Camelbak Podium Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle 530ml (18oz)

The Camelbak Podium Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle is a sturdy, spill-proof way to carry cool drinks on long rides. The unique nozzle is easy to drink from and you can bung it in the dishwasher to stay fresh. If you can get around the weight, price and scratches, it's a good shout.

> Buy now: Camelbak Podium Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle for £35 from Camelbak

Camelbak has an enviable reputation for its hydration products, and the Podium Insulated bottle sits in the second tier of its metal bottle range. The most expensive is the £100 Titanium version, saving you 60g. That's a weight-loss premium of £1.67 per gram, but at least you'll be pretty much guaranteed the bottle will live out its life looking pretty much as it started.

This is more than can be said for this painted steel version, which after its first outing looked as scratched as a three-legged racehorse after a hard night on the windfalls. Camelbak says 'Podium Steel ... will likely eventually show some light wear'. Replace 'likely eventually' with 'certainly immediately' and you'll be closer to the truth. Camelbak should look to a Cerakote ceramic finish for future versions.

But beauty is only skin deep. Function, in the form of its no-squeeze drinking technology, is at the core of the Podium steel bottle. When you unscrew the lid the standout tech is the long blue rubber straw going all the way down the bottle. Counterintuitively, you don't use the straw to suck the water up – rather that's the return path for air to enter the bottle as you suck fluid out the nozzle with the bottle inverted.

Plastic bottles rely on you squeezing water out, then releasing your grip and your mouth seal to allow air to bubble back into the bottle, slosh forward and repeat. But squeezing isn't an option with a metal-walled bottle, so Camelbak came up with the straw to allow free flow of liquid. It just works, and is most perplexing at first – what is this new drinking wizardry before me?

All you need to know is that it's very easy to drink from, and it won't slosh out as you ride along. The nozzle locks with a 90-degree twist so it won't dribble when thrown into a bag, but when you're riding you can leave it unlocked.

If like me you frequently ride in mucky or dusty conditions you'll want to splash out on the £7 Podium Series Dirt Cap to keep the trailside muck at bay.

The bottle is a double-wall vacuum construction. I'm not sure of Camelbak's claim of '14 hours cold' as there are so many real-world variables – initial content temperature, direct sunlight, ambient temperature, windspeed, groundspeed, consumption rate – as to render the road.cc Thermal Gradient Liquid Analyser redundant.

But in the real world, ice cubes stayed icy for an hour or so when I was riding in 20°C heat. If you didn't drink anything, so weren't introducing ambient air to the interior, the contents would stay colder for longer.

As a pseudo-scientific test I pre-chilled the bottle with cold water, then filled it with ice cubes, then topped up with more chilled water and left it on the kitchen bench at 22°C. Twelve hours later there was still a huge chunk of ice inside, so the claim of '14 hours cold' isn't unreasonable – as long as you're not actually drinking from the bottle.

Camelbak says it's 'not intended for hot liquids' – but I can attest to the fact that 530ml of Yorkshire Tea will stay perfectly drinkable for several hours.

The fact there's no give in the bottle means it may or may not work with your cages, but I had no issues on rough rides with either carbon or alloy cages. The rubber Dirt Cap was easy to remove and refit one-handed to keep drinking a dirt-free experience, and I'd say is a must-buy for the Podium bottle.

Now £35 (or £42 if you go for the Dirt Cap) is Not At All Cheap for a 530ml bottle; the 650ml version is a fiver extra, if your frame will take it.

There are a wide range of plastic 'insulated' bottles out there (including from Camelbak) for not much more than a standard bottle, but I've never found any provide meaningful cooling to be worth the loss in fluid capacity due to thicker walls.

Value

The main bike bottle-shaped competition for Camelbak is the Elite Deboyo Race that comes with both a cycling-teeth-squeezy-bottle top and a screw cap more like a thermos. It's also a fiver cheaper than the Camelbak and as it's raw stainless steel, it will probably look nicer for longer. I've personally had issues with Elite's plastic cover hinges failing after a while, so there's that to consider.

I really liked the Hydroflask Bottle a few years back – the cap design has been changed and there's no option for a dirt cover, but the price is right. You'll need a friction-fit cage mind, as there's no indent.

Conclusion

Stainless steel double-walled vacuum bottles are not quite a dime a dozen but you can find them in pretty much any outdoors shop for less than a tenner. The Podium Steel bottle is cycling-specific, with features you'll appreciate like ease of drinking, dirt covers and secure locking. Yes, it weighs over three times more than a normal bottle, so you're really paying about three times the price and carrying about three times the weight over a normal bottle, to have a cold drink. If that's your jam, then the Camelbak Podium Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle is a good – if easily scratched – shout.

Verdict

A nice no-splash easy-drinking thermal bottle that keeps your drink cold for ages, though it does scratch easily