CamelBakPodium Steel Insulated Stainless Steel Bike Water Bottle – for Cycling, Fitness & Sports- Fits Most Bike Cages, 22oz - Pacific

I’ve been a user of the camelbak bottles for many years, with the podium ice variant getting the closest to holding up on long rides in the Texas heat. Even with freezing them solid, they still can’t last a multi hour ride when it is over 100.When I got an ad for these vacuum-insulated ones, I knew I had to try them out. I purchased a lovely color one and was excited how nice it looked when it arrived. Truly it looks beautiful. I was curious how the venting mechanism would work since you can’t squeeze them like a regular bottle, so it must have some way to let air in to let water flow out. It does this with a silicone tube/straw inside that must have some air vent in the cap. This is the first caveat, as it impacts cleaning. If you put any flavored electrolyte mix into your water, I don’t know how easily you can actually clean the inside of that tube. Hopefully the silicone doesn’t get too dirty.The second caveat showed up on my first ride. Because the bottle exterior is steel, it obviously doesn’t have any flex, and it is very smooth. This combination means that many bottle cages might not hold it very securely. Mine have hard plastic/carbon sides that rely mostly on friction to keep it snug. I found the bottle sort of fell in with a clunk, but clearly could slide out with little force. I think if you had a cage with more rubbery sides it might be more secure. However, most assume the plastic bottle is providing both friction and squeeze resistance to. On any sort of rough road, I could hear my bottle vibrating a bit against the bottom of the cage. Mind you this is road biking, not gravel/mtb. On a steep descent with a few bumps, my worse fear of this bottle came true. It popped out of the cage and narrowly missed hitting my or my buddies bikes. It bounced all over and has some pretty horrible bumps and scratches for being approx 2hrs out of the packaging and 25 miles of usage. It appears to not have compromised the vacuum seal, but does seem like the top might have some damage.Clearly this is somewhat on me for continuing even though the bottle felt like it could slide a bit, but how many people are going to invest in brand new bottle cages just to handle a steel bottle? And how do you even know if one you buy will actually work?As great as the enameled(?) coating over steel looks, I wonder if camelbak wouldn’t have been better served putting a rubbery finish on it so that it would have a little bit more friction to keep it from sliding, plus maybe absorb a vibration against the bottom stop of most cages.

fit in the water bottle hold