The bobble water bottle has been around since 2010, but is really starting to get seriously popular in my London gym. At the end of the day, its a water bottle, so it doesn’t warrant a typical BurnTech.TV 2,000 word essay, but the bobble water bottle is an interesting product and many people would like to know more, so…
What is the bobble water bottle?
Bobble is a reusable water bottle which comes with a charcoal filter. Bobble is available in a range of sizes (which generally mimic the sizes you find bottled water in, specifically water bottles intended for personal use). Bobble’s premise is thus to turn regular tap water into bottled water, which tastes a lot nicer. As a bonus, a lot of the nasty water treatment chemicals are captured by bobble, making water drank from the device healthier and tastier.
Terrible London tap water cured
I bought my bobble water bottle around six months ago after becoming exasperated with the quality of the water in my Farringdon gym. I grew up in rural Wales, and as such I am used to great tasting tap water. London was a vulture shock in many ways, and the water quality difference was a very small component of that. The gym water is so chalky that it leaves serious residue on the water dispensers, and the taste made it difficult to drink even after a hard workout.
Bobble was a simple cure to all of that.
The mechanism is simple. The bottle has two components. The first is a regular water bottle and the second is a modified drinking sprout. You fill the bottle up as you would a regular bottle – so there is no time wasted waiting for the water to filter, like for example a Britta water filter. You simply screw on the top and the water filters as you drink it.
This on the fly filtering method is far more preferable to the method behind the filter that you may have in your fridge. It’s more timely, which is important in the gym. The one downside is that the water flow is slightly reduced, and post workout I often mind myself literally sucking the water in.
Durability
The bobble water bottle is intended to last for around 3 months, after which you’ll need to change the filter or buy a new bottle. Mine is still going strong, with no obvious change in performance, with daily usage, after six months.
The bottle itself feels quite thin and fragile, to the extent that I was concerned that it may crack in my gym bag or if dropped. That concern hasn’t yet come to fruition, but it feels like there’s a quality differential between the bottle and the filter. It’s possible that Bobble are manufacturing the filters themselves and buying in cheaper bottles, but that’s just speculation.
Water taste
My bobble water bottle has definitely improved the water in my gym. It doesn’t quite give you the smooth texture of bottled water, but I find it comparable in quality to the brita filter in my fridge.
Side note: skin health benefits
As a quick side note, people with skin conditions like eczema have noted an improvement after using filtered water from devices like Bobble. I myself am one of them. I’ve been a life long suffer from eczema, and after moving to London I started getting some slight facial rashes, usually around my eyes. Nothing major, but slightly unsightly if you look closely, and not something that you appreciate I’d you take your appearance seriously. As a 6x a week gym goer, I do and I was keen to get rid.
I haven’t had one of those rashes since around 10 days post using my bobble water bottle and Britta water filter. I researched this out of interest, and other people have reported massive improvements in far more severe skin disorders then mind, just through using water filters.
It just shows how water, or more specifically the chemicals put into it, really can effect our health. They say that our skin heath is often a manifestation of our internal health – so skin flare ups can be a sign of internal stress.
Whether you have a skin problem or not, I think this is probably,y reason enough to make the circa £7 investment in a Bobble.
Side note two: watch the thieves!
My gym charges £80 PCM for membership, so it is not targeting the lower end of the market. It’s based in an affluent part of London, where rent on a one bedroom flat can breach the £2,000 PCM mark. Yet Bobble water bottles have a nasty knack of going walkies, despite the fact they cost about the same as a pint of beer in the local pub in this neck of the woods. So if you are the sort of person, like most, who dumps their gear by a bench in the gym, leaving it unattended for a few minutes at a time, bear in mind that your bobble water bottle may just go for a walk!
