A few months back, I scooped up another brand of men’s wipes to test out at Dollar Tree, and was fairly impressed with the results. Well, it seems like since that time, Dollar Tree has stopped carrying that brand (The Nobleman) – which offered several different varieties – and instead has put all of their men’s wipes focus on their Assured for Men Face and Body Wipes.

These start things off by making a rather bold claim in small print on their packaging: “Compare to Dude Face Wipes”. Now, I have to be honest that I’ve never tried those before, but Dollar Tree’s version certainly fixes the reason why: price. While the “Dude” brand’s regular, flushable wipes are priced a little more straightforward, their face wipes are almost prohibitively expensive, at least for someone like me, who couldn’t possibly stand the thought of shelling out $5 for 30 wipes. What male would? They really just feel like the “pink tax” put in reverse: a company saw how overpriced and popular female face wipes were – which makes a little more sense considering women will pay small fortunes for skin care regimens – and figured they could make a killing marketing the same thing, only with a scent engineered to be more pleasant toward male nostrils.Now, despite my unfamiliarity with that product, one thing’s for sure: If Assured’s version works even half as well, there’s some massive value to be had here, with these packages offering up the same amount of wipes – for 80% of the cost. And really, how can a “wipe” go wrong? It’s one of those things that doesn’t really do anything that’s visually obvious; I suppose it can remove dirt and grime, as it claims, but I still tend to stick to good ol’ soap and water for that. To me, wipes are just a way to get the “unseen” oils and skin issues off your skin, or as a way to “freshen up” on those days I don’t have time (or the want) to shower. So my criteria is perhaps much less stringent than other users: as long as it makes your skin feel “refreshed” after using it, and it doesn’t have an off-putting scent, then it’s pretty much a win in my book.

Assured’s wipes offer up a soft scent that, according to our four-year-old son, smells like lemons, which is true. But don’t be turned off quite yet: it doesn’t come anywhere near approaching the fakey strong lemon scent of cleaning products, a smell I would have expected out of a similar dollar store product years ago. Instead, it’s a rather soft scent that I would dare describe as rather “pleasant” – at least, a lot moreso than I was initially expecting (and a lot moreso than my natural scent after a busy day).

The only other male wipes I’ve used were the aforementioned cooling wipes from “The Nobleman” brand. Even though these don’t have “cooling” mentioned anywhere on the packaging, they still offer up a similar feeling when applied on the skin. It might not approach the same levels of “cooling” those wipes did, but they still really do leave your skin feeling slightly invigorated, and seem to do an admirable job of covering up those strong male smells that most women are never cursed to deal with (my wife, for example, can go days without showering and still smell like a delicate flower; I skip a day and smell like I ran a New York City marathon).

It also improves upon the main issue I had with “The Nobleman”: Assured’s version offers resealable packaging, in the form of a snap-close lid. This is much better than “The Nobleman’s” method of closing, which consisted of an adhesive, and a thin flap of plastic packaging…something akin to most brand of baby wipes. This means it’s much easier to ensure that your wipes are protected from those deadly air molecules, looking to sap every bit of moisture out of each wipe like a predator combing the desert for food. Often, the enclosures on Dollar Tree products aren’t the best, and are prone to breaking, but I’ve used several packages of these, and haven’t yet had an issue with the snap enclosure, no matter how many times I’ve opened and shut them.

No matter how you look at these, these are pretty darn fantastic. But taking into account the value when compared to the name brand, that puts these on another level. Again, I’ve never used the name brand, so I can’t specifically compare the performance between the two, but I can’t imagine that they “work” five times better.

I mean, it’s a wipe.

Overall: 9/10. They’re wipes: they leave your skin feeling much better than not showering, and offer up a pleasantly soft lemon scent that seem to mask male odors well. Another huge plus over similar Dollar Tree products I’ve tried: they have a lid that snaps shut, locking in the moisture much better than the flimsy baby wipe-style adhesives. But where these really shine is value: a 30-count pack is just $1 (like everything else in DT), which is $4 cheaper than the brand they “dare” you to compare them to on the packaging (and for the same wipe count). Even if their “performance” isn’t quite as good as those – and really how much better can one wipe be over another – the price differential is certainly enough to compensate for that. A great product for any male to have on hand, and at a fantastic price to boot.