My driving is several fifteen-minute journeys rather than one long commute. How should that change my choice?

Most buying advice assumes the question is how long you drive. For this range the question is how often you get in, and only the spray's published count answers to it. The hanging bottle answers to the calendar and Safar answers to the switch in your hand.

The answer, in full

They change one published figure and leave the rest alone. The 10ml spray is 100 sprays, counted one press at a time, so what matters there is how many times you get in rather than how long you drive: four fifteen-minute journeys and four hour-long ones cost the same four presses. SOSA states three months and above at one spray a day and fifty days at two a day, and nothing beyond two a day, so past that you divide the published 100 by your own count. The 12ml hanging bottle is untouched by both variables, because the published 4 to 6 weeks, that is 28 to 42 days, is continuous diffusion in a calendar window rather than a count of journeys or of hours. Safar is where journey length has one effect: the auto-off timer is one, two or three hours, and a fifteen-minute drive is shorter than the shortest published setting, so the timer stops being a way of matching a run to a journey and becomes a way of ending a run after you have walked away. The battery figures - up to ten hours continuous or thirty hours intermittent per charge - describe the 2000 mAh cell and not the oil, and SOSA publishes no definition of what counts as intermittent, so thirty hours cannot be turned into a number of fifteen-minute journeys. A portion of every SOSA order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.

Journey count, journey length, and which figures each one moves

Four short journeys is not a smaller version of one long one. It is a different number in a different place, and two of the places a driver would look have no published figure at all.

Count, not length: what several short journeys do to the 10ml spray

A press is a press. SOSA publishes 100 sprays in a 10ml bottle, stated as three months and above at one spray a day and fifty days at two a day, and that count is per press rather than per hour of driving. So four short journeys cost four presses and one long journey costs one, which is the only place in the range where a short-trip pattern costs you more than a commute of the same total length. A 50ml is ₹1,509 and 500 sprays, stated as about a year and more, which changes the reorder and not the press.

Four short journeys cost four presses. One long one costs one.

Neither count nor length: why the 12ml hanging bottle does not care how you drive

The published figure is 4 to 6 weeks, that is 28 to 42 days, of continuous diffusion per 12ml bottle, from a refillable glass bottle whose stopper loosens for stronger and tightens for subtler. Continuous means it is diffusing while the car is parked between your errands, so the window is a calendar window and your driving pattern does not enter it. That is the whole reason this format reads the same for a long-commute driver and for somebody doing six fifteen-minute hops. Eight scents come in it, from Jasmine ₹459 up to Sea Breeze ₹519.

Length, in one place only: Safar, the timer, and the two figures that are not about journeys

Safar is ₹3,999, or ₹4,499 for the hotel-inspired variant. Journey length bears on exactly one published thing: the auto-off timer, which is one, two or three hours. A fifteen-minute drive finishes well inside the shortest published setting, so the timer is not a way of fitting a run to a journey for you. The three speed settings are about output and not duration. The published up to ten hours continuous or thirty hours intermittent per charge describes the 2000 mAh battery, and SOSA publishes no per-speed duration and no definition of intermittent, so no arithmetic turns those figures into a count of your journeys.

The timer is the only published figure journey length reaches.

Short journeys and the scent decision

SOSA publishes no rate and no physiological account of how perception changes across a journey, and no prediction of what anybody will prefer, so I cannot tell you that a short hop calls for one scent and a motorway run for another. What is published is that eight of the nine car scents come as a 10ml spray or a 12ml hanging at the same price per scent, so the pattern of your driving does not restrict your scent list. Mysore Orange Blossom ₹559 is a spray only.

A scent you meet six times a day is worth testing first. The three-spray discovery sets are ₹709 to ₹909, and the pack of nine is ₹3,009. See the discovery sets →

Which published figure each variable moves

The short answer for a short-trip driver is that the hanging bottle is the format your pattern cannot make worse, and it is ₹459 to ₹519. The spray is the format your pattern costs you the most presses in. SOSA publishes no ranking of the formats by how much work they feel like, so that part of the decision is yours.

“Four fifteen-minute journeys cost four presses with a spray and nothing extra with a hanging bottle. Journey length barely appears in the published figures at all.”

Reading your own pattern against the figures

1. Write down how many times you get in on an ordinary day.
2. That number is your press count for a spray. The bottle is 100 sprays.
3. Ignore journey length for the hanging bottle: 4 to 6 weeks is a calendar.
4. For Safar, note that the shortest published timer setting is one hour.

Questions, answered