This article is part of our series Battle of the Brands, in which we compare category-leading products to their counterparts to determine which are actually worth your money.
Over the years, I’ve tested more than 25 of the best water bottles to figure out which are actually worth your money. Two of the most popular right now — the Owala FreeSip and Yeti Rambler — are truly some of the best water bottles money can buy.
However, even though they’re both fantastic, each has pros and cons that might suit your lifestyle better than the other. That’s why I tested the Owala and the Yeti head-to-head to help you finally find your forever bottle.
Deemed the overall best water bottle in our full guide, the Yeti Rambler is astonishingly durable. It’s got a great cap and can keep your water cold for long enough, but the real reason you should buy the Rambler is if you want a water bottle that can survive major damage for years to come.
The Owala FreeSip stands out thanks to its ingenious lid, which lets you sip from a straw or chug through a larger opening. If you need an emotional support water bottle and love drinking out of a straw, picking the FreeSip is a no-brainer.
Owala FreeSip vs. Yeti Rambler at a glance
| Dimensions | 3.4 x 10.9 in. |
|---|---|
| Weight | 21.8 oz. |
| Leakproof? | Yes |
| Available sizes | 12, 18, 26, 36, 46 and 64 oz. |
| Lid options | 5 |
| Price | $40 |
| Dimensions | 3.4 x 10.7 in. |
|---|---|
| Weight | 15.1 oz. |
| Leakproof? | Yes |
| Available sizes | 19, 24, 32 and 40 oz. |
| Lid options | 1 |
| Price | $33 |
Drinkability
After testing so many water bottles, I’ve realized that when it comes to certain things like temperature regulation, most bottles perform quite similarly. Any double-wall vacuum-insulated bottle you buy will keep ice water cold much longer than you’ll need it to. One feature I’ve found that does separate one bottle from another, however, is how easy they are to drink out of.
Gone are the days of spilling water all over your shirt because you tried to drink through a wide-mouth bottle while walking. Now bottles make it easier than ever to drink as much or as little as you want. A few years ago, we named the Yeti Rambler the best water bottle for this very reason. It used to only have an ultrawide opening, but the brand started shipping the bottles with its chug cap standard. This cap has two parts, and if you screw off the top, it reveals a small spout that lets you chug water as fast as you want without any risk of spilling. But if you take both parts of the lid off, it reveals the Rambler’s huge opening, which means filling it up with ice and water is simple.
While the Yeti Rambler has the best lid I’ve ever tried, as soon as I got my hands on the Owala FreeSip, I changed my mind. The FreeSip’s lid also hides an ultrawide opening that makes filling up easy, but what sets it apart is its 2-in-1 spout hidden beneath a locking flip top. A small opening near the front connects to a straw, while a larger opening right behind it acts as a chug spout. This means that if you want to sip at your desk while working, you can drink out of the straw, but if you just got back from a run and need water instantly, you can chug too. The optional straw is extra useful if you want to drink out of your bottle while driving since you don’t have to raise the bottle to drink. Plus, the FreeSip is easier to operate with one hand, making it the perfect road trip buddy.
During testing, the FreeSip’s 2-in-1 spout was truly a pleasure to drink from. I preferred it over the Rambler’s spout, and if you love straw bottles, there’s no question the Owala is for you. In the past, I hadn’t been a fan of straws for a few main reasons. The first is that they’re terrible to clean. However, the Owala’s straw is dishwasher-safe, so you can forget that. The second big reason is straws tend to shoot out water when you gain elevation, like when you drive into the mountains or when you’re on a flight. Since the FreeSip has two openings in its lid, which can better equalize pressure, it’s less prone to drenching you in water in these situations. I haven’t brought it on a flight yet, but when I drove from Boulder, Colorado, up to the ski slopes at Eldora — a gain of over 3,000 feet — the Owala didn’t explode.
The Yeti Rambler does have an optional straw lid you can purchase with the bottle if you know that’s what you want, but this lid doesn’t have a second opening and isn’t as versatile as the FreeSip’s. You could get both the straw lid and the chug cap for different use cases if you really wanted to, but since the Yeti is already more expensive than the Owala, tacking on an extra $13 isn’t exactly the cheapest option.
Durability
Another huge difference between various water bottles is their durability. This may not be a problem for most, but I am notorious for dropping almost everything I touch (I think it makes me an especially good product tester). To test which bottle was more durable, I dropped both three times from 4 feet above concrete on its lid and three times from 4 feet above concrete on its body. This was quite a brutal test, and when dropping the bottles for our full water bottle guide, nearly every bottle I dropped was unusable afterward, including the Owala.
The one bottle that seemed like it was barely dropped at all? The Yeti Rambler. It’s much heavier and bulkier than the Owala, but its beefier build meant it was the most durable water bottle I’ve ever tested. After the drops, it had some small scuffs and a barely noticeable dent on its bottom, but besides that, it was as good as new. The Owala, on the other hand, had a broken lid that meant it wasn’t leakproof anymore, and part of the bottom got quite a big dent, making it wobbly and unstable when placed on a flat surface.
After my initial testing, I’ve been swapping between the Yeti and Owala as my daily bottles, and I’ve been really happy with both. But I recently took the Yeti with me climbing at a local mountain in Boulder, and as I was packing up it rolled down a large rock and fell over 3 feet off a ledge. Unsurprisingly, the Rambler was completely fine. It had some small cosmetic scratches from rolling on the rough rock, but it fared extremely well in this accidental (but very informative) real-world test.
Temperature regulation and cleanliness
You may think temperature regulation is the best way to tell bottles apart, but as mentioned above, most bottles perform similarly in this department. When I filled a bunch of them with ice water for my larger tests, it took 48 hours for most of them to have any meaningful change in temperature. And do you really need to have ice in your bottle after a full day?
However, it is important to note that out of all the bottles I tested, the Rambler did the worst regarding temperature regulation. After 24 hours, liquid inside the Rambler rose from 31.7 degrees Fahrenheit to 39 degrees, while the FreeSip only rose 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the same time frame. In day-to-day use, the Rambler still keeps water as cold as you need it, but if you really care about having a more efficient bottle, you may be happier with the FreeSip.
Whether your bottle keeps your water cold for 24 hours or 72, you’ll need to wash it eventually. Plenty of double-wall vacuum-insulated bottles aren’t dishwasher-safe, but thankfully, the Rambler is. The bottle and the cap can each be thrown in the dishwasher so you don’t have to deal with pesky bottle brushes. The FreeSip’s lid is also dishwasher-safe (you don’t have to worry about hand-washing the straw), but the bottle itself isn’t. However, since the FreeSip’s opening is so huge, it isn’t as annoying as others to stick a bottle brush or even a normal sponge inside.
Bottom line
Both the Yeti Rambler and Owala FreeSip are fantastic water bottles. You’ll be happy with either, but if drinkability is your No. 1 priority, or if being able to sip through a straw or chug through a spout without swapping lids sounds nice (it really is), the FreeSip should be your bottle. However, if you don’t care as much about drinkability and are scared of dropping your water bottle and ruining it, buy the Yeti Rambler. The Rambler’s extreme durability is miles better than any other bottle I’ve tested, and if you’re a straw lover, you can buy the bottle with a straw lid too.