I’m going to start things off by saying something I’ve never said in a review before: Everyone should try this product.

Hear me out. Sliquid H2O may not be the most exciting product imaginable; it’s not flavored, it doesn’t cool or warm, and it won’t make your nether regions tingle and thrum with pleasure. In a way, though, that’s what makes Sliquid so good; it’s all-purpose, and it gets the job done, which is more than you can say about a lot of lubricants.

For the most part, I only use artificial lubricant when I’m using a toy, and Sliquid is perfect for this. It’s a bit thicker than my old standby, Astroglide, which is good, because I’m always looking for less runny water-based lubes. Moreover, it is water-based, so I can use it with toys made of virtually any material — even the ever-temperamental silicone. Sliquid’s solid performance as a lubricant for penetrative toys makes me think that it would be an equally good choice for regular PIV sex — particularly because, as I will discuss in more detail later, it has virtually no taste to it at all. And while I obviously can’t speak from experience, I imagine that men who like to use lubricant while masturbating would enjoy Sliquid as well. Some people may even find Sliquid thick enough to use for anal play.

Best of all, Sliquid H2O is about as body-friendly as you can get. Like my preferred variety of Astroglide, Sliquid contains neither glycerin (which can cause yeast infections) nor parabens (possibly carcinogenic). However, unlike Astroglide, Sliquid has a grand total of five ingredients in it: purified water, plant cellulose (from cotton), cyamopsis (guar conditioners), potassium sorbate, and citric acid (list of ingredients taken from Sliquid’s website). It’s refreshing to see such a short list, and Sliquid works so well that you sort of have to wonder why other lubricants need a whole catalogue of ingredients anyway. In any case, all of the ingredients in Sliquid get smiley faces on cosmeticscop.com, and because they’re natural, they’re also vegan-friendly.

Before trying Sliquid, Astroglide Glycerin and Paraben Free was the closest thing I’d found to natural lubrication. No more. Astroglide doesn’t feel unnatural, but Sliquid is thicker — even a bit gooey — and thus feels more like what my body produces naturally. I suspect, however, that some women may not share my preference for thicker lubricant; I don’t need to use much lubricant anyway, so I want the little that I do use to feel as close to the real thing as possible. Since women’s bodies are all different, though, I can see a woman whose natural discharge is thicker and/or less plentiful wanting a thinner, wetter lubricant.

There’s one other thing I love about thick lubricant, though, and that’s that it doesn’t make a mess. This is the first lubricant that I have managed to drizzle on a toy without losing a single drop to the bed/towel/floor/whatever; it actually stays in place if you’re holding the toy horizontally. In fact, it’s decently clingy even at an angle; unlike other lubricants that slide or drip downward, Sliquid oozes, giving you time to intervene before it runs everywhere. Generally speaking, water-based lubricant doesn’t stain fabric, but I’d still rather not deal with the mess, so I appreciate Sliquid’s relative tidiness.

One of the things that most surprised me about Sliquid H2O was the almost complete absence of scent or taste. To be fair, I generally can’t smell lubricants unless my nose is right up against the bottle, but I can taste them, and in my experience, they’re usually very bitter. For me, this isn’t the end of the world, but if you like to use artificial lubricant during partner sex, I imagine that this could be a deal-breaker; it wouldn’t be very much fun to have to basically rule out oral sex as soon as you break out the bottle of lube. In any case, Sliquid H2O offers a solution to this problem. I can’t smell it at all, and the taste is so incredibly faint that I can’t even come up with a description of it — I just know that it’s not QUITE the same as water. It’s pretty close, though, and I doubt that you can do much better in the taste department unless you opt for a flavored lubricant.

As I said above, Sliquid H2O is the closest thing I’ve found (at least in terms of consistency) to natural lubrication. I cannot stress enough how nice it is to use a lubricant that doesn’t just trickle down and puddle underneath me. When I dribble this lube on a toy, I don’t have to race to get the thing inside me before it all drips off. What’s more, it seems to spread more evenly than other lubricants; so far, I’ve only used Sliquid with silicone and TPR toys, but it doesn’t bead up as much as a lot of water-based lubricants do. When I actually get around to inserting the toy, I honestly cannot feel any difference between Sliquid and my natural wetness.

Since I usually masturbate for 30 minutes tops, I’m probably not the best person to comment on how long-lasting a lubricant is. That said, I haven’t had any issues with Sliquid drying up too quickly; I put a nickel-sized amount on a toy, and I’m good to go for an entire session. Women who don’t produce a lot of natural lubrication will probably have more of a problem with Sliquid, since it seems to work best as a supplement rather than as a stand-alone lube; however, I haven’t personally tested how long Sliquid stays wet when applied to dry skin. Sliquid also doesn’t seem to get quite as sticky when dry as most water-based lubes do, but since I almost always shower soon after sex of any kind, I don’t know how comfortable it would be to leave it on for, say, an entire night. Like other water-based lubricants, it washes off easily in the shower or even with a few swipes of a wet washcloth.

My Sliquid H2O arrived in a clear plastic bag, but the bottle itself seems fairly leak-proof, so I don’t foresee spills being a big problem. Nevertheless, if there were one thing I could change about Sliquid, it would be the packaging. I’m a fan of the classy, simplistic label, but I don’t find the bottle itself particularly easy to use. I prefer bottles that have a flip-open lid, because I find them tidier; any lube left on the rim of the dispenser gets covered when you close the bottle. Sliquid’s lube has the kind of cap that you press open and snap shut, so leftover lubricant can get on the outside of the cap/bottle. I’ve also found myself having to squeeze harder than usual to get the lube out of the bottle, which means I have less control over how much ultimately comes out. Neither of these are huge problems, obviously, but they are minor inconveniences worth noting.