In 2019 we asked: What’s the next status water bottle? The prediction was Nalgene, following in the footsteps of S’well, a brand which had turned the water bottle from practical vessel into must-have accessory.
Since then, we’ve seen several models come into fashion: the teen-approved Hydro Flask; the mega-size motivational jug owned by Lewis Hamilton, Kacey Musgraves, and Rob Lowe; and the TikTok-famous Stanley Adventure Quencher Travel Tumbler. Each of these remains beloved enough to make an appearance on the list of the best water bottles I reported for the site — but four years after we originally posed the question, there’s a new bottle in town.
The Owala Free Sip was launched in March 2020 but didn’t come across my radar until earlier this year. (To be fair, Lance Bass was an early adopter). I first clocked it when writer Samantha Irby recommended it to us in May. She told my fellow Strategist writer Ambar Pardilla, who conducted the interview, that redditors and Instagrammers were dedicated to getting limited-edition “color drops” (and complaining when they didn’t). Days after we ran that piece, Haley Nahman called it a “top-tier vessel” in her newsletter.
In October, I was set to update that evergreen piece on water bottles. By then, I knew the Owala, which was not previously featured, deserved a spot. So I turned to our junior writer Brenley Goertzen and two senior editors, Jen Trolio and Winnie Yang, all of whom had mentioned that they own one (and in the latter two cases, several). Their love was palpable.
The main appeal, they each told me, is the two separate options for sipping. One opening lets you suck water through a straw, while the other reveals a wide-mouthed hole with a protruding angled border that neatly guides a stream of water out for gulping. (This is unlike the Hydro Flask, which has a straw lid you have to unscrew completely, and the Stanley, which has a separate straw you have to put in and take out of a designated hole.)
Goertzen says the straw lets her sip thoughtlessly — so much so that she has more than tripled her daily fluid intake. But she says she likes the big opening for really chugging after running without having to worry about “accidentally pouring water down my shirt.” Yang points out that the sip hole allows her to get out the last bit of water when the straw can’t draw out any more. And Trolio says she finds this straw mechanism much more pleasant to drink from than ones that stick out.
If all this weren’t enough to declare it the dominant water bottle of 2023, I took a poll of everyone on our editorial staff before I sat down to write this piece. Turns out it’s not just Goertzen, Trolio, and Yang: 11 others are enthusiastic owners (with Strategist editor Maxine Builder noting she bought one just this past weekend because she “didn’t want to miss out”).
But the hype isn’t just within the Strategist hive mind. I’m spotting it in real life, too: at the grocery store, at the gym, on the subway. Just the other evening I noticed it was the most prevalent water bottle among people clamoring away on their computers in the co-working lobby space of the Ace Hotel in Brooklyn.
And if this leaves you wondering what the status water bottle of 2024 will be, I think the Owala is here to stay — at least for quite a while. It’s simply too well-designed to be a passing trend.
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