7 Everyday Products We Actually Tested This Month (And Our Honest Thoughts)

I ordered this in a medium fully expecting to send it back — the photos looked a little too good, and that usually means disappointment when the parcel arrives. Instead I wore it three times in one week. The fabric is lighter than it looks online, it drapes without clinging, and the cut skims the places I'd rather it skim instead of hugging them.

What won me over was how little it asked of me. I wore it to a dinner with flat sandals and a linen jacket, then again the next morning with trainers to run errands, and it looked right both times. It holds a press reasonably well and doesn't wrinkle into a crumpled mess the moment you sit down, which for a summer dress at this price is genuinely rare.

My honest reservation is the fabric feels thin enough that a slip underneath is a good idea in bright light, and the length runs a touch shorter than I expected. If you're tall, size notes are worth reading twice. But for an easy, forgiving warm-weather piece you'll actually keep reaching for, this punches well above what it costs.

I bought these purely for note-taking and ended up using them for everything — colour-coding my review drafts, marking up product specs, even relabelling the pantry jars I've been meaning to sort for a year. The ink flow is consistent from the first stroke, and the colours actually show up on the page instead of fading into that washed-out pastel you get with cheaper sets.

The tips have held up better than I expected. A few weeks of daily use and none of them have frayed or dried out, even the ones I forgot to cap overnight once or twice. Gautam has quietly claimed the navy one as his, which is its own kind of endorsement.

If I'm nitpicking, the lighter shades — the yellow especially — are too faint to read comfortably, so I skip them for anything I need to reference later. And they will bleed through thin notebook paper, so they're better on the desk than in a journal. For the price, though, this is the most useful pack of pens I've reached for all year.

If you have kids, or if you still sketch to unwind like I do, these quietly solve the one thing that drives everyone up the wall: broken crayons. You twist to extend the tip, so there's no peeling paper and no hunting for a sharpener, and the plastic barrel means they survive being dropped, sat on and stuffed into a bag.

I tested them against a regular box over a weekend art project with my niece, and it wasn't close. The colour lays down smoothly, the barrels are comfortable in smaller hands, and cleanup was the easiest part of the afternoon. Two full days of enthusiastic use and not a single one snapped.

The honest trade-off is that twist-up crayons never get as sharp as a freshly peeled traditional crayon, so fine detail work is a little harder. And at some point the nub twists all the way down and there's no way to reclaim that last stub. For everyday drawing with kids, though, these are the ones I'd buy again without thinking.

This one intrigued me before I'd even opened it. It's a thick, rich hydrating cream with truffle extract, and it smells earthy in a way I ended up genuinely liking — not perfumed, more like something grounded and warm. Despite how dense it looks in the jar, it absorbs faster than most creams this heavy, without leaving my face feeling coated.

I used it as a night moisturiser for two weeks, and by morning my skin felt noticeably softer and less tight, especially around my cheeks where I usually go dry. A little goes a long way, so the jar should last a good while, which softens the fact that it isn't cheap.

My reservations are real, though. The earthy scent is lovely to me but will not be for everyone, and there's no fragrance-free option if you're sensitive. It's also a bit too rich for my oilier days, so I've settled on using it a few nights a week rather than every night. If your skin runs dry and you don't mind a distinctive smell, it's a lovely thing to have on the shelf.

I've used this brand's stronger peeling solution before, so I went in curious whether a gentler, leave-on version would actually do anything. It does. I use it twice a week, and the texture improvement is real — smoother across my forehead and around my nose, and my pores look a little less obvious than they did a month ago.

What I appreciate is that it's forgiving. The stronger acids in some products leave my skin stinging and pink; this one doesn't, so it's easier to fit into a routine without planning your whole evening around it. It layers cleanly under moisturiser and doesn't pill.

The honest cautions: this is still an exfoliant, so if you overdo it — and it's tempting, because results feel gradual — you can end up sensitised and worse off than when you started. Start with once a week, build up slowly, and wear sunscreen every single day without exception, because freshly exfoliated skin burns fast. Respect that, and it's an easy one to recommend.

I reached for these after a genuinely brutal hot weekend where plain water simply wasn't cutting it — that heavy, wrung-out feeling you get when you've sweated more than you realised. The raspberry flavour is light and a little tart, not the syrupy candy-sweetness I brace for with drink powders, and I could happily finish a full glass.

The detail that actually matters to me: they dissolve cleanly. No gritty sludge at the bottom of the glass, which is my standard test and the thing most powders fail. I've kept a few sachets in my bag since, and on hot afternoons they've made a noticeable difference to how I feel by evening.

My honest note is that it is faintly tart in a way a few people in the house didn't love, and like any electrolyte mix it's a supplement, not a magic fix — it supports hydration, it doesn't replace drinking enough water in the first place. But as a clean-tasting, no-residue option for hot days and long ones, it's earned its spot.

If you only take one thing from this whole roundup, make it this. It's the single product on the list I'd recommend to absolutely everyone, no caveats about skin type or budget. It's thin enough to wear under makeup, leaves no white cast on me, and doesn't pill over moisturiser the way so many sunscreens do the moment you touch your face.

Non-comedogenic means it hasn't clogged my pores, and I've been wearing it daily for months now without a single breakout I could trace back to it. It's become the most boring, dependable step in my routine — which, for a sunscreen, is exactly the compliment you want to give it.

The only honest quibbles are the usual ones for a sunscreen this good: it isn't cheap for the bottle size, and there's a faint sunscreen scent that lingers for a few minutes before it settles. Neither has come close to stopping me from repurchasing. This is the product I'd hand to a friend and say, just trust me.