A water bottle with smarts
As a big fan of the Apple Ecosystem, I am very much used to entering my vitals into the Apple Health App. One area which I am not very good at is maintaining my levels of hydration. I have a busy schedule, a stressful job and a whole host of other excuses I can use…
As an Apple Watch and smart scales owner most of my vitals are already automatically pushed to the health app, and although I’ve tried using many hydration tracking apps I often forget to update them. Which is when I decided a ‘smart bottle’ was the way to go. After a little bit of research, I settled on the Ozmo Smart Water Bottle.
Hands-On: Ozmo Smart Water Bottle
I’ve owned the water bottle since July 2018, so I think it’s fair that I make note of my thoughts on the bottle. Overall I am impressed with it, there are some pitfalls and some annoyances, but they don’t bother me enough to dump it and find a replacement.
Design
The overall design of the bottle I think is good, it’s ergonomic and fits well in your hand, it also has a handy carry handle on the top, which unlike some others is fixed in place. I actually like this. The lid on the top of the bottle does a good job of filling the spout to prevent any leakage once full. Which I’ve proved to work perfectly, as I’ve hopped around the house on crutches whilst holding the bottle.
Smarts
The Ozmo iPhone app looks like it was designed for the iPhone 5, and doesn’t scale well at all on newer iPhone models. Definitely not well on my iPhone X. However, I am happy to dismiss this, as that’s not so important to me. What does get tricky sometimes is the keyboard often lays over and doesn’t collapse correctly on some of the screens, which renders the application next to useless at times. It does also seem to have a tendency to crash frequently. Although the Ozmo brand and company look well established with a range of smart hydration tracking products for sale, the iOS app is definitely an afterthought.
Although the Ozmo app leaves a lot to be desired, the measuring of the fluids, your intake and the reminders given by the bottle work well. Inside the bottle is a channel which contains sensors to measure how much fluid you’ve consumed. This is transferred via Bluetooth to the Ozmo app and then from there is synced to the Apple Health app without issue. The bottle is also smart enough to know if you’re drinking a cold or hot drink!
Function
As I am trying to improve my levels of hydration, I generally (more often than not) use the bottle for cold drinks (mainly water), for which the bottle functions perfectly fine delivering everything you’d expect (no leaks). I have on occasion used the bottle to carry hot coffee, and each time I have I’ve been impressed with the length of time the bottle keeps the drink piping hot. So much so that almost the first thing I do when I sit down without is remove the lid to allow it to cool a bit quicker. All in all, I can’t argue with the function at all – it really does what it says on the tin… (or website at least)
Price
When I purchased the Ozmo bottle it was much cheaper then it is now (by at least £10) so I think I’d be reluctant to pay the £45.65 price quoted on amazon currently. Perhaps if/when the bottle is on offer again, I’d be tempted.