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Even this $70 smart water bottle still didn’t keep me hydrated

Posted on by darion

When a co-worker told me about the Water.io smart water bottle that ensures you drink enough water, I knew I couldn’t be a better candidate to test it out. I find it extremely difficult to stay hydrated; often at night I realized that I hadn’t drank water all day. Even two months of kidney disease caused by dehydration in the summer of 2012 could not make me change my habits. I was hoping that the Water.io smart water bottle could do this. But it couldn’t.

Water.io smart water bottle

A smart water bottle does a better job of monitoring your hydration than pushing you towards it.

Pros

  • The app offers excellent flexibility

  • An integrated concept with lots of rewards

  • Long battery life

  • Good for tracking water intake

Defects

  • The bottle does not show hydration progress

  • Too mild and misleading status updates

  • For an overview, please go to the application

  • Uses a proprietary magnetic charger

  • It is better to track than to ensure hydration

How it works

You start by downloading the bottle’s companion app to your phone and introducing yourself by answering a few quick questions about your age, gender, height, weight, etc. The app uses this information to store and inform you about your recommended daily intake of water.

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The bottle sends you hydration reminders regularly throughout the day, and its cap vibrates and lights up in the color of your choice. The cap also has dual monitoring sensors that track the amount (down to the milliliter) of water you drink throughout the day. Your details will be updated in the app as soon as you finish drinking and place the bottle on a flat surface.

You can tilt the bottle to check if you’re on track at any time of the day. The LED ring on the cap will flash green if you are and orange if you are not. To check your progress so far, go to the app. If you successfully achieve your goal for the day, the hat will light up in a rainbow of colors as a congratulatory gesture.

Where it went wrong

For some reason, the app used my hydration quiz answers to set a pretty low water intake goal for me. Online water intake calculators have always recommended a water intake of 1.6 to 2.6 liters, but the smart water bottle suggested my total daily hydration amount would be 1.3 liters. I manually adjusted the target in the app and raised it to 1.6 liters.

During the ten-day review period, I followed bottle reminders and provided hydration whenever asked, except for the regular need to drink water when I was really thirsty. I checked the green/orange on-track/off-track status often throughout the day and mostly found it at green.

After a few days of obediently following all the hydration reminders and always having the green glowing cap, I was confused as to why my efforts hadn’t yet been celebrated with a rainbow. When I went to the calendar option in the app to check my progress last week, I found out that I had never met my goal.

Smart water bottle 4
Left: Calendar progress wheels in the app. Right: Accurate water consumption with timestamps for the day. Photo: Dua Rashid / Gizmodo

The biggest drawback to this bottle is that it doesn’t tell you how far you are from reaching your goal. To get this information, you have to go to the app, which probably won’t be something you’ll do multiple times a day, nor is it the purpose of this bottle. There are free hydration monitoring applications for this purpose.

The only way the bottle lets you know your destination is by flashing green or orange, which means you’re on or off the track. And this particular indicator is so benign that it benefits no one. It glowed green on days when I didn’t even reach half of my total goal. It only flashed orange when I got home and reached for the bottle after a long day of not using it. However, I quickly noticed that drinking a few sips would turn it green again, which was confusing. It doesn’t deserve the green light if I just started drinking water every day.

Smart water bottle 3
Left: You need to go to the app to track your progress. Right: useful features in the app. Photo: Dua Rashid / Gizmodo

A much better idea would be if the LED ring on the bottle cap acted as a progress indicator and the circuit provided a target for total water intake. The circle will slowly fill up as you approach it, just like it does in the app. This would do a much better job of giving you a more precise idea of ​​how much you need to drink approximately for the rest of the day. Combined with the overly lenient and completely misleading on-track/off-track indicator, this left me very misinformed about my intake goals.

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I know it’s a shame, but one day out of the ten days I was reviewing this bottle, I got a rainbow. It was so discreet that I would have easily missed it if I hadn’t already had the bottle in my hand when I filled it.

Unlike loud and attention-demanding hydration reminders, the Christmas rainbow appears for an extremely brief moment, only when you tilt the bottle on its side, vibration-free and extremely quiet. I was quite disappointed after waiting for it for days. A celebration so invisible that it could easily go unnoticed is not very encouraging. Interestingly, even that day I didn’t quite achieve my goal. I think he rewards you even when you’re close.

If you decide to get this bottle, remember that this is one additional device to add to the ever-growing list of devices that need charging. It took an hour to reach 100% and lasted ten days before the cap started flashing red to indicate low battery. However, ten days is good enough battery life for a device if it offers enough value.

But to magnetically charge this bottle, you would need a special, proprietary cable. That’s one extra cable to think about and take care of, which immediately discourages me from seeing us finally get closer to having a universal charging standard. Also, if you lose your cable, you’ll have to spend $7 to buy it on the website.

Where did it go

The Water.io Smart Water Bottle is a bottle I would buy anyway due to its design, even if it didn’t offer any smart features. It is characterized by an elegant, solid body and an extremely light construction. My review unit included a $10 mount (sold separately) that I found quite useful.

Smart water bottle 2
Photo: Dua Rashid / Gizmodo

The companion app has a somewhat clunky interface and is prone to crashes. However, if you can get past its low-quality user interface, it will be packed with features and rewards. It allows you to manually add any physical activities you do during the day and adjust your goal based on them. You can manually add hydration outside the bottle, such as coffee, wine, etc.

There are dozens of badges to help motivate you, as well as a leaderboard celebrating the most efficient water drinkers. I felt happier than I would like to admit when I received my first (and only) badge.

Smart water bottle 2
Badges and leaderboard. Photo: Dua Rashid / Gizmodo

Is it worth it?

The Water.io smart water bottle desperately needs a progress tracker on the bottle itself. On-track/off-track status updates also need to be much smarter. Throughout my review, the bottle barely made an effort to hydrate me as it was always green and had a positive status even when I was very behind on my goal.

In addition to the very useful reminders, the desire to see complete progress circles on the in-app calendar, earn badges, and unlock rewards really encouraged me to stay hydrated. Water.io keeps you hydrated and it definitely feels good. However, online hydration trackers and apps can do the same without spending $70. The bottle automatically monitors water intake using sensors, which is impossible with hydration apps. The Water.io smart water bottle does a better job of monitoring hydration than pushing you towards it.

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