Here’s an interesting fact: we’re mostly water. Yes, that’s right. Lots of the planet is water, and so are humans. YAY!
This means that we have to replenish our stocks every now and again (or several times a day, if you’re really going to do it properly). And while the majority of people like to do this in creative ways (like pop, tea, coffee, fruit juice), I am lazy and stick to plain H2O.
I drink a lot of water. But sometimes water can be boring.
Enter the Zingo.
What’s a Zingo?
The Zingo bottle, according to the Ocado website:
Give your water a tasty zing by infusing it with fresh citrus fruits such as lemons, limes, and clementines. The Zingo makes drinking water, easier, fun, & more healthy! The Zingo is compact, lightweight, and available in an array of fun colours. Made with a translucent BPA-free plastic that helps hide scuffs, cloudiness, or any other wear and tear that might occur during your busy day!
It’s a bottle with one of those weird juicer things on the bottom, like the kind you use to make lemon meringue pie. You unscrew the bottom section, squeeze a citrus fruit into it, screw it back to the main bottle, add water and shake.
Hard up facts:
Price: £11.99
Where to buy: John Lewis, Ocado (apparently), and mostly online. I struggled to find it anywhere else.
The review
Pt. 1: Looks
I reviewed the blue version. It’s quite boring; it looks exactly like a bottle. There’s not really much going for it. It comes in green and pink, too. It doesn’t look particularly exciting and I probably wouldn’t notice it on the shelf.
Pt. 2: Usability
–> Okay, I’m going to confess here that I am massively impatient and don’t read instructions. Turns out that this is the kind of thing that you have to read up on prior to using because:
a) I wasn’t sure how much lime I was supposed to use;
b) I managed to get lime pulp absolutely everywhere; and
3) There is no way you can do this and look like someone living the dream in a yoghurt advert.
–> Having a screw cap is probably the worst design feature. Why not have a sports cap?
Pt. 3: Taste
–>I like limes. I didn’t enjoy this. Every time I drank from it all I could taste was sour limes.
–> The were bits of sour pulp floating around, so the bottom of the drink was pretty unpleasant. I couldn’t finish it, so ended up wasting a lot of it.
Pt.4: Would I use it again?
No, probably not. It’s quite gimmicky, and the taste wasn’t up to much.
Pt. 5: Any other comments?
Just some notes on the description:
–> Give your water a tasty zing
Flavoured water can be totally delicious. This wasn’t. (Is Zing marketing code for “zap tastebuds?”)
–> The Zingo makes drinking water, easier, fun, & more healthy!
Adding fruit doesn’t suddenly make it more healthy, and drinking tap water is a lot easier without faffing about with it. Also, trying to make water less boring is not necessarily a fun activity. Lots of things are fun; filling a bottle is not fun.
–> The Zingo is compact, lightweight, and available in an array of fun colours.
What about orange? Orange is a fun colour.
–> Made with a translucent BPA-free plastic that helps hide scuffs, cloudiness, or any other wear and tear that might occur during your busy day!
This just means that you can’t actually see all the pulpy bits floating around in it. This bottle didn’t fit in my satchel, so I’m unlikely to actually take it out and about with me.
The verdict:
Stick to squash.
2/5 Sprouts
EDIT: I just Googled the bottle for an image, and turns out I was using it wrong and I was supposed to leave the lime in… I’m not going through the whole thing again — so it also needs clearer instructions!
