I Bought This Viral TikTok Water Bottle So You Don’t Have To

I've always been a fan of emotional support water bottles (ESWB). I buy myself a new water bottle and it is by my side until I lose it somewhere and have to start the process all over again. It's been a cycle that has been going on for years.

Last year around this time Cirkul water bottles were all the rage on TikTok. It is a water bottle that has you drink from a nozzle that is attached to a cartridge to flavor the water. Plain water goes in, flavored water comes out. Cool concept.

I never ordered one online, I thought about it so many times and just never did. Then I found a starter kit at Walmart in Sartell and for $20, I was ready to start a new water bottle journey. I've always been great about drinking plain water but something clicked in me this past year and I suddenly need everything to have flavor. I thought this would be the ultimate solution.

The starter kit from Walmart came with the bottle, and two flavor cartridges. I got it home, washed it out, and put in the "island punch" flavor sip. I went to take a drink and knew immediately this would probably be the shortest stint I have with a ESWB. Because you need to get the water through the cartridge/filter to flavor it, there is a lot of sucking that needs to happen. I feel like a hamster drinking from a cage bottle.

The bottle itself isn't insulated. They do make insulated ones that they sell online but the cheap starter set is not, so you constantly need to add ice to it or like warm water.

The flavor sips taste good. I've tried four different ones at this point and they seem to last for about 8 fill-ups if you leave the flavor setting at a 3. (You can adjust it anywhere from 0 - 9. My favorite flavor so far has been the Honeycrisp apple.

They market the bottles as using 84% less plastic, and save 250,000 bottles from landfills, but the sips are made of plastic and it looks like a lot of it so I'm not totally sold on that stat.

Now for some more positive points

- I am drinking a lot more water because it is flavored without me having to mix anything. Also I gotta drink it faster because of the lack of insulation so it's encouraging me to drink more.

- Once you get past the initial bottle-sucking motion, it's really not that bad. I feel silly drinking it in front of people (unless I'm at the gym) but it's not as horrible as it was the first time I used it.

- The flavor options are diverse and you can flavor your water to be almost anything which is great.

Overall, I'd give this water bottle 3.5 out of 5 stars. It's doing the job that it promised, it just won't be something I buy again for my next emotional support water bottle.