The best insulated water bottles for hot or cold hydration

Water bottles come in all shapes and sizes, colours, and styles, but only one kind can keep your beverage cold and delicious for hours. Insulated water bottles keep your water cold and your coffee or tea hot. In this article, we’ll give five of the best you can buy.

Before we get into the reviews, let’s go over a few of the things you should know both before and after you buy so that you can get the most for your money.

Before You Buy

With insulated bottles, however, the things to look for are the heat-keeping and cold-keeping capacities. These refer to the amount of time that a hot liquid will stay hot and a cold liquid will stay cold in your bottle – and they make a big difference.

Most insulated water bottles boast their ability to hold heat somewhere between 6 and 12 hours, and cold somewhere between 6 and 24. When looking for your perfect purchase, think about your bottle’s primary use, and how much money you want to spend for extra hours of icy refreshment.

After You Buy

First, cleaning is important! While it may be tempting to leave last night’s tea in there for the next seven days, don’t do it. Make sure to empty and rinse your bottle between uses with water, and wash between use with other liquids. Vacuum-insulated bottles aren’t dishwasher safe, so you need to wash them by hand. To wash your bottle, use a soft bottle brush with a light detergent or a mixture of baking soda and water. If there are persistent odours or tastes, soak the bottle and cap in distilled vinegar overnight.

Next, if you start to notice leaks in your bottle, don’t despair! If parts of your bottle, like the cap or gasket, start to wear out, most companies offer replacements for individual parts. Replacing these bits is easy, and can extend your bottle’s life by years. Once your bottle does finally bite the dust, make sure you dispose of it properly. Many materials, like steel and polypropylene, are recyclable and can be dropped off at recycling centres – which help reduce your personal waste and your impact on the planet.

Now let’s get down to the bottles.

Klean Kanteen Classic Insulated Bottle

Not only is this bottle classy, but it boasts an impressive 25-hour cold and 12-hour hot keeping time with its vacuum-insulated design. With a wide enough mouth to fit plenty of ice, you won’t be caught with a lukewarm beverage during any activity – and cleaning is ultra-simple.

The Klean Kanteen Classic comes in several colours and offers multiple cap styles for customization to your unique taste.

Read The Bushwalking Blog’s full review here.

Yeti Rambler Insulated Water Bottle

The Yeti Rambler is a stylish, well-built insulated bottle, with its strongest feature being the “Chug Cap”, which has an insert for easy drinking while also allowing for a wide opening for easy cleaning.

They obviously aren’t the cheapest of the insulated water bottles in this round-up, but when you get your hands on one you’ll immediately feel where the money goes. The bottle is heavy, really heavy – built for durability and to deliver on keeping your drinks cold . You can even throw them in the dishwasher. It doesn’t get easier than that.

Yeti Rambler’s come in four sizes – 18oz / 532ml, 26oz / 769ml, 36oz / 1L, or 46oz / 1.36L.

Larq Bottle PureVis™

I don’t know about you, but I can be pretty terrible at regularly cleaning my water bottles. I tend to wait until they start to get a bit smelly and, let’s be honest, once they start to smell it’s probably a sign you should have given them a wash long ago.

LARQ is the world’s first self-cleaning water bottle, so it’s fair to say that might go some ways to solving this problem I’ve been having. Included in the lid of every LARQ bottle is their patented UV-C LED technology. Not only does this remove up to 99.9999% of germs, bacteria and protozoa from the bottle itself, but obviously the water inside too. If you currently use a UV water purification device as part of your outdoor adventure kit, you might not need to if you’re packing a LARQ.

The UV-C LEDs automatically activate every 2 hours or can be activated manually using the button on the lid. I can’t believe nobody has ever thought of this before. There are two cleaning modes – Normal Mode is a 60-second cleaning cycle, perfect for daily use, and Adventure Mode, which goes for 3 minutes and is more ideal if you’re unsure about the quality of the water.

LARQ comes with a standard micro-USB cable for charging, which plugs into the side of the lid. A full charge will last up to a month in Normal Mode or 10-12 days in Adventure Mode.

The bottle’s double-wall vacuum insulation is said to keep your water cold for 24 hours or hot for 12 hours, but I’m yet to test these claims (I’ll update here when I do). Unlike many of the other insulated bottles in this article, the LARQ is not recommended for beverages other than water.

EcoVessel The Boulder & The Boss Trimax Insulated Water Bottles

They’re made from food grade 18/8 stainless steel, with No BPA or phthalates, and come in a range of colours. The designers have thought of everything, with a dual opening lid with the option for a wide mouth for filling and a small mouth (with silicone lip) for drinking. They even include an infuser that fits neatly inside the lid for fruit or tea infusion. The smaller bottles in this range will fit most standard cup holders.

I picture these bottles lasting years but when it is finally time to call last drinks, they’re completely recyclable.

In Summary…

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Got yourself an insulated water bottle? Which model did you buy? If you have any stories, updates or corrections, please let us know by commenting below.