The Good: Easy to operate, Fun to use, Easy to clean
The Bad: High initial cost/pricy to use
The Basics: My wife’s new Sodastream Home Soda Maker is fun to use, but a lot pricier to use than I hoped before buying it for her.
I’m almost done milking my wife’s twenty-fifth birthday celebration for review purposes. The gift I have held out the longest to review was the Sodastream Home Soda Maker I got for her. I wanted to hold off on reviewing it for as long as possible because I wanted to really test how well it worked. I picked her up the Fizz model Sodastream because my wife had been ogling it in the stores for almost a year. The Fizz model I gifted to her almost four months ago now was a whole starter kit with CO2 cartridge, bottle, and a selection of flavors that allowed us to sample a number of the Sodastream fluids. Since we exhausted the sample pack, we have bought at least a dozen other flavors and in addition to getting my wife something I hoped she would truly love, I had hoped that it would cut down on our soda pop bills. The verdict for the Sodastream Fizz Home Soda Maker is simple: this is a fun-to-use product, but like the Cuisinart ice cream maker (reviewed here!) we have, the operating cost is quite a bit higher than just buying cans of soda pop when they are on sale in bulk at the local grocery store.
Then again, the local grocery store does not have a zero calorie Pink Grapefruit soda.
The Sodastream FIZZ is a tall, cool-looking Home Soda Maker that allows the user to make whatever soda pop they could ever want with about three times the expense and effort of buying bottles and cans of prepackaged soda pop. Given how few generic brands have low-calorie soda pops or sodas like Pink Grapefruit and Orange Mango, the Sodastream Home Soda Maker has a lot of appeal. As well, being able to reuse the soda bottles from the Sodastream and use tap water for making your own soda pop is good for the environment, but after four months of use, the financial and environmental offsets are not yet apparent.
The FIZZ model is a standard Sodastream Home Soda Maker with a red metallic plastic shell designed to accent kitchens that are red, stainless steel or fairly neutral in their coloring scheme.
Making your own soda pop using the FIZZ is fairly easy, as the main ingredients are water and the concentrate Sodastream flavor fluid. The Sodastream is essentially a mixer that makes the soda pop in an exceptionally easy and simple way. The device does nothing more than carbonate ordinary tap water.
The Sodastream FIZZ is for people who don't like the flavors of soda pop or who do not like the expense of paying for soda pop and paying the deposits and then having to take the containers back for the refund. There is a limited amount of creativity for those using the Sodastream Fizz, but it’s mostly just a way to have a great variety of soda pops available to a household without taking up as much space as one usually would with as many cans, bottle, and 2 liters that having a wide selection of soda pops would. The Sodasteam Fizz is not a huge time saver, not a money saver at all and at 18” high, certainly not a space saver. This sleek, red and gray plastic device looks nice, even in my largely stainless steel kitchen.
The FIZZ comes in two parts: the base and the bottle. The base is an easy to clean device that vaguely resembles a drink mixer. The bottles for the Sodastream are specially designed and threaded to twist into the top of the base. The base has a spout at the bottom that goes into the bottle as one twists it into the base. The base is surprisingly durable, not terribly heavy and easy to store.
Without simply repeating the directions on how to make soda pop using the FIZZ (it's in the manual when you purchase this device!), after the CO2 cartridge is screwed into the back of the Home Soda Maker. After filling the bottle with water, simply screw it into the base and then press the bar at the top front of the Sodastream Fizz in order to carbonate the water. Then, just add a capful of flavoring to the carbonated water bottle, reseal the bottle, turn it over once or twice and you have fully mixed soda pop!
This device is simple, easy and generally efficient. You assemble it and it only works when the bar is depressed. This is a remarkably well designed product for ease of assembly and efficiency of purpose; when the carbonator tank is properly inserted, it works just fine. The Fizz Sodastream is virtually impossible to use if it is improperly assembled.
The bottles are irksome in that they cannot be dishwashed or cleaned with soapy water. That means that they have to be cleaned by rinsing the bottles repeatedly so they do not simply taste like the last Sodastream flavor one made. The other irksome aspect of the Sodastream is that when the initial cost, the CO2 cartridge, bottles and flavoring are disproportionately higher than buying soda . . . for several months. After four months, the monetary benefits of the Sodastream are not at all evident.
The Sodastream Fizz is fun, but it is not a costsaver, making it more entertainment than culinary.
For other kitchen appliances, please check out my reviews of:
Samsung Stainless Steel microwave
Hamilton Beach 727 Milkshake maker
Kidde 2 3/4lb. fire extinguisher
5/10
For other home and garden reviews, please check out my Home And Garden Produce Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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