I thought I'd give a quick review on the above mentioned Elite Deboyo that I ended up buying.
The good points:
- It does keep liquid cold/hot for ages. I didn't get to test it as far as the 12 hours claimed, but before I used it on a ride for the first time I did a quick test with some water and ice cubes, the neck is easily wide enough to throw chunky ice cubes straight in, and the ice cubes were still a good size and the liquid very chilled after 4 hours.
- It has 2 types of interchangeable lids, one for apparently easy on the move/bike access, and a screw top lid like a normal flask. Unfortunately the screw top flask lid cannot be used as a cup for hot drinks like some flasks, this is a shame. It is not a squeezy bottle so when drinking hot liquids you just have to pour it through the narrow spout directly into your mouth, which for coffee or tea just doesn't seem right, make the screw lid a cup Elite!
- Its chrome and shiny and the black and red match my Bottecchia well
The bad points:
- Despite looking big and appearing the same size as a 750ml bottle, capacity is only 500ml. If I'm honest I don't think this is enough, I've got two water bottle holders and do like long rides, but if I had two of these I'd find the 1 litre capacity for two cages a bit limiting.
- When using the top with the easy access flip top lid, I've got to say I don't find it easy to use one handed at all. Obviously to keep liquids hot or cold for long periods the seal has got to be good, and it is tight, but I found it too stiff to get open and even harder trying to close it one handed. When opening the first few times I almost dropped it as the sudden lurch as the seal breaks apart did not give any feel or confidence in how it was going to open. And getting it to close tightly and properly one handed, while on the move I found impossible, without it turning into a dangerous on-bike yoga challenge, which is a major hassle as realistically you can't drink on the move, which is what I wanted in the first place. I can ride no handed but living and riding mostly in busy London traffic, time spent with no hands on the bars is something I want to minimise. If you have to effectively stop to drink, this offers no advantage to a traditional drinking flask, that's not very good.
- If this is cycling specific as opposed to a regular flask, I would have expected it to be a really good snug fit in the cages. I even have some recently fitted Elite bottle cages on my Bottecchia, so you would expect a bottle from the same company to at least fit those cages. When I first saw the pics I thought that indented section a third of the way down the bottles neck was shaped to ensure a snug bottle fit and prevent bottle ejection. It doesn't really. The bottle does fit, and though I did not manage to eject the bottle from its cage, it does rattle around a bit, and as this is metal, rattling in a metal cage means its noisy, and makes your bike sound like its a clown bike trying to dis-assemble itself. Factor in that London roads have all seemingly been dug up and refilled 100's of times, it means road surfaces here are mostly bloody awful. Now I normally ride everywhere with music (lets not go there
) and I have lovely smooth and near silent running bikes, but I can easily hear all this noise over my music.....and it gets worse........
What makes this noise even worse though is if you have any ice in the bottle. Maybe I hadn't properly thought this through, or had unrealistic expectations, but while this bottle seems to offer plenty of heat insulation it offers zero sound insulation. With ice in this, unless you are riding on the smoothest velodrome and at the most steady application of power you can manage, the bottle rattles in the cages, and the ice crashing around in that metal bottle makes it a sound amplifier!! Honesty its like a bag of spanners falling down the stairs, Its kind of like a bell alternative I never asked for, I've been alarming pedestrians with my approaching and non-stop noise, its actually embarrassing
. And this can all be heard over the sound of my music player and is driving me mad, without music its even more annoying, and in practice has made this unusable for cycling. This is frankly a bit rubbish for a cycling specific product in its same brand bottle cages. Obviously if you have plastic/carbon cages this would be quieter, but still, meh.
I could faff about and fit some gel or blu-tak to stop the bottle rattling in the cage, but as I still can't really use it one handed while riding, and its still noisy as hell with ice in it, and I had bought it for cold drinks with ice in mind, not hot tea or coffee, its a busted flush, and is going to be consigned to non cycling regular flask use.
TLDR - One to avoid, back to the drawing board
.
. This has been a real struggle in the hot summer we've had. The best I can manage is to put 1 water bottle filled with water into the freezer the day before so its totally frozen solid, and on the ride next day as that gradually thaws I keep topping up the other bottle which has just water and ice cubes. This is the best I can do.
......Sods law but you watch the weather change for the worse as soon as I buy it, and Europe gets plunged into the next ice age
