FYI
Klean Kanteen has discontinued our runner-up pick (though you may still be able to find it for sale in places), and replaced it with the 16 oz Rise Tumbler. We’ll test one soon and report back.
February 2023
Occupying a spot somewhere between water bottle and travel mug on the beverage-vessel continuum, the insulated tumbler has, over the past decade, become a great alternative to disposable cups. After leaving 16 insulated tumblers full of Slurpee in the front seat of a hot sedan, we’re convinced that the 20-ounce Hydro Flask All Around Tumbler is the best for most people. In temperatures reaching as high as 112 °F, all the tumblers we tested had an effective insulating value, so they can all keep your drink hot or cold for a few hours. However, the Hydro Flask’s performance and aesthetics—even after a redesign in 2022—make it the winner.
Our favorite tumbler is Hydro Flask’s All Around Tumbler (20 ounces). Unlike a water bottle or a thermos, a tumbler is not for tossing in a bag. It retains both heat and cold only for as long as you need to get from one place to another, and it lets you sip easily while on the move. The tumbler is the ultimate commuter vessel.
Five tumblers stood out during our cold-retention Slurpee test, and an earlier incarnation of the Hydro Flask was in that top five. The Hydro Flask took second place in our heat-retention test, bested by a single degree in temperature, so it will easily keep your coffee hot for the duration of your commute. But the aesthetics were why people loved this tumbler. We chatted up a dozen (or more) people over dinner around a campfire, and they all agreed that the Hydro Flask was easier to hold and more visually pleasing than any of the other 16 models we looked at—and that really mattered to tumbler devotees. At the time, the Hydro Flask had the slimmest, most covetable shape of all the tumblers we looked at and came in eight pleasing powder coats. (We prefer those to plain stainless steel tumblers because those get uncomfortably hot to the touch if left in the sun.)
The current (mid-2022) equivalent of the Hydro Flask tumbler we tested—it now holds 20 ounces, not 22—is about an inch shorter than the original and slightly bigger in girth. It’s not uncomfortably so, but it’s still perceptibly larger in circumference than the old version. (We measured about 3 inches from the base as the spot where we found ourselves naturally grasping the tumblers.) The construction remains the same (double-walled stainless steel), and the tumbler still comes in eight powder-coat colors as well as three other sizes: 12 ounces, 16 ounces, and 28 ounces.
The tiny anti-glug hole in the Hydro Flask’s lid won’t let liquid slosh out when the tumbler’s in a cup holder, but you still can’t toss the tumbler into a backpack and expect no leaks. Photo: Michael Hession
The biggest change is the plastic lid it comes with: not the original insulated lid, with one larger sipping hole and a smaller, anti-glug hole opposite, but an insulated lid with a slider that you can open and close. The lid still has the usual anti-glug hole, which means it’s not entirely spillproof—we’d never toss the tumbler in a tote bag or backpack—but the slider can reduce, for instance, bumpy-road spillages.
Hydro Flask offers a lid with an integrated straw for its tumblers. We’ve tried that lid on the larger version, and it’s great: secure, easy to remove and clean, and fitted with a flexible silicone mouthpiece to prevent soft-palate jabbing. However, the new slider lid’s drink opening is large enough to accommodate a straw; the previous version’s was not.
Finally, although in the past the company had told us that washing its tumblers in the dishwasher or soaking them in hot water might discolor the powder coat, it now says that the tumblers and their coatings are dishwasher safe. (Although you should put the lids in the top rack.) We’ll start washing ours in the dishwasher and will report back if we have any problems.
cited from:
The 3 Best Tumblers of 2023 | Reviews by Wirecutter (nytimes.com)