dishwasher.

That said my packed lunch loving daughter does love her pink box and so it gets a lot of use. At the price I paid, which was under £4 (sainsbury's currently have 25% off all sistema products) it's a fairly good buy as I feel it's well made and fun. It's also good to know there are no nasty BPA's in the plastic and using it, with careful washing, does save on packaging. It's a tentative thumbs up here then, I just think the designer maybe hadn't thought through the washing up part!