Fitness Gear Review: HidrateSpark STEEL

What is it?

HidrateSpark STEEL is a stainless-steel, vacuum-insulated chug that keeps drinks cold up to 24 hours. The LED smart sensor “puck” glows to remind you when it’s time to drink and tracks your water intake by syncing via bluetooth to the HidrateSpark App. The HidrateSpark comes in either a chug or a straw lid. 

HidrateSpark STEEL replaces your typical water bottle with a sleek looking, durable chug that insulates and tracks your water intake with great accuracy. The bottle is perfect for those who want to improve their water consumption or who enjoy setting mini daily goals to help stay on track. 

What you get: 

The HidrateSpark STEEL comes with the bottle, either a chug or straw lid (you choose), the battery and a charger. 

Review:

We have used several HidrateSpark bottles. We love the overall quality and its ability to track and record your water intake. Most people do not consume enough water, the HidrateSpark is designed to help fix that. With the use of the app, put in your personal data and it sets your daily water goal. You will need to calibrate the sensor before use but it’s very simple. 

Once you fill your bottle, the light flashes to indicate it’s been recorded. Drink away. The app creates a circle to represent your goal. Once you have completed your daily goal, the circle is completed and your bottle lights up like a Christmas tree indicating your achievement. They also set a pacer around your circle to show you where you should be at any given time of day. If you are behind on your water goal or haven’t drank in awhile, the bottle lights up as a reminder to drink, while also sending witty push notifications such as “waaaatttteeerrr” and “water you up to?”

As an extra push for people who enjoy small achievements,  the app awards digital trophies for certain accomplishments such as how many goals you’ve met, how many bottles you’ve saved using the HidrateSpark, goal streaks, etc. You can also join group challenges such as Holiday Challenge, Monthly Challenge, etc. to set more goals be part of the community. 

Finally, you can invite your friends to be in your circle. You can watch their progress as they watch yours. Whether you actually want to challenge them and finish first doesn’t matter. You will find yourself wanting be the first one to your goal more often than not. We found that our friends talked more trash than we anticipated over who won more often. It is actually a surprisingly fun competition for just drinking water.  

Overall, we love the HidrateSpark product. We are big water drinkers and love having the ability to track our water intake every day. It helps keep us properly hydrated while also adding a box to check once we hit our daily goal. We have used both the chug lid and the straw lid and both work great. It just depends on preference. Personally, I love the straw lid. It’s the best straw I’ve ever used with any water bottle, hands down. Like ever. 

If you’re looking for a downside, there really isn’t anything glaring. There are few things we’ll point out though that are minor things we’ve noticed. The bottom of the bottles have a rubber grip. This rubber grip does not allow it so slide so when you hit it, it falls over. No big deal. Given the option of having a rubber grip or not, we prefer the rubber grip. The battery lasts for about two weeks. There is an indicator in the app showing the juice left in the battery. We never look at it and have been caught with a dead battery a couple times. This isn’t an issue as it charges fast and you can manually add your water if need be. Price is another debate. We think that for the price of $60-$70 it’s worth it. You get a well-made water bottle that interacts with you, allows you to challenge friends and, oh by the way, improves your health by helping you consume more water. There really isn’t a price for that. 

Important Information:

They are not designed for hot beverages. Lids are top-rack dishwasher safe. The bottle’s bodies are hand-wash only. DO NOT submerge, wash or get the sensor wet. And while you can use other beverages in your Spark, it’s designed for water. Make it your main water bottle and use another container for other liquids.