Drinkmate Spritzer

A while back, I reviewed the original Drinkmate carbonator, and gave it my thumbs up.

This time, they sent me their new Spritzer, which is a smaller, more compact unit.

Basically, they got rid of the stand, so it's just the head that attaches to the bottle you're going to carbonate, and a connector to the CO2 tanks.

It's not quite as industrial looking as that sounds, as you can see from the photo, although if you found it in someone's kitchen drawer, you might not know exactly what it is.

The Drinkmate Spritzer came with the smaller water bottles, rather than the larger one that came with the original Drinkmate. It also included two 3-ounce CO2 canisters for carbonating.

First, the operation of these two devices is nearly identical, and they use the same type of bottles, so you can swap between the two devices - for example if you have one at home and one at work. When using a small 3-ounce CO2 canister with the Spritzer, the canister is completely enclosed. The Spritzer can also use the larger 60-liter canister, but then it would be much bulkier. If you're making a lot of fizzy water, the larger canisters might make more sense even though it wouldn't look quite as sleek. But if you want to take the carbonator along on a picnic or tuck it in your desk drawer, the smaller canister, enclosed in the device, might make a lot more sense.

One of the main selling points of the Drinkmates is that you can use them to carbonate any beverage. With other carbonators, you can only carbonate water, then add flavor. That means you can't carbonate things like wine or juice or tea. While I mostly use mine for water, it's kind of fun to carbonate other things.

After I used the Spritzer a few times, I realized there were some distinct advantages to the smaller bottles. For one thing, that's a nice serving size for me. When I used the bigger bottles, I poured the fizzy water into a glass. With the smaller bottles, I drank straight from the bottle.

So I bought extra bottles. And that was even a better idea. You see, cold water carbonates better than cool water, so now I just leave filled bottles in the fridge and I carbonate them when I want them. When I'm done drinking, I clean the used bottle, refill, and tuck it back into the fridge.

Do I like this better than the original Drinkmate? Hmmm. I think I do, since it's smaller. But that's a personal decision.

Since the operation of the two is pretty much the same, I'd say that it's really a tossup as to which is better. The original carbonator doesn't take a lot of counter space, so if you want it handy at all times, you might like that better than a device that you'll tuck in a drawer.

Either way, it's a cool device.

Here's my original review.

I received this as no cost to me; I bought extra bottles.