Everyone agrees that a major component to exercise is proper hydration. But that’s about all they agree on. Just about the only product that comes in wider variety than shoes are water bottles. Short ones, fat ones, pricey ones, expensive ones, they all carry water, right? So what’s the difference? Well, they don’t all chill and filter your water like the Cool Gear EZ-Freeze Pure Bottle does.
The ez-freeze provides a great solution for someone who can’t stand the taste of the water at his/her gym. The filter for the water bottle lies inside the bottle itself, so all you have to do is fill it up and go. At the top of the filter, they’ve attached an internal “freeze” stick, which can be thrown in the freezer for whenever you need to pull it out and go. This attaches to sipper cap/valve system on the top – when the straw is closed, ez-freeze is virtually leak free, so you can throw it in a gym bag or purse and not have to worry about soggy items after use.
Not such a simple water bottle anymore, eh? Well, I did like the fact that it kept my water cold for long periods of time. In a normal water bottle, I’d just throw a bunch of ice in it, and it would all melt by about lunch time, leaving me with water that tasted vaguely of my freezer. The freezer stick didn’t seem to gain any flavor from being left in my freezer on several occasions, and the charcoal filter worked just fine despite getting water from several different sources (The gym, work, tap at home, etc). So it worked as it was designed to work.
I did have a few complaints, though. One, the design is such that you can’t just use the water bottle without the freezer stick. One day, I happened to just forget the stick at home in the freezer in my rush to get out the door, which rendered the water bottle useless. Two, the design also takes up a large capacity, so you can’t get anywhere near the claimed 24 oz capacity. So I just ended up filling the water bottle up more frequently. Also (and this gets really nit-picky here folks) the straw was fairly hard to sip out of due to having to draw the water through the charcoal filter. I didn’t like using this on the treadmill for this reason – it was just awkward, and messed up my breathing.
However, if you like the taste of cold, filtered water, this is the water bottle for you. Like most plastic products these days, it’s BPA free, so you don’t have to worry about getting cancer. Oh, and since the charcoal filters are only good for filtering approximately 100 gallons of water (no, I didn’t test this out…), cool gear is more than happy to sell you replacement filters – at $8.99 for a two pack. It’s almost like it’s the water bottle that keeps on giving. For more info on the EZ-Freeze Pure Bottle and other Cool Gear products, visit www.amazon.com/coolgear.
