Hydro Flask Wide Mouth with Straw Review

The Hydro Flask is our overall favorite water bottle design. It provides top-notch performance in all testing metrics and is the perfect vessel for everyday hydration, whether you're sticking around the house, at the office, or at the gym. During our most recent testing period, we selected three separate lids to customize our experience. The Flip Cap straw is our favorite for guzzling plain water, while the Flex Chug is perfect for water, tea, and drink mixes. The simple Flex lid is perfect for coffee and tea, and each lid features a solid gasket attachment along with a carry strap for easy transport. This ergonomic and user-friendly design is the perfect choice to integrate into your daily hydration routine.

Closure

The Hydro Flask Wide Mouth design supplies a variety of cap closure options. For this review, we tested the Flex cap, the Flex Chug cap, and the straw lid. The pop-up straw design was one of our favorites overall, thanks to the thick and sturdy BPA-free hard plastic that produces a satisfying click when it locks into place. The straw is easy to engage, flipping into sipping position with ease, while featuring a small vent located in the center that enables uninterrupted flow from the bottle. It has a little plastic pin that keeps the vent plugged when the straw is flipped down. It is perfect for cold drinks and incredibly convenient when you need to get your daily ounces of H2O. The Flex lid is a traditional wide-mouth opening, sans straw or flip cap. It is perfect for storing hot beverages like coffee or tea, but the wide mouth opening can be difficult to drink from if you're on the move, either walking or driving.

The Flex Chug cap has a narrower mouth opening stacked on top of a wide mouth base, giving you the best of both worlds. It is perfect for hot or cold beverages thanks to a small opening on top of the wide mouth that makes it easy to hydrate on the go. This was our go-to cap for commutes, hitting the gym, or even the local trails. This is also a great bottle for winter skiing and snowing in the backcountry when you'd like a hot beverage to combat the cold. The wide-mouth bottle is easy to fill and easy to clean, and the narrow mouth opening on top prevents spills while drinking. Each lid twists off with one full rotation.

We're happy to report that each cap style on the Hydro Flask Wide Mouth passed all of our objective and everyday leak tests with no issue. Whether shoving the bottle into the bottom of our backpacks or lying on its side overnight, this bottle displayed continuous, well-sealed performance throughout our testing period. We only noticed one minor point of leakage in the straw cap, as a few drops of water can get caught in the upper portion of the straw and leak out when it is locked into place. That said, with awareness and some basic adjustments, we were able to remedy this minor design flaw.

Taste

We rarely experienced any unwanted flavors when using the Hydro Flask Wide Mouth for our everyday hydration. The smooth interior and external steel threads keep contaminants at bay. As with any bottle, we recommend rinsing the bottle and cap when swapping from one beverage to another. We found that the lid with straw performed best with plain water, while the Flex and Flex Chug lids provided better performance with electrolyte mixes, coffee, and tea. The only instance where we noticed a hint of a plastic chemical flavor was when drinking hot beverages with the straw cap. To be fair, this plastic flavor was still fairly minimal, but for this reason, we recommend using the standard Flex or Flex Chug cap for hot drinks.

The tiny lip on the upper portion of the bottle's interior can also trap contaminants, so we recommend a thorough wash between electrolyte mixes or lemon water, which can leave a residue behind. That said, we used this bottle for everyday beverages from morning coffee to electrolytes to evening tea, and didn't experience much residual flavor from the bottle itself. If you like to use your bottle for more than just water, we recommend sticking with either the Flex or Flex Chug lids, both of which are versatile enough for any beverage, hot or cold.

Ergonomics

The Hydro Flask Wide Mouth features a slender, powder-coated design that's easy to use and easy to grip with one hand. The 20-ounce size easily stows into a cup holder or even the water bottle cage on your bicycle (although we found this can scratch up the exterior). Each lid features a carry handle that can fit a few fingers. The Flex Chug lid has a smaller grab handle, but still has enough space for at least two fingers. The lid with pop-up straws flips up with minimal effort and provides a satisfying click when it locks into place, while the Flex lids twist on and off with only one turn. We love the Flex Chug lid for hydration on the go, thanks to a smaller opening that prevents spills when we're drinking while on a walk or in the car. If you were going to buy only one cap to go with your bottle, the Flex Chug should be it.

The bottle we tested held only 20 ounces, and we found ourselves refilling the bottle a lot compared to larger bottle designs, but Hydro Flask offers a variety of sizes ranging from 6.7 oz all the way up to 128 oz (a full gallon!). Our ideal size would be the 24 oz, which still has a narrow enough base to fit in most cup holders, but has a bit more height, which equals fewer refills.

We also noticed that the wide-mouth twist-off lid design has a little extra resistance compared to other similar designs that we tested, especially when filled with hot liquids. Warmer temps expand the cap materials slightly, which seems to create a stiffer seal, but it was never so tight that we were unable to open it. At the end of the day, the Hydro Flask Wide Mouth was one of the easiest bottles to use, making it our top choice for everyday hydration.

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Material Quality

The Hydro Flask Wide Mouth is crafted from high-quality 18/8 stainless steel and features a powder-coated exterior with a smooth, ergonomic, and attractive finish. Our testers put this bottle through the wringer, only seeing some slight cosmetic damage when sliding the bottle into the water bottle holder on our bicycle; however, this didn't change the overall performance. One person on our team has had her bottle for 6+ years, and it has survived being dropped on concrete, shoved into backpacks, and left in the car on a hot day. With all this abuse, the insulation has held strong, but some of the powder coating has chipped around the edges. Each lid that we tested features bullet-hard, BPA-free plastic that showed no signs of wear, even after loads of testing. The entire bottle, along with each lid, is dishwasher-safe.

While we didn't experience any issues with the straw lid, we do believe the design could use some improvement. The thin plastic straw doesn't seat securely inside the lid, and is undoubtedly the reason we detected chemical flavor during our objective hot water testing. We've tested more durable designs that feature metal straws that don't impart any plastic flavor. The straw lid should be used strictly for water, while the Flex and Flex Chug offer more versatile performance for hot and cold beverages without any unwanted taste.

Should You Buy the Hydro Flask Wide Mouth with Straw?

The Hydro Flask Wide Mouth with Straw is the perfect choice for those seeking an insulated water bottle that's durable enough to withstand daily use. We tested this bottle along with three separate lids that allow you to customize your preferences, whether you're trying to stay hydrated around the house, at the office, or hitting the gym. While it's not our first choice for day hikes or bike rides, the sleek and slender design fits easily into our water bottle cage on the bike, the cup holder of a car, and into our day pack without any leaks. If you're interested in a well-insulated and versatile design that's suitable for everyday use, this bottle doesn't disappoint.

What Other Water Bottle Should You Consider?

While the Hydro Flask Wide Mouth with Straw isn't an affordable water bottle design, it does supply excellent quality within a durable construction that's built to last. If you're interested in a more affordable water bottle design that's also insulated, consider the Iron Flask Insulated, which outperforms its budget-friendly price tag. If you're primarily a bottle that is best for hot liquids or electrolyte drink mixes, the Purifyou Premium is our favorite glass construction. If you're after a lighter-weight, larger-capacity design, our team loves the Nalgene Wide-Mouth, which is great for hikers and backpackers. If flavor is the ultimate consideration when purchasing your next water bottle, we highly recommend the Purist Mover due to its perfect blend of glass and stainless steel, which prevents flavor transfer within a highly durable and long-lasting construction.