Owala FreeSip Kids Review: Months of Walks, Drops and Daily Refills

Every Saturday morning a little before eight, my granddaughter Hattie stands in my kitchen and asks me the same question. 'Grandma, is there water in the bag?' For a long time the answer was a plastic bottle that leaked into my tote, and the follow-up question came about ten minutes into every walk. I am sixty-one, I taught elementary science for thirty-one years, and I still did not solve the water problem until this year.

In February I took Hattie to Mammoth Cave in old sneakers with that leaky bottle and a thin poncho. She got wet socks, a blister on her left heel, and we turned back after about a mile. That night I sat at the kitchen table and ordered five things in one Amazon order: a pack, boots, binoculars, a rain jacket, and the Owala FreeSip Kids 16 oz bottle. Everything arrived within the week. Our first walk with the lot was the first Saturday of March, so the Owala has been in our routine for about eight months and roughly thirty Saturdays.

How I've Used It

I want to be clear about what this bottle is for in our house, because it is not the bottle that goes up the trail. On Mammoth Cave mornings the water is in the pack Hattie wears on her back, and the Owala stays in the back of the silver Forester for the ride home. Where it earns its place is everything else: the Lost River Cave paths in town when we are out under an hour, the car, and school. That is most days of the week, which is why I have an opinion about it.

The routine has not changed in eight months. I fill it before we leave, drop two or three ice cubes in through the wide mouth, screw the lid down, and hand it to her in the driveway. She carries it by the loop. At Lost River she holds it herself for the whole loop, which matters more than it sounds. Before this, I carried everything and she carried nothing, and by the end of a walk she was tired in a way that had nothing to do with her legs.

The first couple of weeks the push button gave her trouble. Small thumbs, a button that takes a firm press, and a lid that has to be held steady while you work it. She handed it back to me twice on the second Saturday. By the fourth Saturday she was doing it without looking, and she has not asked me since. That is the entire learning curve, as far as I can tell.

Eight months is long enough for a novelty to wear off. It has not worn off. She still picks it up on her way out the door without being reminded, and she has not lost it once, which for a third grader is a run of good habit I did not expect to last.

The Lid, the Loop, and the Lock

The lid does two jobs and does both of them well. Press the button and the top flips open. The carry loop folds over the button and locks it shut, which is the detail I did not think I would care about and now would not buy without. Hattie is eight. She sets things down without looking. The lock is the difference between a bottle in a bag and a puddle in a bag.

The spout gives her two ways to drink from one bottle. She can sip upright through the built-in straw, or tilt it back and swig from the opening. She uses the straw in the car, because a straw means she does not have to tip it while I am turning onto the highway. She uses the swig opening at the trailhead at Lost River, standing around, taking her time. I have watched her switch between the two without thinking about it. Nobody had to teach her, and I never had to explain it.

There has been exactly one leak in eight months. June, in the Forester, the bottle lying on its side in a cup holder with the lid left unlocked. A small puddle, mostly water, a minute with a cloth. Every time the loop has been folded over, the bottle has come out of a bag dry. I have stopped checking it. In March I checked it constantly.

It went down the stone steps at Lost River in June. There is a small dent near the base, and it still holds ice.

The June Drop on the Stone Steps

The steps down to the water at Lost River are stone, uneven, and a little slick after rain. In June Hattie went down on them with the bottle in her hand. The bottle landed first. I heard it hit and I braced for the crack of plastic splitting along a seam. There was no crack. There is a small dent near the base, about the size of my fingertip, and a scuff on the side.

It has worked ever since. Same lid, same button, no rattle when I shake it. The dent does not bother her at all. It bothers me slightly, and every time I notice it I think about what a plastic bottle would have done on those steps. We have not dropped it from anything taller than that, and I am not going to test it, so I will only tell you what happened to ours.

That is the honest summary of the body of this bottle after eight months: one dent, one scuff, no failure. The outside has a slightly dull look to it now from going in and out of a bag and being set down on limestone. It does not look new. It looks used, which is what I would expect from something an eight year old carries thirty Saturdays in a row.

What It Does With Cold and Ice

The mouth is wide enough to drop ice cubes into without a fight. That sounds like a small thing until you have tried to get ice into a narrow-necked bottle in a hot car with a child waiting. The walls are double-wall stainless steel, so the outside stays dry and does not sweat onto a car seat or into a school bag next to paper.

On a hot July morning I filled it with water and three cubes before we left, left it in the car while we walked the paths at Lost River, and there was still ice rattling in it when we came back. The listing says up to 24 hours. I have not run a test anywhere near that long and I am not going to claim one. What I can say is that a July afternoon in a parked car in Kentucky did not melt ours out.

Cleaning is the part that reviews tend to skip over, so I will not skip it. I have hand washed the cup since the first week and put only the lid on the top rack of the dishwasher. The wide opening makes the cup a two minute job with a bottle brush, and I have never had to go hunting in the corners for anything. If you are the kind of household that wants to put the whole bottle in the machine and walk away, this is worth knowing before you order rather than after.

Where It Fits and Where It Doesn't

Sixteen ounces is the whole story. For an eight year old on a two mile loop in under an hour, it is right. On a genuinely hot day it is gone before we turn around, and I refill it from my own bottle back at the car. That is not a fault in the bottle, it is arithmetic, but I would rather say it plainly than have a parent find out in July. It is also 322 grams empty, and Hattie carries it the whole way without complaint, which she would not do with a heavier bottle.

At 3.24 inches wide and 8.84 inches tall, it sits in a cup holder and stands on a desk, and it takes up less room in a school bag than the wide bottles some of her classmates carry. It never goes inside the pack on Mammoth Cave days. We tried that once in March and she handed it back to me before we reached the trailhead. The pack is her water on those walks, and a second bottle was just weight she did not want.

One more thing, because I have watched it happen over the year. The Owala has made her more willing to carry her own things. She is responsible for it in the car, she packs it on school mornings, and she has not lost it once since March. I do not think that is a property of stainless steel. I think it is because it is hers and nobody else's, and children take care of the things they consider their own.

What Eight Months of Saturdays Has Done to It

I keep waiting for something to fail, and nothing has. The button still flips the lid open on the first press. The lock still holds it shut. The straw is intact and has not gone cloudy in the way that straws in cheap bottles do. The seal still seats properly, which is the part I expected to go first, given how often it is opened and closed in a week.

The inside has stayed clean with hand washing and a brush. There is no smell in it, which I cannot say about the plastic bottle it replaced, the one that started to taste like a swimming pool by June. I rinse it every evening and wash it properly twice a week, and it has held up to that without any special attention from me.

If I am honest about the small frustrations, there are two. The button is stiff enough that a four year old would struggle and an eight year old needed a couple of weeks. And the capacity means I am refilling it more often than I refill my own. Neither of those is a reason not to buy it. They are reasons to buy the right thing for the right job.

Who This Is For

This is for a parent or grandparent of a child somewhere around five to twelve who needs that child to carry and open their own water on short walks, in the car, and at school. It is for the adult who is tired of being the water carrier. The push button and the lock are the two things that make it work at that age, and the loop means it can hang off a finger while a child climbs stone steps or gets into a car.

It also suits the household that already has a bigger water carrier for real trail days and wants something smaller for everything else. That is exactly what happened here. The bottle gets used on more days of the week than the pack does, and it cost me nothing in effort to make it part of the routine.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if this is going to be the only water on a long hike. On a warm day sixteen ounces does not last a child two hours on a trail, and you will end up carrying it and refilling it for them. That is the job for a pack with a reservoir, not for this. Skip it if you want a bottle that goes in the machine whole and comes out done, because ours has never been washed that way and I would not start now. Skip it if you want something that still looks new after a season, because ours has a dent near the base and a scuff on the side and it has earned both.

And skip it if your child is still at the age where a lid is a toy. The lock is good, but it is not a promise, and the one leak we had came from a lid that was left open on purpose. Every bottle I have ever handed a child has leaked at least once. This one has leaked once in eight months, which is a record in my house, not a guarantee in yours.