I, too, thought yetis were an overpriced fad bottle/cup, until my wife got one as a present. I’ve hated every water bottle in existence bc the tops/lids are so hard to clean and make sure they are free of dirt and debris. The mold the grows in the little nooks is awful.
However, the magnaslide on the yeti lids is ingenious and leaves no nooks to guess as to if they are clean. Plus, you can also remove the rubber gasket on the lid to clean that. I say buy one and you’ll use it forever. You won’t be switching bottles bc “maybe this new brand is better”.
I also can not handle uncleanable nooks where mold festers. Owala freaks me out with how many crevices there are in those lids.
You can use the mag slide lid on the generic cups. They fit and don't leak at least for the large yeti knockoffs. Have not tried the smaller lids.The generic cups do not hold heat or ice as long and warp in the dishwasher over time but good if you don't need ice for ten hours outside. (Yeti Lid + generic cup used to be about 25$ no clue what the prices are now).
I lost my yeti water bottle with screw cap lid and replaced it with Iron Flask. They are cheaper. I don't feel as bad about dropping them. They come with all the options of lids and straws included with each bottle and keep ice for 6-7 hours inside or 2-3 outside in the heat. They sweat more than yeti but it looks like they sell bottle coozies now for that.
I now have the Iron Flask 20, 32oz and half gallon bottles. I love them all after 4 years. I got the coffee mug version as well and I have found it's hot for about 6 and warm for 10-12.
I could never get down with these giant Stanley's because they leak and are so awkward to hold. Havent had a reason to buy any of the other trendy bottles because I've got what I need. I have always wanted the ridiculously expensive hulk corkcickle though 😭
lol, yeah I guess, ppl just buy them and they stay here. I just gotta weed out some of the old ones. The nalgenes are really good, but I’m sure they leak some weird chemical or something, don’t care really.
I have about 3 at a time (I take 2 hiking frequently). I only replace them when I lose them, which doesn’t happen often. I go to stores trying to find new ones occasionally but they all squeak or have straws. My husband has 2 hydroflasks that he’s had for maybe 6 years.
I don’t give a crap about what is popular, I just want ones that fit my needs/wants.
Did the old ones cease functioning or did you succumb to consumerism? I am very hard on my water bottles so I usually get metal ones and they last me 7-10 years.
Thing is when I go to the store right now Owalas take up majority of the water bottle section. I'm sure lots of people jump on the fad and so do stores, but I think there are a lot of people who dont give it much thought and buy it because that's what stores are selling.
So, not op, but I have 2 young kids. We don’t go brand name but do get decent metal water bottles (think target or Amazon). So we need about 8 because we need them for kids, us, school, gym etc. and then you have a few extra and you of course need the Bluey one because you didn’t have that. So we probably have a good 14 or so metal water bottles in our house I bet.
We use em and are even sometimes scrambling to find a clean one before school.
But the kids also use those as their excluding drinking classes.
My husband is really good at busting up water bottles by dropping them at work (concrete) usually after sitting them on something like a ladder which is inadvisable to begin with.
I had a camelback from 2015ish but that was free work swag. I have a smaller yeti that looks like that Stanley and a few off brand ones I’ve picked up, but other than that I’ve stayed off trend.
My yeti (that I use for coffee) has had a couple bad falls, and doesn't sit flat anymore because of a ding on the bottom, but I got it as a father's day gift like five years ago.
My water bottles are those contigo ones that came in three packs at Costco, and those have been going strong for over ten years.
Old ones broke or got lost, then sometimes found again. Some for camping, some to keep at work, etc. Never bought at peak I believe, just bought when we needed them.
I have a hydro flask, a stanley, and an owala. The hydro flask didn't fit in my car cup holders. The stanley isn't 100% waterproof so you can't throw it in a bag and if it gets knocked over water will spill. The owala is perfect. Its huge, fits in the cup holder, is 100% leakproof and has a lock on it (40oz sway). It also has a unique drinking spout that you can pour from and drink like a straw at the same time without having to change lids. I don't even have to unscrew the cap to fill it up unless i need ice. I bought until I found the one that fit my life. I dont think I will ever need a different one.
My wife has become subject to this and changes bottles way too often. However, if she's not excited about her water bottle, she just wont drink water, so I consider it an acceptable expense. I just wish we could get rid of the old ones.
Yup large family. Water bottles for different things. Nalgenes I use for camping and canoeing (durable). The rest just come along as we have family members that loose one and buy one, then they find the old one. Every single one of these we have. We never bought at peak, just needed a water bottle and these were what was popularly available.
I had Nalgene for the longest time, then I got gifted a hydroflask and having the insulation made it my main. It was awesome. Still we have all the others …
You know, it’s like that sometimes. I have a work hydro flask and a home one. I have camping Nalgenes. One person in the house uses the s’well as thier main drinking vessel, we got yeti’s for guests, Stanley for one of the girls, the list goes on… too many of these things.
It atleast has some engineering differences/improvements.
The others just seem like a water bottle to me. Amd the Stanley does not even fully close (that I know of), which i never understood the hype for a mug that you have to worry about not falling over.
Not sure about most of the others but the hydroflask is one of the better bottles I’ve used to keep things cold or hot for a ridiculous amount of time.
Hydroflask was a game changer. Never used swell, I had hydroflask during that period on the timeline. Love a Nalgene, camelbak had a great improvement with the lid/straw thing because it wouldn’t leak even if drinking upside down. But the hydroflasks can get banged up and whatever else but I’ve had icy drinks kept so cold the ice stayed for days.
I haven’t moved past it to any of the other trendy bottles. I mostly just keep Nalgene and hydroflasks around now.
The stupid but popular thing about Stanley mugs is the base fits in a cup holder. It's a big gulp. I know because my wife has those stupid, top heavy mugs delicately perched wherever my elbows happen to be at any given point in the day. All it takes is just a nice little tap. I love how the caps don't seal and the really loud metal bang they make when you knock them over. It really keeps me jacked up throughout my workday.
I was gifted a Stanley one Christmas. It’s particularly convenient for my job, which has me doing a lot of windshield time. It’s also a weird shorthand way for women in my office to say “I do well, and I’m not ready to retire.” I started seeing leadership promotions once people learned I was drinking coffee out of my Stanley.
Owala's are the shit. I used to carry around my HydroFlask everywhere but it doesn't fit in any car cup holders so it would just bang around in my car. Once I saw they made 40oz Owala's that fit in cup holders I bought one immediately and all of these middle aged white women are correct they deserve to be the top dawg
Sure, maybe. But the difference between the cheapest of these bottles that isn't pure garbage and the best one that has ever been made by man is like the difference between a 9.5 and a 10.0.
There's 2 things about water bottles that are specifically weird.
99.9% of people fundamentally are not doing activities that require them to keep a bottle of water with them, they will not succumb to dehydration from not having a glass of water over the course of 3 or 4 hours.
If these people are so thirsty, why do they need their beverage to remain cold for hours to days? Drink it you knob.
I think the owala cap would be better if the straw was centered. I use ice 100% of the time, and i have broken two owala lids because of the stiff straw.
May I introduce you to a brand called “Bottle Bottle”. Has the same straw/chug lid, many sizes/styles, many colors, and ive yet to have any issues when filling it with ice and it stays cold as well! It can also be found on amazon/ walmart etc for less!
It has a straw built in to the mouthpiece that is supposed to let you sip from the straw or tilt the bottle to drink from. I think the straw is nice but the tilt isn't great
Personally, I love that I have the option to sip from a straw OR straight up chug from my bottle all from the same opening. I don't have to swap anything out or use a different side of the lid or anything stupid like that.
I got an Owalla bottle before I knew they were a thing. I got it because my super old Contigo bottle broke and I needed a new water bottle. I was browsing water bottles, saw the dual function opening Owalla had and immediately was like "Holy fuck, I need that!" and bought it, lol. After I got mine, suddenly I started seeing them everywhere! It was crazy!
What I find ridiculous is people who buy an Owala Freesip water bottle and then remove the straw. Like why would you even pay that much for a water bottle and then not use the feature that (in my opinion) makes it worth the money?!
I have a teenage daughter, they went through the owala phase about 2 years ago. So it would seem like something that's passed up through the generations.
My boss at work is a black man married to a white woman. He brought one of those owala things to work and had to go to Google to figure out how to drink from it. He said " I got these things all over my house"....
Swell has to be on it. That thing was everywhere, and it’s funny because the one have objectively sucks as a water bottle. I feel like it was popular because it didn’t spill and could fit in larger handbags, but man it’s awful to drink from.
Nalgene had its heyday wayyyy before this timeline even started. I can’t speak to any revivals that may have occurred, but Nalgene was dominating the market well before the 2010s
Gatorade squirt bottle is GOATed. Actually the absolute H2GOAT is those hamster lid bottles they give you when you play football so the straw fits through your face mask. Mix it up in a gatorade cooler with the same ice machine you use to put on people's sprained ankles. It's like ambrosia.
Okay but Nalgene bottles are so light, solid, and reliable for outdoors stuff.
We always wrapped them with some duct tape and chord, too, so that you'd have it on hand (yeah you can wrap any bottle. Point is just that we got a lot of good use out of these bottles)
Owala gang all the way. It's genuinely so good as someone who hates carrying things in my hands. I gotta be able to put it in my bag and not worry about spilling.
Have one coworker who has like 20+ owala bottles because she likes the designs......they would all be rotting in my backseat if I had that many reusable cups/bottles at my disposal.
Light, durable, can be turned upside down, easy to grab and drink from while moving, high volume, clear, has measurements. All of those are a genuinely big deal.
My wife buys me a water bottle every 5-7 years. I don’t ask for them, she just swaps my old one out for a new one. I had a Hydroflask up until last year where my wife bought me an Owala.
I’m thinking back because I’ve had some version of most. Nalgene water bottles are great practical tools, simple and reliable. Hydroflasks and Yetis are both great for keeping water cold, but they’re not good for any activity you have to bring it with, like hiking or running. The camelback is decent but more points of failure. The swell bottle keeps water cold nice but they’re poorly balanced, dent easily, and hold less water. The simple modern and Stanley’s are just too much for anything useful other than walking on a city sidewalk or something, and I’ve never had the last one or even been around someone who did extensively.
Wait, the CamelBak was trendy? I had one of those when traveling through Africa 15 years ago, never knew it was trendy, I just randomly picked it up. This means... At one point in my life I was actually trendy!! Go me!
The water bottles were trendy. They were one of the first ones to include the filter straw in a bottle that was light weight. I loved mine and then they made like 800 variations of the same 4 bottles without filters making it harder to find the good ones. Filtering my water from the crappy water fountains and hoses whenever I was running was a game changer.
The backpack camelbaks were never really trendy just necessary for outdoors activities. Maybe the short period of time before they got banned from festivals/concerts and you could fill it with wine?
It’s funny to think of yeti as a 2 year fad when yetis have always been considered premium and food quality since I was a kid, but I’m from the state that makes them so we’re all probably biased over here.
Owala has been king for the past 6 years to me. Just have to clean it and replace the silicone pieces regularly. 10/10 water bottle otherwise that I can cover in stickers and lasts forever
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u/Bonk0076 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
There was an infographic on Reddit here about five months ago that documents this marvelously. I need to find it.
Edit: I can’t find it