My experience: Over two weeks, I used the thinksport stainless steel 750ml bottle to carry ice cold water on bike trips around town.
Function: 3.5/5
Style: 4/5
Build Quality: 5/5
Overall: 4/5
Availability: Stainless steel double walled thinksport bottles are available online at the thinksport store in 350 ml ($15.99) and 750 ml version ($19.99).
Summary
Combining the petroleum free design of stainless steel bottles with the double walled insulation of bottles like the Polar bottle, thinksport offers a high quality water bottle that keeps liquids either hot or cool for hours without condensation sweating or extreme temperature to the touch. While the bottle does a great job of temperature regulation, it’s unusual size make it of limited value to the cyclist wanting a plastic free replacement for bottles in their frame cages.
thinksport sells two sizes of their stainless steel, double walled bottles in 350 ml and 750 ml sizes and in a limited variety of colors.
Style and build quality
The thinksport bottle sports a classic design thanks to the shine of stainless steel. This material gives the bottle some heft and a finish that feels like a quality product. Because of the double wall design for insulation, the bottle is wider than non-insulated bottles of similar volume, however the hourglass design makes holding the bottle easy.
Function
The designers of the thinksport obviously put some thought into issues around filling and using a bottle like this. Since one of the primary uses is to keep liquids cold, it is nice to see a large mouth opening to allow standard ice cubes to be easily dropped in the bottle. Once filled, there is a wire mess cover to this opening that prevents ice from flowing out onto you when you drink from it. You can drink from the bottle either from the large screw off cap or a smaller, sipping opening with a plastic leash that keeps the lid from getting lost.
The removal mess interior cover stops ices from dumping back out on you while drinking.
The thinksport bottle is not lined in any way so there is no plastic taste or off-gassing. Conversely, there is no metallic taste either, a problem I’ve had with other metal bottles.
I was interested to see how well the bottle would do at temperature regulation as that has been my number one criticism of stainless steel bottles. While the true test will come during our Texas summers, I found the bottle did an excellent job of keeping water ice cold for 3-4 hours. This is considerably better than Polar bottles which tend to keep water cold 1-2 hours depending on ambient temperature. Also, as an added bonus the bottle is designed to handle hot liquids unlike most other sports bottles.
While the thinksport bottle exceeded my expectations on keeping liquids cool, the over-sized design of the bottle to achieve this makes it of limited usefulness to the cyclist. This size means the bottle does not fit in standard water bottle cages. The bottle also does not have a pop up drinking spigot as an option. Combined, this means on-the-bike drinking is pretty much impossible. For the cyclist, the thinksport bottle might be best used as a refill bottle for your cage bottles to keep the refill cold. Alternatively, those riding trails or riding socially may not mind stopping to pull out the bottle. (NOTE: I was sent the 750 ml version. The 350 ml, approximately 12 oz, may fit in bottle cages. It is unclear from the pictures on the thinksport site whether this would work.)
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