Performance Comparison
Though it comes at a price, the Hydro Flask was one of our favorite bottles for travel, outdoors, and everyday use.
Ease of Use
With a smaller capacity than the Hydro Flask Wide Mouth, the 24 oz Standard Mouth is a lighter, more versatile option that still has all of our favorite features of a Hydro Flask bottle. The carrying handle is smaller than that of the Yeti Rambler and the Hydro Flask Wide, since the Standard has a narrower mouth than both of these bottles. We didn't find this to be too problematic since we were able to still fit two fingers into the handle comfortably. The narrow mouth was also nice for drinking cold beverages; wider mouth bottles are tough to drink from one-handed and also cause backsplash, especially when drinking and walking simultaneously!
The narrow mouth of the Hydro Flask is great for drinking cool, fresh water from the local fountain in Cornudella de Montsant, Spain.
We did not like the narrow mouth for hot drinks, though. Much like the Mira Cascade, the narrow mouth of the Hydro Flask seemed to conduct heat, making it almost impossible to drink our hot drinks hours after the bottle had been filled. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the narrow mouth was too narrow to fit ice cubes for cold drinks. If you are planning to use the bottle as simply a water bottle, the Hydro Flask Standard is a great option, but for hot drinks or very cold drinks, it falls a bit short.
Durability
Over the years, Hydro Flask has proven to make bottles that are built to last, and this one is no exception. We took this bottle to the crag, we biked around town with it, we dropped it on the ground. Though the paint got a few nicks in it, the bottle was otherwise unscathed after a few months of heavy use. While other insulated bottles, like the Simple Modern Summit and the Mira Cascade saw minor dents and chipped paint, the Hydro Flask stayed relatively unscathed. The Klean Kanteen Classic was comparable, with minimal scratches in its paint and no dents to speak of after two months of use.
The Hydro Flask was one of the most durable bottles we tested. We were not afraid to beat this bottle up, and we hardly saw a scratch after two months of continuous use.
We do admit that part of this is the luck of the draw and how the bottles fell. Many of our friends have Hydro Flasks and Klean Kanteens with several dents and scratches. These dents and scratches haven't affected the performance of any that we have heard, though.
Ease of Cleaning
The Hydro Flask Standard Mouth is 11 inches tall and 3 inches wide, making it a tall and narrow bottle. This size and shape are more challenging to clean without a bottle brush since it's impossible to fit a sponge or a hand inside. You'll need a specific bottle brush, or resort to simply rinsing the bottle with a little soapy water. We also struggled to clean the Mira Cascade and the Klean Kanteen Classic for the same reasons.
The Hydro Flask, left, was more difficult to clean than its wider-mouthed competitor, the Simple Modern Summit in the middle, but easier than the Mira on the right.
The Hydro Flask has a very easy-to-clean lid, though, which elevates it in this metric. The threads are exposed and the lid has no moving parts, which makes it easier to clean than the Klean Kanteen's sport cap or the Simple Modern Summit's flip cap.
Hydro Flask bottles are not suited for cleaning in your dishwasher. Their website does lay forth some
cleaning tips for washing by hand.
Weight
The Hydro Flask Standard Mouth has a much lighter feel that previous Hydro Flask models we have tested. Its sleek shape, narrow width, and slightly smaller capacity give it this light feel.
The Hydro Flask Standard feels light and portable, even though it is a heavy-duty vacuum insulated bottle.
It's more than a feeling, though — the Standard weighs almost 5 ounces less than our Editors' Choice Award winner, the Yeti Rambler. For reference, the Rambler weighs 18.5 ounces for a 26-ounce bottle, and the Hydro Flask Standard weighs 12.9 ounces for a 24-ounce bottle. Of course, these vacuum insulated bottles are by far less portable than their non-insulated competitors, the Klean Kanteen Classic is almost half the weight of the Standard and is pretty much the same size.
Taste
The Hydro Flask did well in this metric. We filled this bottle with coffee, tea, Emergen-C, and water, and for the most part, flavors seemed to dissipate quickly after a wash or two. The threads on the lid are exposed and easy to clean, which is where we found flavors to linger the most. Its performance was on par to the Mira Cascade, since both bottles are tall, vacuum insulated, stainless models. The Simple Modern Summit did better in the taste metric because it has interchangeable lids that are easy to clean.
Best Applications
We used the Hydro Flask day in and day out, for both hot and cold beverages, and in both urban and outdoors settings. The sleek look of this botte just begs for it to be used. The carrying handle is comfortable and the matte finish of the bottle has a nice feel in the hand. We had a similar experience with the Mira Cascade, though, when it came to putting hot drinks in this bottle. The narrow mouth concentrates heat, making it hard to drink from without burning your lips on the metal rim of the bottle. Also, the fact that the Hydro Flask's mouth is so narrow makes it hard to fill the bottle with ice cubes. The Rambler or the Simple Modern Summit are better options if either of these hang ups are deal breakers for you.
We tended to use the Hydro Flask as a bottle for drinking water, keeping our coffee in a different container, as shown above.
Value
In terms of value, Hydro Flask products are a bit of an investment. They are not cheap up front — the Standard Mouth bottle costs $35. Comparatively, the Wide Mouth 1L is $40 and the Yeti Rambler 26 also costs $40. All of these name-brand vacuum insulated bottles cost a pretty penny, but they do seem to last. To us, it seemed worth it for the Yeti, since we used it so frequently for hot drinks. The Standard, due to grievances mentioned above, felt like it had a hefty price tag for a bottle that we ended up using for room-temperature water most frequently.
Conclusion
Though we listed some complaints about the Hydro Flask 24 oz Standard Mouth, overall, we thought this was a great bottle. When leaving the house, our hand gravitated toward this bottle more often than not, whether we were going climbing or heading to the coffee shop. Though it has a hefty price tag, the Hydro Flask is a durable, reliable product. We also loved that the bottle comes in a wide variety of color options and sizes.
