Halo ProActive sports wash review

We've been testing Halo ProActive sports wash on our cycling kit – an effective sports kit cleaner that helps reduce odour build-up

Cycling Weekly Verdict

An effective way to keep your sports kit clean and whiff free – a shame it’s not more available in supermarkets.

Reasons to buy
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    Effective sports kit cleaner

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    Reduces odour build-up in kit

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    More economical than many sports kit washes

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Reasons to avoid
  • -

    Limited availability in stores

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You can trust Cycling Weekly. Our team of experts put in hard miles testing cycling tech and will always share honest, unbiased advice to help you choose. Find out more about how we test.

Most cycling kit is made from technical manmade fabrics. These have a tendency to get pretty whiffy and the smell tends to build up in them over time too. Many have washing instructions which recommend 30°C maximum, which means there’s limited opportunity to get them really fresh.

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Merino wool reduces the odour problem but is expensive and also needs to be washed carefully, so a laundry product which helps keep odour at bay even when washing at low temperatures is very useful.

>>> 11 things you absolutely have to do after cycling

Halo makes some strong claims about its sports wash
(Image credit: mike prior)

Halo ProActive is designed to kill off odour-causing bacteria that feed on the sweat we produce when exercising. Halo says it also removes skin particles from clothing which are rubbed off the skin and lodge in your clothing’s fibres. Rather than the sweat and skin particles themselves, it’s the bacteria feeding on them that make your clothing smell.

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Halo says that as well as washing out sweat and skin and killing off bacteria and viruses in the wash, its active ingredient stays around in the clothing and continues to suppress bacterial growth and hence whiffiness.

Watch: How to wash cycling kit

I’ve been using Halo ProActive on my cycling kit for a few months now. It’s certainly effective at cleaning up dirty, sweaty clothing. It’s only faintly scented, so if you want your kit to smell like spring blossom after washing it will disappoint. But it does suppress other odours effectively. You still won’t get away with wearing the same synthetic baselayer for a week, but it might just smell a little less lived-in when it comes out of the drawer ready for action.

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Sainsbury’s sells Halo ProActive Sports Wash in its larger stores and you can find it in some sports retailers, or buy online directly from Halo.

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Paul Norman

Paul started writing for Cycling Weekly in 2015, covering cycling tech, new bikes and product testing. Since then, he’s reviewed hundreds of bikes and thousands of other pieces of cycling equipment for the magazine and the Cycling Weekly website.

He’s been cycling for a lot longer than that though and his travels by bike have taken him all around Europe and to California. He’s been riding gravel since before gravel bikes existed too, riding a cyclocross bike through the Chilterns and along the South Downs.