Life is a Prayer.com

Isn't it beautiful?

Soap. It's something that all human societies have a need for. There are thousands of ways you can transfer soap to your body, though. Many people have these crazy blocks of soap with which they can make some suds to clean their hands and bodies. Others use a new form of soap—so-called "liquid" soap, which is a little easier to transport and apply. Of course, both types of soap have advantages and drawbacks.

But as technology has progressed, hand soap has become increasingly convenient to store in liquid form. As a testament to liquid hand soap's strides in acceptance in human society, as well as the American ethic of laziness and convenience in all things, Simplehuman has designed a soap dispenserwhich requires so little effort to use that even an unsuspecting animal could figure out how to get soap out of the thing.

Simply Convenient

It's simple, really: You just wave your hand or some other thing under the soap dispensing nozzle, and soap comes out. It uses an infrared sensor, which is pretty darn accurate and not too error-prone.

On the base, in the rear, there's a little knob that you can turn to switch the dispenser off or set level 1, 2, 3 or 4 - each level gives an increasing amount of soap (I like level two the most). You refill it with any standard liquid soap, from any brand (you can get it quite cheap in bulk!), and refilling is as easy as screwing off a little port in the top, pouring in the soap, then screwing the top back on.

In my three months of testing, I haven't had a problem with the thing, and the batteries seem to be holding up quite well.

Great, but Not Perfect

The only major complaint I have against this beautiful device is that it is yet another surface that I need to clean in the bathroom - the oh-so-shiny top gets dust and such things pretty easily, and suffers from the iPod chrome-back effect—it begs to be shiny and clean, at all costs!

A minor gripe is the fact that the manual dispensing button is located in a very awkward place, at the top towards the back, and the rubber button isn't always the easiest to press. I'd much rather have some sort of switch near the dispenser which is easier to touch with the same hand receiving the soap. [See update below for more on this].

For the convenience of not having to change soap very often, and not having to touch a messy soap-squirting nozzle every time I wash my hands, I'm happy to fork over $30 (current street price, with a coupon or discount). I highly recommend this dispenser! (The dispenser is listed by Simplehuman as a "Sensor Soap Pump").

UPDATE: After hearing from @simplehumangal on Twitter, I've found that the main purpose of the manual dispensing button is for washing dishes. I had not even thought about the use of the soap dispenser for dishwashing, but now I know! Maybe another one will be on order soon ;-)

UPDATE 2 (6/20/10): This thing's still kicking after more than a year—although I had to recently use a toothpick to clean the dispenser nozzle. It's a great product!