8 Of The Best Smart Water Bottles To Ensure You Stay Hydrated
Considering how necessary water is for life, you think we'd be good at getting enough of it, but you'd be at least a little wrong. While chronic dehydration isn't a widespread problem (despite common unsubstantiated claims that three-quarters of the adult population in the United States is dehydrated), it is a significant problem in some demographics and a more minor but more widespread problem in the wider population.
If you think you might be chronically dehydrated, it can be a surprisingly difficult problem to address. Moreover, it's hard to know how much water is right for you. The general rule of thumb is you should drink water whenever you're thirsty, and you'll probably be fine. But if you want to be more objective about your water consumption (even if you're not worried about dehydration), a smart water bottle can add a little electronic flare to your hydration efforts.
Depending on the bottle you choose, smart bottles can provide several added benefits, including, in many cases, the ability to set hydration goals and track consumption with connected apps. These are some of our favorites.
LARQ PureVis
The PureVis smart bottle from LARQ features double-wall vacuum insulation, providing a barrier between the temperature inside your bottle and the outside world. It's sufficient to keep your coffee hot for up to 12 hours and water icy cold for up to 24 hours. More than just a solid water bottle, it employs smart technology to sterilize and clean your bottle and your water.
It won't track your water consumption but will make you feel more comfortable drinking from unfamiliar water sources. The bottle incorporates proprietary PureVis UV technology to kill pathogens in the water and on your bottle's interior surface. In tests, the bottle eliminated 99.8% of E. coli after a 20-second cycle.
The PureVis automatically runs a sanitizing cycle every two hours just to keep its contents nice and clean. You can also trigger a sanitizing cycle manually by pressing a button. That way, if you fill up and are thirsty right now, you're only a button press and a 20-second cycle away from a bottle of water you can drink confidently.
Hidrate Spark TAP
The Hidrate Spark TAP is an entry-level bottle perfect for folks who want to dip their toe in the smart bottle pool without investing a lot of money. You can pick up a full setup for as little as $20 and start tracking your water consumption today.
Spark TAP bottles don't automatically track your water consumption but work pretty seamlessly with an associated app. Whenever you empty your bottle, just tap the built-in NFC tag on your phone, and the app will update your progress against whatever goal you've set. Bottles come in either plastic or metal and sizes between 20 and 32 ounces.
The magic in the bottle is mostly contained in the smart puck attached to the bottom. In addition to housing the brains of the bottle, it also glows hourly to remind you to drink. And you can customize the color and style of your bottle, lid, and puck based on your liking. Best of all, you can buy replacement bottles, lids, and pucks individually, so you don't have to replace the whole thing if one component goes on the fritz.
Gatorade Smart Gx
Most smart bottles feature sturdy metal designs, but this offering from Gatorade features their signature squeeze bottle. That way, you can look like all the other dudes in the gym but with the added benefit of tracking technology.
The Smart Gx holds up to 30 fluid ounces of cool or cold liquid. Adding ice to your drinks isn't recommended, as it may reduce the sensor's ability to accurately track your water consumption. More on that in a moment. Hot or warm drinks also aren't recommended as they might damage the bottle's smart cap. The cap is where all the magic happens. It connects to the Gatorade Gx app on your smartphone to track how much water you've consumed. Then it displays progress toward your daily hydration goal in lights on the lid's surface.
You can personalize the lid with up to twelve characters, adding a name or short phrase to the black space just inside the light ring. A sensor built into the lid measures the distance between it and the water surface. That tells it how much of the total possible volume is missing and, therefore, how much you have consumed. The lid also has a pod piercer compatible with Gatorade's Gx pods, so you can easily flavor your drinks.
WaterH
The WaterH smart bottle offers a well-rounded suite of features with a distinctive exterior design. The bottle connects to the corresponding WaterH smartphone app to track your water consumption against your goals. It also provides insights about your intake and visual reminders to hydrate.
Charging your bottle is easy with the included wireless charging dock. Just set your bottle on top of it and wait for the soft exterior lights to flicker, letting you know the bottle is charging. Those same lights provide a slow, pulsing reminder to drink water throughout the day. When drinking, the bottle detects its interior water level and tracks your consumption. The WaterH also has a built-in Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) sensor, keeping an eye out for potentially dangerous particulates like lead. And all that information gets sent to your phone's WaterH app as long as your phone and bottle are within five meters of one another.
In addition to the bottle's impressive technological guts, it also features dual-wall stainless steel walls, keeping your warm drinks warm for up to 12 hours and cold drinks cold for up to 24 hours.
iHome Aquio
The Aquio smart bottle is really a peripheral device attached to an otherwise ordinary but robust 16.9-ounce water bottle. Double-insulated stainless steel layers facilitate temperature control, keeping your coffee or tea hot for up to 14 hours and your other drinks cold for up to a day.
The Aquio doesn't track your water consumption, and it doesn't clean your beverage, but it does help you pump up the jams when you're getting your sweat on. Beneath the bottle itself, you'll find an attached Bluetooth speaker capable of blasting out six hours of your favorite tunes on a single charge.
The speaker is compatible with iHome, smartphones, and tablets. Moreover, it has an IP67 dust and water rating, which means it can handle being submerged in up to a meter of water for up to 30 minutes and is completely protected against dust ingress, so it should be able to handle whatever you throw at it during your workouts. And if you want to ditch the bottle and just take the speaker, it detaches, so you can use the speaker as a standalone device.
Tylt power bank bottle
The appropriately named "bottle" from Tylt holds a standard 16.9 ounces of hot or cold liquid. Two layers of stainless steel, separated by a vacuum layer, keep liquids hot or cold for up to 12 hours. The bottle doesn't feature fancy analytics, tracking, reminders, or other bells and whistles. But it does feature a 5,700mAh rechargeable battery pack.
The battery portion of the bottle has an IP65 rating, making it resistant to dust entry and capable of holding up to some light water exposure. You shouldn't take it in the shower with you (and why would you?), but a little sweat or light rain shouldn't hurt it.
When fully charged, the bottle's battery carries enough power to juice up your smartphone twice. The battery also easily detaches from the bottle, allowing you to toss and take it in a bag on its own. It's also useful when it's time to clean your bottle and you want to avoid a dangerous electrical event in your kitchen sink.
WateReminder
The WateReminder smart water bottle is perhaps the flashiest smart bottle on the market. Before that, however, a little about the bottle itself. It's built with stainless steel and insulated. The bottle is sturdy but has a relatively small capacity, holding only 430 milliliters (roughly 14.5 fluid ounces), so you'll have to fill it up more frequently than other bottles. While its carrying capacity is diminished, it more than makes up for it with style.
Like a few other smart bottles, the WateReminder smart bottle has an associated smartphone app available on Android and iOS. As you drink, a built-in sensor measures the distance between it and the water surface to determine how much you've consumed and shares that information with the app. It comes with an included magnetic charger which charges your bottle in about an hour and lasts for approximately 10 days on a charge.
In addition to tracking your consumption, the lid is equipped with a small, round, high-definition LCD touchscreen display. You can use that display to give you water reminders (in addition to vibration reminders), track your hydration goals, see the temperature of your drink, set productivity or exercise timers, and show off your favorite photos. It will also show you water expiration reminders if you haven't opened your bottle in a while. Even from a distance, everyone will know you're drinking in the future.
Hidrate Spark Pro
Like the Spark TAP, the Hidrate Spark Pro is customizable in size and lid type. Whatever your choices, you'll get a vacuum-insulated stainless steel bottle capable of keeping your drinks cold for up to 24 hours. You can even use ice without messing up the readings, something other smart bottles can't do.
That's because instead of an internal sensor, all the brains of the Spark Pro are in the sensor array inside the puck mounted to the bottle's bottom. The app uses a hydration equation to calculate your hydration needs based on several unique factors, including age, height, weight, sex, and activity level. In addition to tracking your water consumption and tracking that data in the associated smartphone app, the puck also glows periodically to remind you to drink.
If you want to integrate your hydration information into your other fitness applications, the Spark Pro is compatible with Apple Health, Fitbit, Google Fit, and more. You can also do hydration challenges with your friends to motivate one another. And for the forgetful among you, the app also keeps tabs on your bottle's location, so if you leave it at the gym or the park, you'll at least know where to find it.