Stardrops Surface Wipes Glass Cleaner

When I bought my new television last year I needed to get a stand for it and I fortuitously found the perfect thing in Morrisons – a three tier television stand in black glass.

Unfortunately, this television stand is a dust magnet and it needs to be cleaned every other day otherwise it looks dreadful. I tend to use Pledge Dusting Cloths to get rid of the excess dust but need to wipe the glass down with a specific cleaner to really bring the shine back to the glass.

I used Mister Muscle glass cleaner for years but more recently have been drawn towards glass cleaning wipes as I have been able to find them in shops such as Poundland for a very reasonable price. I have become very fond of the Windolene glass wipes but recently encountered wipes made by Stardrops on sale in Iceland for a very reasonable two packs for a pound. At that price I felt I had nothing to lose, so I picked them up.

The Wipes & The Claims

The Stardrops product is called “Stardrops Glass Cleaner Surface Wipes” and they come in a blue pack which can be resealed after opening. Obviously you have to ensure you have resealed the pack carefully otherwise the wipes will dry out.

Each pack contains 80 regular wipes or 40 large ones. This is achieved by a perforation in the middle of the large wipe, meaning you can tear the large wipe in half for a regular one.

Stardrops packaging claims that the product “cleans, protects and sparkles”, and the wipes contain vinegar which Stardrops claim will cut through grease. Stardrops also claim their wipes are quick drying and clean without leaving smears.

My Experience

The first thing that struck me about these wipes was the smell. It’s rather pungent but very sweet – almost like liquorice or some other confection. The wipes themselves are very soft and appear to be made from a loosely woven fabric as opposed to a paper product. There is a perforation roughly in the middle of each wipe but I must admit I tend to use the full size wipe because I use them to clean large glass items but I guess it’s a nice touch to enable you to half a wipe and put the section you do not need back in the packet to use in the future. The half size wipe is very small however and is only really of use for cleaning small areas such as phone screens, glasses or smaller computer monitors.

After you’ve had the wipe out for a few minutes you can definitely detect the smell of vinegar and I have to say when that kicks in the sweet smell fades quickly and I don’t really like the smell that lingers – it reminds me a bit of my dad’s old socks!

To use, I just wipe over the dusted glass several times with the wipe. The wipes do leave a smear behind them but this fades after about 30 seconds as the glass dries off. The glass does clean up to a shine but the wipes can leave small streaks – especially on my computer monitor and my TV screen.

I have tried to clean the glass without dusting the glass shelves first but the wipes just cannot pick up the dust anything like as efficiently and as such they don’t shine anything like as well as they do if they have been dusted first.

I tend to use two of the large wipes to clean my dusted TV and glass shelving unit and overall I do like the end result apart from the occasional streak on my TV screen. The wipes do ensure my glass TV unit shines and sparkles and for the price I can’t really complain. I also like the fabric composition of the wipes as they fit more easily into the corners of my TV screen than the paper based wipes I have used from Windolene.

I have used the wipes on mirrors and been impressed with the results on them but once again I would recommend you dust first before using. I don't find any of my glass needs cleaning less often using the Stardrops wipes than using Windolene or any other glass cleaning product however.

The wipes are gentle to use and certainly I have not experienced any adverse reaction to the active ingredients, which are Vinegarm, Ampoteric Surfactant, Mentha arevensis, Benzisothiazolinone and Limonene.

For the price I do like these wipes – they do the job well even if the smell is a bit strange. My only real gripe about them is the small, but detectable streak they leave on TV screens but at the price they are that’s a very small quibble and I’ll certainly buy these again.