Hydrive Kiwi Strawberry A

Moving right along with the six new Hydrive flavors released rather recently, I find myself face-to-face with a tall fuchsia bottle, Hydrive Kiwi Strawberry Alertness formula. As I explained in the Blue Raspberry review, Hydrive launched six new products, each with a designated purpose. Being allocated to alertness, Hydrive adds in some neat, though standard ingredients such as Guarana, Panax Ginseng, Vitamin B3, B5, B6, and B12. These are found in your every day Monster, along with caffeine, taurine, L-Carnitine, and L-Arginine. I'm interested to see how the simple ingredients in the drink compare to an average Monster, Rockstar, or Amp. In terms of design, the drink is packaged in a transparent bottle, with a sticker label stretching around the bottle. On the sticker, Hydrive mentions alertness and focus a couple of times, and a brief description of the product. It has a basic yellow-purple design behind a standard black font reading, "Hydrive Energy". Lastly, the bottle isn't a complete 16 ounces, but not far off at about 15.5 ounces per bottle.

Tearing open the bottle, there's not too much of a potent scent. As far as I can tell, it's a rather bright strawberry tang with the kiwi complimenting well. Taking a few sips, the flavor is just that. At first, the drink tastes stronger, like a tropical mix you find at the grocery store, then slightly fades with each sip, most likely due to the lack of much pure sugar. Unlike a few kiwi strawberry drinks I've tried, Hydrive does a nice job balancing the amount of each fruit in the drink. Instead of a prominent berry, there's a good, benign helping of kiwi. Although kiwi isn't common in drinks, it really does pack a punch of good flavor. If you've ever tried a kiwi, you know that it's real tart and sweet, while maintaining a distinct flavor that's unlike any fruit or vegetable out there. While strawberry, on the other hand is a much more common flavor in desserts, drinks, and salads. It's not as tart as a kiwi, but it complements nicely with other fruits and sugars. Together, I like the blend Hydrive uses: tart, sweet, and smooth. Although the drink is low on sugar, the fruits taste well natural, not artificial. Because it's not carbonated, the Hydrive goes down well like a fruit drink, without being as thick as one. Overall, a refreshing sugar free drink, and like the Blue Raspberry, exceptionally formulated.

Per bottle, you get only 30 calories, and 6 total grams of sugar; it's a good on-the-go drink if you want good energy, while wanting to watch your calorie intake. You also get about 20 milligrams of niacin, 2 milligrams of Vitamin B6, 6 milligrams of Vitamin B12, 10 milligrams of Pantothenic acid, 140 milligrams of sodium, and 50 milligrams of Potassium. In the bottle, there's also purified water, sucrose, citric acid, sodium citrate, caffeine, natural flavor, sodium benzoate, taurine, sucralose, gum arabic, magnesium chloride, hexahydrate, glycerol ester of wood rosin, Red #40, Blue #1, and all the listed Alertness Formula in the first paragraph, as well. Within about thirty minutes of finishing the bottle, I find myself more jittery than the last Hydrive I had. The formula for alertness doesn't have many differences between itself and a regular Monster or Rockstar. The kick is decent nevertheless, but definitely not as alert as I had anticipated. Aside from that, a great sugar free drink; I cannot wait to review the final Hydrive on my part, and hear from Jeff about his.

Taste: 7.7 - A refreshing equal blend of tart kiwi and sweet strawberry
Kick: 7 - An average kick full of hyper/jitteriness, and some alertness
Overall: 7.7 - Definitely a recommended drink if you're into sugar free drinks, and don't want a Gatorade

Reviewed by: Chan

Snapple Antioxidant Water Strawberry Acai

I couldn't review just one Snapple without reviewing it's sibling with similar energy drink ingredients in it as well, the Snapple Antioxidant Water Strawberry Acai. I was so impressed with the Dragonfruit that I delayed a few reviews just to get in this review to find out how it compared to the Dragonfruit. Now, I found this at my every day grocery store, and so can you, so I doubt you'll have trouble locating a bottle or two of these. Besides last review, I haven't had a Snapple in years, and I must say, they have really improved their line of refreshing drinks, including their newest line of "healthy" water. I believe that strawberry is commonly messed up in energy drinks because they're either sweetened wrong, or there's not enough actual strawberry flavor in that. I'm curious to find out how Snapple takes on their own version of strawberry, especially with acai mixed in. The bottle design is similar to that of the Dragonfruit, only with pinkish-red rain drops, and some with clear areas inside of them. The background is a simple white color with a complimenting cloudy light pink color, which is from the drink color by the way. Well, let's twist this one open to find out how good or bad Snapple made it, compared to the Dragonfruit

It simply twists off in one sweeping motion with plastic crackling noises and reveals an aroma much similar to the Vitamin Water energy drinks and the Dragonfruit, you know, very light and floral. The color is a cloudy and translucent pink hue, but with some lighter color mixed in, perhaps water, thus the reason it's 'watered-down', or diluted. Snapple Antioxidant Strawberry Acai definitely provided a flavor I wasn't expecting. The first thing I notice in this drink is the diluted strawberry taste, with a lot of earthiness. The next part of the flavor seems to be more acai-flavored and more earthy when you first taste it. Even though the flavor isn't the best, it really is refreshing, especially after an evening full of exercise. After drinking almost all of it, I found traces of melon and traces of mixed berry as well as more earthiness perhaps from the acai berry. I'd say that if you wanted the buzz from one of these waters, you might want to stick with the Dragonfruit. However, if Dragonfruit isn't your thing, like if it's too sweet or too intense, Strawberry Acai is pretty refreshing to drink. With slightly more sugar, there's slightly more gumminess, this one being a bit more noticeable and thicker in the mouth. Overall, this drink is meant to be chugged, not enjoyed, because if it were meant to be enjoyed, the earthiness in the acai will overpower your taste buds.

The ingredients are mostly the same as the Dragonfruit antioxidant water but a few differences linger. There is: purified water, sucrose, citric acid, natural flavors, potassium citrate, calcium lactate, modified corn starch, ginseng, caffeine, guarana, vegetable juices, acacia gum, ribose, niacin, ECGC, and B vitamins. Like I mentioned before, Snapple does a great job by putting in not just a few energy ingredients, but putting in more complex ingredients like ribose and electrolytes, which are just two of the many types of good ingredients for the body. This time, they only used vegetable juices for the color, which is reasonable because it gave more of a cloudy color and was less concentrated. Per 20 ounce bottle, you get slightly more than the dragonfruit, 140 calories and 32g of sugar. That is another one of those odd drink where there's more sugar than its sibling though it was much less sweeter. This is a perfect example for one of those types. Well, in terms of energy, you get 60mg of caffeine and in terms of antioxidants, you get 165mg of EGCG (Vitamins A and E). All in all, as much as I was excited to review this drink, I was slightly disappointed as it was much less sweeter and a bit more bitter.

Taste: 7 - The taste was somewhat sweet, but the strawberry was diluted and the acai overpowered the drink with bitter earthiness
Kick: 6.5 - The nice blend of electrolytes, caffeine, guarana, ginseng, ribose, and B Vitamins gave me a solid hour and a half boost
Overall: 6.8 - Hm, although it was refreshing, I recommend you try the Dragonfruit instead

Reviewed by: Chan