These water bottles are clearly on the expensive side, but well worth the investment! I ride in the Phoenix AZ heat and it has always been a challenge to stay hydrated without drinking hot water or energy drink for the second half of the ride. These bottles keep the beverages cold! I have ridden for 4 hours in the heat and still have ice in my bottle at the end of the ride. I highly recommend this water bottle. If your water bottle cage is on the loose side they can rattle around and be pretty noisy, but on 2 of the three bikes I ride regularly they didn't make any noise at all. After I changed cages on the third bike to composite, tight cages the rattle stopped completely on my third bike. Now I don't hear any difference when I use these bottles.
I've bought various water bottles--plain and tepidly insulated--the latter lasting about twice as long as the plain one. Where I live we have microclimates, when I leave the house it can be 63' and eight miles inland 85'. This mean my ice filled insulated bottle water starting is fully melted at the 1/2 way point and will become rather yucky on the way back (and I still have another 500 feet of elevation to climb coming back. The Camelbak Podium is an excellent way to quench ones thirst on a hot day on my return leg, as it maintains the ice cold temps for two hours easily when kept full and makes the return so much more pleasant. It's a little heavier and rattles in my plastic water bottle cage, but a thin strip of Velcro dampens out the sound.
Many polymer bottles tend to get stiff as the temperature drops making for a harder squeeze made even more of a challenge with heavily gloved hands. Not these. This bottle remains flexible even in the very cold (0deg F).
I chose the white ones which seem to have picked up and retained some color from drink mixes I use. Better than the other way around, I would think.
We should probably use drink mixes without the dyes. I don't drink it for how it looks; who does?
It's nice to have some type of cover over the nozzle on any water bottle. It keeps the road grime off of what you're putting in your mouth. It actually helps your grip as you can leave the top on when you open the nozzle by pulling it up from a cage, flip the top off with one hand and drink. The ring on the other end fits nicely into a groove on the nozzle. It's a no-brainer for a Bivo bottle if you're a person who wants to keep the drinking nozzle clean while riding.
