The best water flavoring should add a punch of big, bold flavor to your drink without much effort, time, or money. Water flavor enhancers are great for school lunch boxes and camping trips. Leave a few in your car or at your desk at work to spice up those 64 ounces of H2O you’re obligated to drink every day.
Whether you crave the taste of iced tea, are big on berries, or like lemonade, we have a water flavoring for you. We tried a wide selection of water flavor enhancers, both generic and name-brand, for this taste test. After mixing numerous powders and liquids into water, we found the five best for you next mug of flavored water.
- Bolero Advanced Hydration Sugar-Free Iced Tea Sachets
If you know me, you know I hate things that are sugar free. Not foods that are naturally sugar free, but processed sugar-free products. They always have such a weird taste. I’d rather just not eat the thing than eat a sugar-free, chemical-y tasting, diet version of the thing. Bolero Advanced Hydration Sugar-Free Tea Sachets taste good, though. I tried them at a food convention and was shocked by the flavor. They make flavored water that actually tastes like a lightly sweetened tea and not a diet drink. Good job, Bolero, for making one of the best water flavorings out there.
Related: Best Iced Tea
Credit: Merc /
- Great Value Lemonade
This water flavor enhancer makes a great classic lemonade with just one squeeze. It’s sweet but not too sweet, and zippy without being sour. You can add just a little to your water for a lightly lemon-ed ice water or you can give your beverage a more generous squirt for a classic lemonade so good that it almost tastes homemade. And one of its best features is the price. It’s so unbelievably cheap. A great taste and a great price? You love to see it.
Related: Best Hard Lemonade
Credit: Merc / Walmart
- Market Pantry Grape Liquid Water Enhancer Drops
If you like grape-flavored things, this liquid water flavoring is giving full grape and I love it. I was shocked to find out I liked this a smidge more than grape Kool-Aid! It’s a little grape-ier. Just a little bit of this squeezed into water and you have a tasty grape drink. It’s not particularly nuanced and I think that’s nice. It promises grape flavor and you get grape flavor. It’s one of the best water flavorings if you just want something sweet and fun.
Related: Best Grape Jelly
Credit: Merc / Target
- Kool-Aid Tropical Punch
Listen, before you get on my case, let me say this: All Kool-Aid is delicious. Grab any form of any flavor of Kool-Aid and you will be happy. That being said, their Tropical Punch outshines every other tropical punch water enhancer on the market, so it earned one of the top spots on this list. It’s perfectly balanced. No one fruit is more prominent than the other. It’s wonderful! And it’s one of our best water flavorings.
Related: Best Fruit Punch
Credit: Merc / Walmart
- True Lemon Strawberry Lemonade
I don’t know why you’d ever make lemonade again when you could just buy True Lemon Strawberry Lemonade. It’s so sweet and tangy and citrusy. You get both strawberry and lemon and not just some sweet mystery liquid. I ended up bringing all of these home and drinking one a day. I couldn’t get enough of this stuff. Plus, it’s made with natural ingredients like crystallized lemon, beet powder, and cane sugar. I love how simple and delicious this is and I will continue to buy it.
Related: Best Strawberry Ice Cream
Credit: Merc / Walmart
Best Sugar-Free
Best Budget
Best Fruit Flavor
Fruit Punch
Best of the Best
Other Products We Tried:
Great Value Grape, Kool-Aid Cherry, Crystal Light Strawberry Lemonade, MiO Sweet Tea, Great Value Energy Berry Blast, Crystal Light Berry Sangria, Skittles, Crush, Celsius
Share your favorite water enhancers with us using #SporkedTasteTest for a chance to be featured on our social pages!
Most of these are worse for you than the sugar versions. Sucralose is genotoxic, aspartame is just absolutely terrible for you in general and True Lemon’s Stevia has erythritol.
Bolero has sucralose and possibly erythritol in their stevia.
Great Value has sucralose.
Market Pantry has sucralose plus it’s from Target soo that’s another reason not to get it.
Kool-aid has sucralose and the liquid drops from them have aspartame.
True Lemon has erythritol and the Strawberry flavor is one of the worst flavors from True Lemon.
Bobelo, carbonates slightly, solid flavor and sweetened with stevia that lacks erythritol, you can call them and confirm on that. The only downside is they have limited flavors. 4 regular flavors and 2 with caffeine. Orchard, Berry, Lavender Lemonade, and Pina Colada. With Peach Mango and Cherry Vanilla as their caffeinated versions. You’re really just better off buying something pretty inoculous like Monin’s syrup and mixing a drink that way, sure it has sugar, sure it has calories, but it’s not actively toxic and will still come in under soda or juice unless you go overboard adding it.
I wish I could drink the grapes and tropical punches but red 40 gets me sick. If you know good tasting ones without the red 40 I’d love to hear of them. Thanks!
I appreciate you doing this article and I’m glad the true lemon won. I’m constantly in the search for no artificial sweeteners in a drink packet. I hate the taste of artificial sweeteners and with the new research that sucralose causes DNA damage. Most of the time I can only find drinks for athlete’s which contains a bunch of salt with no fake sugars. It would be awesome if you could find some more of these products I could try. So far I’m using scratch, which is good but high in salt.
Except True Lemon’s Stevia has erythritol in it so it increases your risk of heart attack and stroke. Try Bobelo, it uses Stevia without the erythritol so if you liked True Lemon for the Stevia inclusion then Bobelo is just better, better flavor as well IMO.
Surprisingly, Jordan neglected to mention an important fact regarding the no sugar one. What kind of sweetener is used?
I agree with this. I want real sugar. That fake stuff tastes nasty.
It’s sucralose it’s genotoxic (damages your DNA) it also has acesulfame potassium.
I will try the ones I haven’t yet on your list. My top 5 are.
1- Klass Hibiscus Berry Aqua Frescas
2- Sonic Cherry Limeade mixed with True Lemon Peach Lemonade
3- Sonic Ocean Water also good mixed with True Lemon Watermelon Limeade
4- Klass Cucumber Lemonade Aqua Frescas
5- Almost all of the Wal-Mart brand varieties.
This team is always so right. Kool-Aid Tropical is fantastic.