Amphipod PURErun Stainless Steel Water Bottle Review – Trail Running Gear
By David Hanenburg on 16 Jul 2010 at 10:32 am | Tagged as: product reviews
Amphipod has recently delivered a stainless steel handheld water bottle ready for the trails, called their PURErun series.
Being a stainless steel bottle fan, I purchased the Amphipod PURErun Handheld. As exciting as water bottles can ever be, I was quite curious in hydra-testing it.
Glamour Shot
She might have a little dust on her but I think she cleaned up pretty well.
Out of the Box
My first impression of the 16 oz Amphipod PURErun was its clean, BA look. Something about the simple black color gave it a bunch of cool points in my eyes. Those cool points can quickly turn into fool points if it didn’t perform. I looked forward to the upcoming drive.
What else caught my eyes?
The Zippered Pouch
The nicely sized pouch is attached to the outside of the cushioned adjustable hand-strap and can comfortable hold a couple gels and have a bit of additional wiggle room (maybe a key, salt tabs, TP). It is a nice size – not too big to make it an annoyance, not too small to be useless.
(Two Hammer gels easily tucked inside.)
Some of you may know that I like those little key-hooks. I looked and looked inside the pocket and nowhere to be found. Bummer.
The Sleeve
Where is the stainless steel bottle? Tucked underneath the insulating sleeve. This made the bottle quite comfortable to hold and added a bit of grippiness as compared to holding a smooth steel bottle.
The Overcap/Spout
Why the attached cap (they call it an overcap)? I pulled it off to find out. Underneath was the pure silicone spout (BPA-free) that was ready to hydrate whenever gravity allowed. So flow it will, unless something exists to plug it. Fortunately, on the inside of the cap exists a plug that fits snuggly into the spout to stop the fluids from escaping.
The overcap and base of the spout was also threaded to seriously lock the overcap down. Not sure if I would need/use this or not.
The Mouth
This is one of times when a big mouth is celebrated. Ease of cleaning and simple fill/re-fill is a bottle requirement for nearly any runner. After a quick twist of the cap, you could see the nice sized mouth. Check!
(A few water droplets still hanging around from an earlier run.)
Size
The Amphipod PURErun bottle is slightly smaller than your typical handheld and holds less fluids (16 oz vs. 20-22 oz). Here is a mugshot of the PURErun with the Nathan Quickdraw Plus (my review).
Test Drive
Enough of the small talk, time to address whether the PURErun is cool or fool.
I loaded the bottle up with ice, filled with water, and pushed down the overcap till the internal plug popped within the spout. Then out the door.
The first test. How did it feel in the hand? Quite comfortable. The insulating provides a very nice surface to wrap your hand around. I then tightened the adjustable strap to snug up again the hand. So far, so good.
Now for one of the more serious tests in my mind. Would water leak out of the overcap or would it pop off if it was not screwed down? I really didn’t want to have to unscrew the overcap every time I wanted a drink. So I twisted my wrist up, down, and around – not a drop leaked out. The overcap remained attached. Cool!
I wanted to take a quick drink before taking off. Popped off the overcap and then my attention was taken somewhere else as my wrist relaxed. The water flowed like a waterfall…to the ground. Oops. This is one gotcha if you take off the overcap and get distracted. There is some serious flow rate with this spout so wet toes are possible.
I did say serious flow-rate! 
Throughout the run, the bottle was very comfortable and functional. Since I put ice in the bottle, some condensation occasionally dripped off the bottom of the bottle but not a drop out of the overcap.
I was also happy that the attached strap at the base of the bottle remained snuggly attached and did not slide off like can sometimes happen with Amphipod’s Hydraform Handheld (my review) when you take your hand out of the handstrap.
Girl Thoughts
My wife has also ran with the bottle a couple times and was also pleased with the bottle and how it felt with her smaller hands. Plus the pocket was a nice place to put her gotta-have chapstick.
We both give the PURErun a definite – cool!
Cleaning
Obviously cleaning inside the bottle – no big deal.
The one area that can be tough to clean or not clean at all is the spout area. For the PURErun, you will not have any green stuff growing because of the simplicity and accessibility of cleaning this area up.
Simply, unscrew the cap.
Pinch the spout and push through the cap.
Green fuzzy stuff – be gone!
Overall Impressions
The Amphipod PURErun Handheld (16 oz) delivers a stainless steel running bottle that is both casual training and race ready. It would be a great bottle for that out-the-door short to moderate run/race or a longer run when you have access to additional water.
You do pay a premium for this bottle as compared to your standard BPA-free plastic handheld and it holds less water than the typical handheld (16 oz vs. 20-21 oz).
If stainless steel interests you, the Amphipod PURErun Handheld is a high quality product worth a look.
You can purchase the Amphipod PURErun Handheld and receive an Endurance Buzz visitor discount at Running Warehouse.
Simply…
- Click Running Warehouse
- Submit the displayed Endurance Buzz visitor discount code. You will see the discount noted in your shopping cart.
- Now you can go to the Amphipod PURErun Handheld.
Happy Hydrating.
Be active – Feel the buzz!
David – EnduranceBuzz.com
About the author
David Hanenburg is the passionate dirt-lovin' creator of Endurance Buzz and has been playing in the endurance sports world since 2000 after knockin' the dust off of his Trek 950 hardtail thanks to a friend asking to go ride some local dirt. In 2007 he ran his first ultra on the trails and fell in love with the sport and its people. For more information on David's endurance sports journey, check out the About page.
This looks like a great bottle. Thanks for the review – I will look into it as well.
For runners – this bottle is really solid and definitely worth a look. Thanks for the comment.
how did you get the bottom part off the bottle to clean it?
i feel that if i try to take it off it will snap
Hey Alex – Good question. Just letting you know I don’t have an answer…yet. I am working to get you one though.
I understand your concern with snapping. I have contacted Amphipod and will share the response once I get it.
Thanks for the question.
Have an answer – straight from Amphipod:
It’s designed to be really tight so it stays on when in use. To remove, first loosen the handstrap via the adjuster buckle (hidden at the bottom end of the pouch), (this will make it a lot easier to slide the strap off the base of the bottle with a little elbow grease). Take the sleave off, unscrew the main cap and pop it off the pop-cap, then take the handstrap collar off over the the pop-cap tether ring.
THE TRICK IS: Don’t take tether/pop-cap off the bottle (leave tether and pop-cap assembled to bottle and wash together in the dishwasher). In the dishwasher, wash the bottle in three pieces: Spout, Main Cap and Bottle (with tether and pop-cap).
Reverse to assemble (making sure handstrap collar gets back fully under the tether ring).
Thank you very much for the quick response.
I will give it a go with the elbow grease tonight. I previously purchased the Trail Pack, after reading this review about the bottle and loved it. so much that i bought the hand held. I will let you know how it goes.
Alex – No worries. Great to hear you have had good experience with the bottles. Definitely let us know how the disassembly/reassembly works.
Not going to lie i was tentative to try it. However, I did and it worked like a charm. And I put the bottle back together and it held well, just as it had before i removed the band. Great bottle. I am really happy i went with Amphipod
Very cool Alex, thanks for the update and great to hear it worked as described!
Received a link to next weekend’s trail race and found this awesome product review. Today is Earth Day (actually, every day is Earth Day). I had to order this straight from Amphipod. Four weeeks to try it out before my next target race, a half marathon, in the Sonoma wine country.