Have you ever looked wistfully at the Hydroflasks of VSCO girls and boys on campus? Have you wished you had a sturdy stainless steel bottle but wanted to “sksk” on a budget? Me too.
I came into college with a reusable plastic bottle but eventually wanted something that could give me icy water during those long lectures. When I hopped onto Amazon and saw that Hydroflasks ranged around $40, I felt like that was a lot for just a water bottle. So, I looked around for alternative and affordable brands. I came across the brand Simple Modern. Their Summit bottles, which look similar to Hydroflasks, is just $20.99, and has a 4.5 rating from 2,592 reviews on Amazon.
There were lots of pretty designs to choose from, like ombres, marble, and shimmers. I wanted a bottle that would make me happy to look at every day so this variety of options was great for me. There were so many gorgeous pastel colors that I was torn between, but I eventually chose the color “Sweet Taffy” in the 32 oz size and checked out. I’ve been using my bottle for a couple of months now, and here are my thoughts.
Ok, it feels obvious to say this about a bottle that was advertised as insulated, but this guy is really good at preserving ice inside. Some nights I’ll forget that I still had ice water inside of the bottle and the next morning the ice is still there. I did a little test to illustrate the power of my bottle baby. I filled it up about a third of the way with ice and the rest with water at noon (as seen in the pic on the left). I carried the bottle around all day and refilled it a couple times. Then, I checked for ice at midnight and sure enough, there was plenty left (as seen in the pic on the right).
Also, the bottle came with two different types of lids. This was really nice since I could decide if I wanted to sip from a small opening or from the actual wide mouth of the bottle. I didn’t need to separately buy the kind of lid I wanted since these two automatically came with the bottle. Plus, the package came with a code for a free silicone bottle boot! I’m not sure it the company will do this for every order, but I was able to get my boot by only paying a few bucks for shipping. These little things that came with my bottle made my experience a lot more personalized and fun.
Other cool things about the bottle is that I’ve dropped this guy a couple times and have yet to dent it. And sometimes, people will say “Hey, I like your Hydro” and I can smugly respond “Aha, this is actually like a Hyrdo but cheaper.”
In conclusion, I’d recommend you cop one of these affordable beauties if you want a stainless steel bottle that looks hecka cute but also functions well. They’re definitely great for someone like me, who doesn’t need a super fancy bottle to do intense things like camping and just wants a nice bottle to get through the school day with. You can purchase them either on Amazon or the Simple Modern website.
All photos by the author unless otherwise noted.