Product Review: Waves Gear Forever Cold Water Bottle
This Is A Bottle Cap
Today’s Product: Waves Forever Cold Water Bottle
My Qualifications: It isn’t that I want to be a braggart but I am a human being who consumes both hot and cold beverages. I’m also a bit of a collector/hoarder – “He’s a hoarder!” my wife is screaming from the other room – of things that carry beverages, including my very extensive collection of vintage King-Seeley Thermoses. I’ll be signing autographs after the show.
Important Factual Information: As you’re all no doubt aware, doctors everywhere mandate drinking at least 13 gallons of water daily. This goes double for fitness fanatics, who are now expected to both drink from a Camelbak and guzzle from a Nalgene simultaneously if they want to have any hope of surviving their endeavors. If those seem to be a bit much for your life, there are other ways of hauling life-giving liquids around.
Enter the Waves Forever Cold Water Bottle is, which, according to the company’s website, is stainless steel and features dual-pane construction, which is definitely something might impress you if you know what that means, which I do not. It is big, holding 34 fluid ounces, which is a lot. It has a sizable opening, which the company claims allows for users to fill it with “even the biggest ice cubes” although this is plainly untrue, as this did not fit even a little. Most important to me is the company’s claim that this bottle keeps cold beverages cold for upwards of 24 hours and hot beverages hot for upwards of 12 hours. It also costs $39, which is a lot, especially when you pay $9 for shipping.
Scale Matters! This Is The Same Water Bottle Next To A Mug With Mustaches On It.
Testing: I ran this thing through the ringer, putting everything in from cold beverages all the way to hot beverages. That’s not really the ringer though, surely. There’s probably more than you’re supposed to do to a water bottle. From the company’s marketing materials, I get the distinct impression that an ideal customer is somebody who’s 26, has the day off occasionally, and goes adventuring, perhaps going so far as to have a Mountain Dew on the way to that adventure. But I am not 26. I am 34. And I was really only looking for something that would hold a lot of coffee in the mornings and a lot of ice water in the afternoons. I was also hoping for something that would clean easily.
So that’s what I did. I filled it with hot coffee, which I then drank, then I cleaned it, then I filled it with ice water, which I then drank, then I waited until the next morning, wherein I went through the entire process again. At no point did me or my bros do anything more exciting.
After doing this for several weeks, I can confirm several things. I can confirm that this is a very big water bottle that is made of stainless steel. I can confirm that it does hold 34 ounces of liquids both hot AND cold. I can confirm that it does clean up easily in that my afternoon water didn’t taste like my morning coffee. I can confirm that I was able to successfully use it despite never even once bro-ing out with it.
I can also quibble with the company’s claim about it keeping liquids hot for up to 12 hours. Because yes, it might be able to do that, but this assumes that you screw the lid on after making your pot of morning coffee and then not opening the bottle again until that evening. If you’re repeatedly going back to the bottle, as one traditionally does when getting additional drinks from it which is what I would presume most users are going to do, the coffee will go from hot to warm to cold in far less than 12 hours. This shouldn’t be shocking necessarily but it does make me wonder if this company thoroughly thought through how its customers were going to use the bottle that it was selling.
I Have Added A Single Piece Of Cinnamon Toast Crunch To Provide Further Illustration Of Scale. I Am Thorough In A Way That Consumer Reports Is Not.
Conclusion: This is a good enough water bottle that is too expensive. You’d be nuts to pay full-price (almost $50 with shipping!), especially when the company routinely offers discounts on its items. If you find one of those discounts though, I’d recommend pouncing, even if the issues with its heat retention are a bit of a disappointment. As I’ve written previously, most customers probably aren’t going to use it like I did, and I’m guessing that the company’s heat-retention claims were a bit of an afterthought. It will keep your coffee hot/warm/lukewarm for upwards of four hours, which isn’t bad, and it absolutely does keep cold beverages cold, which is probably more of its goal anyway.
You’ll also have a good customer service experience, as I can confirm after having a back-and-forth with the company’s CEO (who is probably himself a bit of a bro), a guy who was communicative and honored an expired coupon on the grounds that he was late in answering my questions about the product. That speaks volumes to me.
Shackleton would have sailed across half the south atlantic with a crew in that thing.
But really can i keep cold and hot liquids in it at the same time? Like what if my drink temperature desire changes during the activity, can i drink from the cold stuff and not the hot stuff or vice versa? And can it take selfies while i’m drinking and then upload them to all my various social media connections so people can see what i’m drinking during my adventures? Because if it can’t do all those things then what is the point of life anyway?Report
I’m just trying to imagine what I would look like after 34 oz of coffee.Report
I’m guessing kind of like this.Report
You two are weak. Or responsible. Maybe both.Report
Unless you’re truly an outlier, I probably rival you in coffee consumption. I’ve been good the past couple of weeks, but only because 1) I’m leaving the house earlier this term so don’t have as much time for the extra cup before walking out the door, and 2) I keep forgetting to buy more coffee for my office coffee maker. But I worked from home today, so it was like old times.Report
I often drink 2 16 oz coffees over the course of an 8-10 hour day. Never in anything close to the time I’d have to drink one brew before it got cold in that thing.Report
@chris, why do you shorter days than the rest of us 24-hour types?Report
Everything’s shorter in Texas.Report
Sam,
Two double cappuchinos for me in the morning.Report
James – I am happy to take this bet.
Chris – Sounds like you’re off to a good start.Report
Just finished my fist 16 oz. I probably won’t have any more coffee until early afternoon.Report
I actually don’t think it is unreasonable for them to assume the bottle remains closed. I could imagine loading it up with coffee that I wanted to drink after a hike or something. I guess. I don’t hike. Do people drink coffee after hikes? Oh. I don’t drink coffee either.
For just regular ol’ water drinking, does your collecting/hoarding give you any insight into what is best? I’ve been using those Camelback bottles with the flip top for a while now and they’re pretty good but they aren’t entirely leak proof, which bothers me. I like being able to drink out of a straw without having to unscrew anything because I drink it in the car a lot. A Nalgene or something like this would not suffice. But I’m hoping for something like that Camelback BUT BETTER and LESS LEAKY. Any tips, oh Bottle Master?Report
My issue with camelbacks is the potential for them to get moldy. Yuck.
Me, I’m a big fan of certain Poland Spring water bottles. You can buy them cheaply; most convenience stores sell them. They’re filled with beautiful water from a place that has plenty of water (Maine, Poland Springs is about 45 min. down Rt. 26 from me,) and not with filtered water from a place that has water shortages (California, for instance). The bottles can be refilled at your convenience; we tend to fill ours at the many road-side springs around the state, where the water literally gushes out of the ground, the state installs taps, and locals care for them and keep them clean. (One of my projects for the next few years is to write a book about Maine’s roadside springs). Or you can refill them from any tap. When they get gnarly, recycle the bottle, and purchase a new, pre-filled one.
Yeah water.Report
And I forgot; we do go hiking. A lot. Going up a steep mountain, I can easily down five or six liters of water in just a few hours; and that’s heavy to carry. So an added bonus of my Poland Spring water bottle for carrying water is that they are very, very light.
They do not keep your water cold, and I’ve never bothered to take coffee in one, though my son occasionally fills one with coffee to drink on his way to work.Report
I don’t really care about water temp, to be honest. I fill my water bottle from the tap and just keep it with me. I only really want it ice cold if I’m hung over (which is exceedingly rare these days). So temperature doesn’t matter to me. And, to be clear, I’m referring to the Camelback water bottles… not the backpacks. I have a backpack but am weary of it because I do worry about mold.
Tell me more about these road side springs. The Appalachian Trail cuts through my neighborhood. Along one of the local highways that bisects it, I always see people pulled over, often at a pipe sticking out of the ground with water flowing out of it. It confuses this city mouse’s little brain…Report
@zicReport
Yup, you described a roadside spring.
Ground — particularly the deep, glaciated soils we have here in the Northeast, make the very best water filter ever. Fill your bottle up there.
Maine has a law on the books that springs that empty onto roads cannot be buried (this is what they used to do); they need to be tapped. Generally, if a spring has good water, people tend it, someone takes responsibility for the occasional test, etc., and you’ll see people pulled over to the side of the road, filling up their water bottles. If people are regularly drinking it, you can presume it’s safe to drink. Safer then much of what lines the shelves in convenience stores; that doesn’t even have to meet tap-water standards.Report
White people be tripping… drinking water straight outa the ground like that.
I still look a little side-eyed at my well system. And it has filters and softeners and treatment thingies out the wazoo on it.Report
@kazzy
Try it. There’s a good chance it will be the best water you’ve tasted in your entire life.Report
@james-hanley
How many bugs will I be picking out of my teeth?
Actually, I’m game. I’ll stop by next time I’m on that road. Question: Will I have to wait until the thaw?
I’m a bit surprised to hear that. My well water needs a ton of treatment, primarily for hardness because of the prevalence of lyme in the area. But on at least one occasion (just before we moved in) it needed to be ‘shocked’ on account of a bacteria issue. I believe the technical term was “a dog pooped in your water”.
Is it far to assume that my well is not only pulling from a different water source (we live about 2 miles as the crow flies from the roadside stream; so I recognize it wouldn’t be the exact same body of water but I mean the same general aquifer I guess is the term?) but, on account of it being manmade, it is tapping into water that isn’t moving and benefiting from other things that the roadside stream is?
Seriously, this city boy just doesn’t get how water pulled directly out of the ground doesn’t have… ground stuff in it?
Also, NYC tap water is known to be the best on earth (its part of why our pizza and bagels are so great) so there will be some stiff competition in the water drinking content.
@zic
When it comes to bottled water (which I don’t generally drink), I take Poland Spring over Dasani any other. There is a discernible difference in taste between the two. I’m not a water snob, mind you. Most of what I drink is either my filtered well water or comes right out of the tap (in one building we lived in I insisted on a Brita but that is because the plumbing made the water taste funky). But if you put Dasani next to Poland Spring, I’m choosing the latter every time.Report
@kazzy first, all water is ‘out of the ground.’ All of it. Water is a limited resource, it recycles, and it’s all been in the ground. Aversion to water out of the ground is kinda like aversion to dirt that your vegetables grow in.
With your well, there might be lots of things going on that it needed to be shocked; but my first guess is that it’s tapped into a still pocket that collects, but doesn’t overflow and ‘run.’ In general, moving water is clean, still water get’s dirty, and water in the ground can be either, depending on the geology.
That’s why spring water is generally safe; presuming there’s no point-source pollutant; that the spring is running means it’s flowing through the ground, and all the bits of dirt, etc. actually collect and hold the microbes one might find troublesome in swamp water, etc. Plus, because it’s in the ground, instead of surface water, it won’t generally be contaminated with the things that make surface water dangerous.
If you’re concerned at all, I’d suggest stopping at the spring; are there any signs there? Is there a posting about the water being tested? If not, you can get a water-test kit and have it tested yourself before drinking it. When I talked about doing my book project, that was part o the effort — testing the water in each spring I visited, combined with some photos, interviews of people who regularly drink the water, and to the extent possible, history of the spring. Some have major myths built up. The one I visit most often is purported to be magical, and people who only drink that water are purported to live to 100 or older. I’ve been told that at the spring dozens of times.
But in general, it’s the flow that matters. I’d be hesitant to drink from a spring that only trickled a dribble of water in the late summer; one that gushed consistently and had some obvious woodland about it from the direction of waterflow (meaning there’s no septic system or other obvious source of contamination within 200 feet upstream of the flow) would top my list of good water. It tastes good, has a lot of oxygen in it (oxygen in water makes it taste better,) probably has some dissolved minerals that are good for you, and while there will be some microbes, they’re generally of the sort that won’t harm you and will help in that they stimulate your immune system with regular exercise. BTW, most well water has a similar microbe load.
Water flowing through the ground is a precious thing; that’s why there’s so much concern about fracking — muck that water up, and you’ve destroyed the essence of life as we know it.Report
Kazzy,
True, NY is known for its water, although SF claims it’s water is the envy of the nation (Sierra snowpack, so it is good).
But no bugs. The pipe will be tapping below ground level. Whether you’re in the same aquifer or not would require a geologist to tell us–there are large aquifers and micro aquifers. And some aquifers produce great water and others not so good, all depending on the rock it’s coming through. Granite tends to produce great water, limestone produces muddy water, sulfurous ground produces skunky water.
Keep in mind, water softeners are to protect your plumbing from calcium/lime and other mineral deposits. But it usually tastes better than soft water because of the mineral content (again, depending on the mix of minerals).
There should be no bacteria problems if the aquifer is tapped properly because the water’s coming from an a anaerobic environment. If you’re concerned about that (and it’s not at all unreasonable to be), if you see someone getting water from it stop and ask if they’re local, and if they are, whether they drink water from it regularly without ill effect. If they’re just hiking through (probably not this time of year, obviously they probably don’t know).
Trust me, that roadside stream is not benefitting from anything. It’s exposed to all kinds of things the aquifer’s not, like oil, grease, tire rubber, anti-freeze and animal poop that is overwhelmingly likely to carry giardia, which won’t kill you but will make you wish it would, and possibly E. coli. Ground water, assuming it’s not shallow, has none of that. Sufficient depths of sand and gravel filters out the nasty stuff when the aquifer is recharging (water draining through the ground down into it). Only shallow aquifers tend to get bacteria and other parasites. And effectively all surface water, everywhere, even in our “pristine” wilderness areas have bacteria and other parasites such as giardia. There’s an old belief that free flowing water purifies itself every so many yards–don’t believe it, it just ain’t true.
As for waiting until thaw, I dunno. Is it free flowing from the pipe, with no spigot?If so, perhaps there’s enough pressure from above-freezing water to keep flowing. If there’s a spigot, then the water stuck in the pipe that’s exposed to the surrounding air is likely frozen, unless you have some warmer days. You’ll be able to tell us after you give it a try.Report
Re: fracking.
Most fracking occurs far below the level of aquifers and poses no direct threat to them. Aquifers tend to be near surface, no more than hundreds of feet down, while the gas deposits tend to be thousands of feet deeper. There are some places where the aquifers and deposits are only hundreds of feet apart, and those are being monitored closely–that may not be enough separation to prevent migration of the forced hydraulic fluids into the aquifer.
The contamination a so far have come from surface spills, which happen with normal drilling operations, too.Report
This discussion is fascinating because I don’t know anything about getting ground water, etc.
Here’s an observation, this:
along with James’s reference to SFers saying their water is supposedly the best reminds me of growing up in Denver and hearing that that water was the best (actually, the local news story said it was rated the second best, but it touted that rating–whencever it came from–as proof that Denver was such a great place to be). Maybe that kind of statement is one of those assertions that people in places with at least passable tap water just tend to say.
But for the record, I don’t think I’ve heard the same said of Chicago. Not that the water here is bad, mind.Report
Gab,
Yeah, NYC and SF went to tons of trouble to get their water, it truly is fabulous. Rivertowns like Chicago and Pittsburgh don’t do the same, and it shows.Report
Most fracking occurs far below the level of aquifers and poses no direct threat to them. Aquifers tend to be near surface, no more than hundreds of feet down, while the gas deposits tend to be thousands of feet deeper.
Almost all of the contamination episodes that I’m aware of — and there have been plenty over the decades that fracking has been in use — are due to flawed cementing jobs on the well(s). Cementing is expensive and time-consuming and there’s always pressure to rush through it (the main cause of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was a defective cement job). Vertical migration of hydrocarbons in excess of 10,000 feet has been documented when the cement job was particularly crappy.Report
If you want to keep hot beverages hot, the thing I can most enthusiastically recommend is a vintage King-Seeley “Icy Hot” thermos. I’ve never run into anything that does a better job of insulating its contents. And they’re usually cheap. But you can’t fix them if they break because parts are essentially non-existent. They also wouldn’t work for you because you want something you can drink from while moving.Report
I have this Stanley thermos that’s built like a tank that keeps stuff hot for DAYS if you don’t open it. But I rarely use it, because it’s built like a tank, plus I rarely leave the house anymore so I can either just brew some more or nuke what’s in the fridge.Report
Nissan makes a good thermos…
Other Uses Not Recommended.Report
@zic
You’ve got me sold. Will the tap run in the winter?
I’m being a little deliberately silly here. It is true that I’d lick a dirty barroom floor without pausing but look side-eyed at well water (to say nothing if these streams), but that is a function of familiarity. I see enough people using it (filling up jugs!), I am pretty confident it’s safe.Report
@kazzy If it’s below the frost line, it will run. (That’s usually about 4 feet.) If it doesn’t I probably wouldn’t drink from it; too close to the ground and subject to e-coli etc.
If it is flowing in winter with a good, steady stream, that’s probably a very good indication that it’s a safe spring to drink from.Report
This is my spring; I’ll go and take a winter photo if you like; but it runs like this all year long.
http://greenwoodroad.tumblr.com/post/95283828362/sometimes-the-best-things-in-life-are-freeReport
In my part of the country, I wouldn’t drink from it without pumping it through a ceramic filter first — Giardia is pretty much everywhere here.Report
Anyplace people are pulling from on a regular basis is probably being tested.
http://www.findaspring.com/locations/north-america/usa/linn-run-forbes-forest-spring-latrobe-pa/Report
If any of you are interested in these products, the website is having a 40 percent off sale until Saturday. If you use the code JANEND-40 at checkout, you’ll get your savings.
Incidentally, I’m not a spokesman. The company just happened to email this out and I thought I’d share here.Report