Hydrate – Spark Hydrate – Spark Pro Lite
HidrateSpark Pro Lite is a powerful smart water bottle for tracking your hydration and building better habits. It is a lightweight and ergonomic container equipped with accurate sensors. Plus, the company’s unique glow feature adds a colorful way to stay on track. It’s not perfect, nor is it cheap, but its helpful prompts and third-party integration make it a useful tool for anyone interested in health and fitness tracking.
With daily recommendations, automatic tracking, and dynamic reminders, smart water bottles aim to keep users fully hydrated. If you are someone who often forgets to take sips, the pulsating lights in one bottle should do the trick. On the other hand, if you already drink that many ounces a day, you may find a lot to like about the device and its companion app. Find out more in our HidrateSpark Pro Lite review.
About this HidrateSpark Pro Lite review: I tested HidrateSpark Pro Lite over the course of two weeks. The unit was purchased by Android Authority for this review.
What you need to know about HidrateSpark Pro Lite
Kaitlyn Cimino/Android Authority
- HidrateSpark Pro Lite: $69.99
HidrateSpark Pro Lite is a 24-ounce smart water bottle designed to track (and improve) your hydration habits. To do this, it equips the bottle with smart sensors that sync via Bluetooth with the companion HidrateSpark app. These sensors automatically measure and track your water consumption, recording progress throughout the day in a similar way to the popular Apple Activity Rings.
Just like the reminder to move, the bottle also tries to get you to take action. The Sensor Puck features LED lights that glow whenever you’re left behind to drink water. These flares are meant to help you remember to drink throughout the day so you can meet your hydration goal by bedtime. You can customize your target as well as the color of your water bottle’s glow. Each bottle offers six unique glow options plus the option to create and pay for more custom looks in GlowStudio.
The HidrateSpark Pro Lite bottle itself comes in six different colors: Black, Navy Blue, Sea Glass, Fruit Punch, and Wildberry. The device comes with two caps, one bottle, a rechargeable LED disc, and a special charger. It’s available for $69.99 from the Apple Store as well as third-party retailers like Amazon.
What is good?
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In terms of effectiveness as a hydration fitness tracker, the HidrateSpark Pro Lite is a solid A plus. It’s lightweight, comfortable, BPA-free, and easy to integrate into your everyday life. It comes with a straw lid and a chug lid, both of which are fun to use. I’m partial to straws because I’m a kid, but I also appreciated the inclusion of a couple of options. For added inclusion, the bottle is also compatible with both iPhone and Android phones. HidrateSpark also links with Apple Health, Garmin Connect, the Fitbit app, and Health Mate, so you can sync reminders with your favorite wearables.
HidrateSpark Pro provides hydration and stimulation tracking and a laser light show.
During setup, HidrateSpark determines a hydration recommendation based on your personal details (age, gender, weight, height, etc.), fitness activity, and local weather. You can override the suggestion and choose a manual target if you want to aim higher. You’ll also set your wake-up and bedtime so the app can calculate a drinking schedule based on when you’re actually conscious. Finally, you can customize how you prefer to receive reminders including how many and how often. The app also allows you to choose the type of smartphone notifications you want, ranging from funny to motivational. I found these notifications to be unimpressive but less effective than the bright, vibrant glow reminders.
The companion app itself is very simple. On the Home tabThe HidrateSpark app displays your daily goal in a dynamic graph that closes as you drink. You’ll also see at a glance statistics on your current progress including how many bottles you must drink to reach your mark. If you drink water from another container, HidrateSpark accepts manually added data as well (jealousy free). You can even score tea, coffee and nutritional supplements. I appreciate the ability to manually add drinks from the Apple Watch Series 8 because what good is hydration if you don’t get credit?
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application History tab Provides some additional details including an hourly breakdown and daily drink history. This is useful if you want to enter your behavior patterns and identify when you are running low on water. For me, the answer is always, but especially outside of meal times. During my HidrateSpark Pro Lite review, I developed a habit of screaming one quick bottle in the morning only to know I’d make a dent in my goal by lunch. the Social tab It introduces drinking challenges and lets you connect with friends who are also on a hydration journey.
Finally, who Bottles tabYou can add more Smart Bottles to your account, snooze reminders, or customize your glow. Light color options include rainbow, red, gold, lime green, aqua, blue, violet, or moonlight. There are also special glows for specific occasions such as the Superbowl team colors. As mentioned earlier, you can also create fully custom glows in GlowStudio, though these cost $4.99 to enable. I didn’t start with the studio, but I thought most of the options included were attractive and fun.
Overall, the LED aspect of this smart water bottle is pretty timely. It’s entertaining enough to warrant its existence, and it really grabs your attention. I found myself crunching away a few times only to be alerted by the soft pulsating light that I was lagging behind in my water intake. The LED disc itself is unobtrusive and lasts up to two weeks between charges. When it runs out, it uses a special charging cable included in the box.
The companion app is reliable, intuitive, and annoying enough to be effective without being overly annoying. The interface is simple. You don’t have to write anything about the house but it gets the point across. When you’re ready to see how much you’ve consumed and how much you need to reach your goal, the information is front and center. I also tested the bottle sensors with different amounts of liquid and the measurements were very accurate.
What is not good?
Kaitlyn Cimino/Android Authority
It’s hard to complain about a water bottle that holds water well and also inspires you to drink it, but we’ll give it our best shot. For starters, HidrateSpark Pro Lite is far from cheap. For $70, you can easily buy several reusable bottles and set your reminders to churn. A lot of “dumb” bottles have measurements if you’re committed to tracking your consumption throughout the day. Sure, bright lights are fun, but once the novelty of your personal delirium wears off, HidrateSpark may leave you with buyer’s remorse.
Other shortcomings are entirely subjective. For example, maybe you don’t mind room temperature water. One of the strengths of HidrateSpark Pro Lite is, as the name suggests, that it is light. However, the plastic body that reduces the weight of the bottle provides no temperature control. Unlike an insulated bottle, the HidrateSpark Pro Lite will not keep your drinks cold. On days when I added ice to my water, it melted quickly. The bottle is also not equipped to hold hot liquids, so double duty as your own coffee mug is not an option.
Again, this raises concerns about the price per bottle. The 26-ounce Yeti is only $40, and while it’s not a smart bottle, it does a pretty good job of regulating temperatures. I also spend a lot of time outdoors and don’t want to spend nearly twice as much on a bottle that won’t serve me well on a hot day. Plus, plastic tends to feel cheap and brittle. I didn’t put the device around a group, but I’d be hesitant to pack it for hikes or toss it in a gym bag.
In addition to being pricey, the HidrateSpark Pro lite is relatively small and won’t keep your drinks particularly cold.
Plus, while the Smart Bottle offers a sleek aesthetic, it’s largely because it only holds 24 ounces, or 710 milliliters, of water at a time. If you work from home or stand near a water cooler, this isn’t a big deal. However, many bottles come in much larger and more convenient options. In fact, the stainless steel bottle of the same brand offers a volume of 32 ounces. However, I’m a big fan of bottles that actually fit in my car’s cup holder, which the HidrateSpark Pro Lite does with ease.
In short, this looks like a bottle for very specific use cases. Its size, construction materials, and durability are likely to keep it standing at home or on your desk. Unfortunately, even if that’s exactly what you need it for, it’s rather expensive.
HidrateSpark Pro Lite review: The verdict
Kaitlyn Cimino/Android Authority
We are all creatures of habit. Any tool that helps us build better habits is worth considering. HidrateSpark Pro Lite offers some nifty features and automates users’ hydration tracking. It can provide useful insight into your drinking patterns throughout the day and remind you to keep up with your goals. However, it is also $70.
HidrateSpark Pro Lite automates tracking of your hydration.
That’s a big price to pay for something you can recreate with a pen, pad, and a few premade reminders. If you’re not even someone who struggles to stay hydrated, a smart water bottle may not be a necessity in general. Or, you might be more interested in bottles with alternative features like the LARQ Bottle PureVis ($99).
On the other hand, hydration is essential to overall health, and HidrateSpark Pro Lite is a really powerful product. Eye-catching glows may be exactly what you need to add glow to your flavorless water. It’s a reliable water bottle with accurate sensors and some fun extra features. The company also sells a stainless steel model in several sizes called the HidrateSpark Pro ($79). These models have the same fun features and companion app but will keep your drinks cold all day long.
HidrateSpark Pro Lite
Reminds you to drink water • Fun custom colors
Give your hydration habits a glow
HidrateSpark Pro Lite is a plastic water bottle that takes care of you. Designed to track your cold drink intake, custom lights blink when it’s time to drink, and your total consumption is plotted throughout the day.
Top HidrateSpark Pro Lite FAQs
No, placing the HidrateSpark Pro Lite in your freezer will damage its sensor disc. However, you can add ice to HidrateSpark Pro Lite.
The company does not recommend using its packaging for anything other than water. HidrateSpark also recommends that you do not put hot liquids in your bottle.
Yes! As long as the bottle is empty, the HidrateSpark Pro Lite is TSA approved.
In the companion HidrateSpark app, use the Find My Bottle feature to locate your bottle’s last synced location.