admin Water bottle caps: Besides the basic screw cap, you can opt for a water bottle with a lid that suits your needs. Maybe you want a sport cap—the one that you can suck on like a baby bottle—so that you’re not fumbling around with a loose lid while you’re mid-workout. You could also get a straw cap, which for some reason just makes drinking things more fun (but is also annoying to clean).
The Best Overall Water Bottle: Hydro Flask Water Bottle
Hydro Flask has been making insulated water bottles for a little over a decade now, but it wasn’t until the last couple years that they started popping up everywhere. Attribute it to the VSCO girl trend or a general uptick of people taking self-care seriously, but the fact of the matter is that Hydro Flask makes a damn good water bottle. None from its lineup of bottles is as ubiquitous as the standard-mouth, 24-ounce bottle, which is available in pretty much every color of the rainbow.
The double-wall vacuum insulation keeps cold drinks cold for 24 hours or hot liquids hot for 12 hours, which is great for taking this thing on long trips. Its powder-coated exterior makes this water bottle dishwasher safe, but on the top rack. Hand-washing is recommended to preserve the bottle’s longevity. The coating also helps you grip it without the risk of the bottle slipping from your hands. If you want, you can swap out the regular cap for various styles of caps and lids, but for everyday use, standard mouth is the way to go.
The Best Budget Water Bottle: Camelbak Eddy+
For $16, the Eddy+ is hard to beat. It’s made of plastic, but half of that plastic is made of recycled materials, and it’s BPA, BPS, and BPF free. This lightweight and highly durable bottle won’t keep your water cold as long as a double-wall vacuum insulated bottle, but it’s still an excellent cheap solution for making sure you stay on top of getting your daily water fix. Even better, the Eddy+ is backed by a lifetime limited warranty so you don’t have to be too precious with it (not that it can’t take a beating). We know some people love to drink from a straw, so if that applies to you, you’ll be a big fan. We just don’t like how grimy the straw lid can get, especially if you don’t wash it regularly.
The Best Water Bottle with a Straw: Brumate Rotera
Some people need their water bottle to have a straw. Maybe it’s to supplement their 7-Eleven Big Gulp craving of they just need a “fun” way to actually consume water. Brümate, the brand best known for its mega coolers, designed an award-winning bottle. We’re, of course, talking about its inclusion in our introductory class of GQ All-Stars. So what makes this simple-looking bottle so great? First, it looks a lot nicer than your old run-of-the-mill bottle, but most importantly it has an ingenious design feature, which neatly equips its lid with a built-in metal straw that pops up with a simple twist. That not only keeps the straw clean, but also means you don’t need to pry at it with your dirty fingers to get a sip of that sweet, sweet nectar, er, water.
The Best Water Bottle for the Outdoors: Hydro Flask Trail Series Water Bottle
If you’re an avid hiker or backpacker, you know weight is everything when you’re considering what to tote in your pack or rucksack. That’s where Hydro Flask’s Trail Series stainless steel water bottle comes in. Each retains the brand’s exceptional double-wall vacuum insulation for temperature control, but these bottles are significantly lighter (supposedly 25% when you compare bottles that are the same size) than the brand’s other options. Even for commuting to work, this bottle won’t add any extra weight to your already-overstuffed work bag.
The Best Lid Design on a Water Bottle: Purist Mover
The mouth design of a water bottle can make or break it for a specific user. A mouth that’s too big will splash water in your face if you’re trying to drink while you’re moving; a mouth that’s too small will make you feel like a hamster drinking from its teeny little water dispenser. With Purist, you get a lid that can adjust its flow and allows you to drink from anywhere along the circumference. The interior of the Mover is lined with unbreakable glass, which puts a barrier of separation between water and steel so that there’s no flavor transfer for an unwanted metallic taste. The bottle is beautifully designed, and it’s double-wall vacuumed like a Hydro Flask bottle.
The Best Glass Water Bottle: W&P Design Porter
Glass-constructed water bottles are tricky. They’re nice, and they don’t impart a metallic flavor into your water. But they’re also worrisome to bring out because if you drop it, well, it’s glass and it will break. But if you just really want a glass bottle, the Porter from W&P Design is the best it gets. It’s made from borosilicate glass, so while it’s not indestructible, it might survive a short drop. It’s wrapped in a soft slip-resistant silicone sleeve, because you really don’t want to drop this bottle.
The Best Water Bottle for Working Out: Takeya Originals
The ideal water bottle for working out is one that you can drink from while you’re on the move. We like Takeya Originals’ water bottle best for this because of its narrow mouth opening and ease of access—just screw off the attached cap, and chug away. Its double-wall vacuum insulated, and at this point, you already know what that means. That screw cap also has a hinge-lock so that it’s not smacking you in the face while you’re trying to have a drink, and it’s this tiny ingenious feature that really sets this water bottle over the top.
The Best Purifying Water Bottle: Grayl UltraPress
For those treks through remote environments with suspicious bodies of free-flowing water, bring Grayl’s UltraPress along for the road to make sure your drinking water is actually good for, well, drinking. In our hunt for the best water bottles with filters, we found that the UltraPress is almost like a French press for water, except instead of separating coffee grounds from your brew, you’re separating viruses, like hepatitis A and norovirus, and bacteria, like E. coli and salmonella, from your water. The additional use of charcoal eliminates any “off” flavors from your water source, and the replaceable cartridges, which go for $25 a pop, last around three years, or however long it takes for you to get through 40 gallons of agua.
Plus, 5 More Water Bottles We Like
Yeti is all about insulation from its high-quality coolers to its beer can sleeves. Its Rambler series of water bottles are just as good, featuring 18/8 stainless steel, which won’t impart any nasty flavors in your water, and it won’t hold onto any previous odors or flavors. It also has an interesting Chug Cap for when you just need to get as much water into your body as quickly as you physically can in one gulp.
Zojirushi is better known for its rice cookers than anything else, but we won’t hesitate to say the brand makes a great water bottle, too. It has a flip-top lid, for ease of use, which completely disassembles for a thorough cleaning. The mouthpiece is also designed in such a way that an air vent allows liquids to flow out smoothly instead of gushing at you. Another nice touch is the inclusion of a safety lock to ensure the cap doesn’t accidentally flip open on its own when it’s jostled around in your bag.
Klean Kanteen’s original stainless steel water bottle wasn’t that great. First, it wasn’t insulated so your beverages were never at the temperature you wanted them to be, and they also got sweaty on the outside from condensation. Its insulated water bottle is much better with its double-wall vacuum insulation and “TK Closure,” which has an internal thread design, pushing this bottle’s ability to keep drinks cold for up to a whopping 58 hours. To bring up the bottle’s drinking spout, twist the bottle cap, and an included stainless steel straw attaches to the spout like you’re drinking from a Big Gulp.
Compared to the Grayl UltraPress, LifeStraw’s Go series of purifying water bottles is not as satisfying to drink out of because it filters as you sip. However, it does perform just as well as the UltraPress in terms of eliminating bacteria, parasites, sediments and off flavors, while its double-wall vacuum insulation does a better job at keeping drinks chilled. The filter costs the same as Grayl’s, but it has to be replaced after filtering 26 gallons of water rather than the competition’s 40 gallons.
With the Owala bottle, you’re free to “swig” or “sip.” What we like about this water bottle is that it lets those who like to sip from a straw have exactly that, or allows someone who likes to chug to do exactly that, as well. While you could theoretically unscrew a straw-capped bottle to be able to chug from it, the Owala offers both options with one mouthpiece. The bottle is also leakproof and keeps bevvies cold for 24 hours, so what more could you really ask for from your water bottle?
