Why pay $50 for a soap dispenser? Because in addition to death and taxes, you can count on any product that uses suction cups, regular batteries in a wet environment, or motion detection, and is cheap, breaking in short order.
simplehuman’s hands free, rechargeable, automatic, cartridge-based soap dispenser creates the best foam we’ve gotten out of a pump so far. Even better, the amount of foam dispensed is variable- the further away your hand is from the spout (that always stays clean and unclogged), the more foam is dispensed.
This is a product with a lot of points of failure and a lot of components the competition only includes a subset of. Most hands-free soap dispensers don’t foam, and most foaming soap dispensers aren’t hands-free. I’ve owned an embarrassing number of soap dispensers, and had their pumps stop working, their motion sensors stop responding, and their suction cups (that keep them in place on the counter) stop sticking, just to name a few issues. I’ve even had different dispensers from simplehuman fail in the past.
Buying simplehuman’s dispenser locks you into an impressively built out soap ecosystem, with six brands signed on in addition to simplehuman’s internal offerings so far. We counted around 30 different soaps to choose from, including options from Nest Fragrances and Antica Farmacista.
There’s no good soap standard to compare the pricing of simplehuman’s cartridges to. The cartridges are 10 Fl. Oz. and range from $7-$24, less if you buy a six pack, less when they make it to Amazon Subscribe & Save, and like everything, less when they’re on sale. They’re obviously not going to be cheaper than buying liquid soap by the gallon at a wholesale club, but from there you’ll have to do your own math.