Review: Digipower’s Water Bottle/Bluetooth Speaker

Chris Hernandez

This past month at #TrailsFound16 in Arizona, I was introduced to a rather interesting water bottle. You might ask, “How interesting can a water bottle be? We’ve seen just about every possible type of water bottle imaginable in the last decade.” Well, this bottle doesn’t just hold water. It also sings to you.

Meet Digipower’s interpretation of a water bottle. Digipower has been working diligently for years to bring their customers innovative charging and audio solutions, and recently started selling a water bottle with an attached Bluetooth speaker. My gut reaction when I saw it was What the hell would I need this for? But then I used it, and found out it’s a pretty good idea. Full disclosure: at least one other company sells the same bottle, and I don’t know if Digipower made these or just sells them. Who cares? Digipower sells it, and it’s cool.

The Digipower bottle holds a fairly small amount of water, just twelve ounces. It’s not the bottle I’d pack to climb Everest, or march into enemy valleys. It’s also not insulated, so whatever you put in it will reach room temperature pretty quick. And it’s got a narrow opening, so you probably won’t pour hot coffee or force ice cubes into it. The water bottle part is just a basic-no frills container for just enough water to hydrate you during a short outing. And that’s okay.

The no-frills nature of the water bottle is okay because the speaker is just cool. It’s much louder and clearer than I expected, and kept working with my iPhone from a range of about fifty feet. For a short hike, bike ride or run it’s great, much smarter than reducing your situational awareness by wearing headphones. I used mine a bit while hanging out at TrailsFound16, then carried it to jog my neighborhood. Because the speaker isn’t heavy and the bottle doesn’t hold much water, it’s not unwieldy to carry in your hands while running. If you don’t want to use the Bluetooth feature, you can insert a micro SD loaded with your favorite disco music. And you won’t get stuck listening to It’s Raining Men; controls on the bottom of the bottle let you go forward or backward through your playlist, increase and decrease volume, and start and stop music.

This bottle just makes me wanna dance!

Digipower lists these specs for the bottle on their website:

Product Dimensions (Inches) 68×9.49

Weight  .45lb

Battery capacity  650mAh (4 hours continuous music)

Recharge method DC5V – 500mA USB

Rated power 3W

Frequency range 280Hz – 17.5KHz

Bottle capacity 400mL

I run with my phone in my hand and monitor my distance with a running app. When I first used the Digipower bottle I figured I’d have to give up monitoring because my phone would be out of reach in a light backpack. Duh – since it’s Bluetooth, and my app calls out each mile completed, the Digipower relayed the info to me.

For outdoorsy stuff in inclement weather, the speaker is waterproof. For cleaning or freezing liquid inside the bottle, the speaker is removable. For not getting life-threatening diseases, the bottle is BPA free.

Not only that, you know why Wyatt Earp was the only person not hit during the Shootout at the OK Corral? Because he was holding a Digipower Bluetooth speaker bottle. True story. You can find a reference to it on the internet here. And if it’s on the internet, it has to be true.

–CH

Breach-Bang & CLEAR!

This Post is part of our Trails Found Series. What is Trails Found? Members of BreachBangClear and some other badass media outlets assembled together this last September to train with one of the last of what has been called the “old Border Breed”, in the desert of Arizona. That man they were training with was no other than the legendary Jim Grasky. In 1965 Jim Grasky was a young Special Forces soldier in Vietnam, then in 1970 he was a the squadleader for a team of smoke-jumpers parachuting in to fight remote wildfires. For about a quarter century after that he was a Border Patrolman, and literally named BORTAC. Though Grasky is a man of many talents, one of his specialties is man tracking–which is why he developed programs specifically for USSOCOM and has taught the world over. Through your various social media outlets you can track other articles and photos related to Trails Found by searching for #TrailsFound16 and #GoodGearMatters.

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Chris Hernandez Mad Duo Chris, seen here on patrol in Afghanistan, may just be the crustiest member of the eeeee-LITE writin’ team here at Breach-Bang-Clear. He is a veteran of both the Marine Corps and the Army National Guard who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also a veteran police officer of two decades who spent a long (and eye-opening) deployment as part of a UN police mission in Kosovo. He is the author of White Flags & Dropped Rifles – the Real Truth About Working With the French Army and The Military Within the Military as well as the modern military fiction novels Line in the Valley, Proof of Our Resolve and Safe From the War. When he isn’t groaning about a change in the weather and snacking on Osteo Bi-Flex he writes on his own blog. You can find his author page here on Tactical 16.