A review of ‘Lifeline performance hygiene plus membrane waterbottle‘ – well quite a mouthful of a product title to start with. Doesn’t exactly slip off the tongue.
Firstly, it looks quite good, even if it does remind me of some bottle you may find in a hospital with all those clear labels to write your name and blood type on. It is well designed and looks good on the Trek Madone, less so on the winter training hack.
Old marginal gain hill climbing habits die hard. The first thing I did was to put it on the weighing scales because it felt heavier than your typical plastic water bottle. It is of no consequence, but for the record it weighs 125 grams; that’s 40grams more than your standard 750ml bottle.
But no one (I hope) buys a waterbottle on weight – not even me.
Bacteriostatic glass like inner surface
One reason for the extra weight is the ‘bacteriostatic glass-like inner surface‘ again, another suitably impressive sounding title. The good news is that this inner surface does seem to give a noticeable performance feature – the bottle tastes less like plastic – more like drinking out of a glass cup. For those who get tired of retained odour and taste in plastic bottles, this is quite a notable feature. Definitely a strong selling point.
Adjustable cap
Another feature of the bottle is that you can adjust the cap to alter the water flow. In other words, either off or on – I never needed anything in between. I’m not quite sure of the point of this. The problem is that to open the cap you need two hands. When you’re cycling this gets a bit tiresome, especially if you have thick winter gloves on. After a few times of opening and closing I got fed up and just left it open. The good news is that if you leave it open, I didn’t notice any water jump out. But, if no water jumps out, why close it?
To drink, you just squeeze the bottle and it comes out at a very satisfactory rate. In fact this is another strong feature of the bottle. It feels well made, and an impressive ease of drinking. It also has a wide cap and opening at the top, making it easier to fill with powder (it is pain when you get a water bottle with an opening the size of 50p piece making it impossible to fill with powder.)
Ease of cleaning
Another good point is that the cap and bottle can be dissembled to make it easy to clean. Sometimes waterbottles get a bit manky with left over powder getting jammed in the nib of the bottle. This is good for a thorough cleaning.
Hygiene feature
Because it was featured as a hygiene bottle, I thought the switching mechanism on the cap may be to protect the valve from the winter elements of mud and stuff. But, it is just as exposed as any water bottle. Perhaps I was expecting some kind of cap to protect where you drink when not in use.
Overall
The inner glass like membrane is definitely a good feature. The taste of the water is more neutral than you can expect from a bottle. I don’t see the point of the opening system. I end up leaving it open on a ride. But, still it is a good water bottle; it is easy to drink, easy to clean and is made very well. It just took me a while to work out that the opening/closing feature wasn’t so useful.
£6.15 for a water bottle is more expensive than normal, but I think the cost can be justified on the grounds of the ease of drinking and the non-plasticy inner surface.
- Lifeline – water bottle 750ml at Wiggle