Magic Valeting Smell-Alike Air Fresheners Review

We were very kindly sent a selection of 'Smell-Alike Air Fresheners' from West Midlands-based Magic Valeting to test.

Apparently inspired by some of the big-brand aftershave and perfumes, the ones we got our hands on are 100ml spray bottles, in four different scents:

• Smell of Success
• Snow Flake
• Dark Poppy
• Signature Scent

In over 30 years of driving, I've never actually used a sprayable air freshener in a car before, so this was a new experience.

Air fresheners are a great way to create an inviting atmosphere in a car - and sprayable ones are designed to mask or eliminate odours from the interior, carpets, and other surfaces in the vehicle.  However, as I found out - they're also a very effective way of just 'having a really nice scent in the air'.

Of the four I tried, I ranked them in this order of preference - and with these comments that I wrote whilst testing them:

#1 - Dark Poppy - very nice!
#2 - Smell of Success - very after-shave like!
#3 - Signature Scent - very sweet!
#4 - Snow Flake - very sweet!

I have to say that I really liked all of them, but just liked Dark Poppy a bit more than the others - with Smell of Success a very close second.

I should also confess that I took them into the house and sprayed them around a couple of rooms, to make them smell really rather pleasant.  If anything, I thought that the nice smells hung around for a lot longer in the house.  That's probably because my car journeys were fairly short ones, which means a change of air when you open and close the doors.  I might be onto something here - use them in the house as well as the car!

For me, I'm not sure that I'm going to remember to manually spray these scents around - either in the car or elsewhere - but I would be very interested in seeing if they can be put into one of those room diffusers so that this happens automatically.  They're water-based, so I can't see any reason why this wouldn't work.

I definitely recommend you give these a try - and the fact that they come from a small, UK-based business is an added bonus.

We gave them a 7 out of 10 for Applicability, 9 for Ease of Use and 10 for Smell. Overall rating 8 out of 10.

You can buy them online here.