ZEFAL164 Water Bottle, 33 oz

love these larger bottles for long rides!

These bottles have been out of several years. The original design was all black. The problem with the original design, as another reviewer pointed out, is that the lid was not water tight and the bottle would often leak. That one fact essentially made the original completely useless.Having heard that these were redesigned, I thought I'd give them another shot. The extra 8 ounces this gives you over the most of the other large quantity bottles is just really appealing.After tying the new design out, I can confirm what another reviewer posted in that the clear bottles definitely feature a smaller lid than the original design and are absolutely water tight, as you can see in my photo.Additionally, this bottle is likely going to be just fine in your holder, even with the additional ounces. The reason is, it's really not that much longer than typical 25 ounce bottles. It fits tightly and firmly with no wiggle.In sum, I definitely recommend the clear bottles. The black bottles look to have the original lids that leaked(though that could be an outdated photo). Unless you really have a preference for black, stick with the clear ones. If you must have black, I'd drop the seller a line and see if the lids have been updated and when the bottles were manufactured. If the bottles are anything older than 2016, buy the clear ones instead!Cheers!

Compared to the wildly popular Polar bottle, the Zefal contains 9 ounces more water, while having the same exterior size. See my side-by-side picture. The reason is because the Polar is insulated, while the Zefal isn't. They securely fit on my bike the same way.I take both bottles on long bike rides (50+ miles). Wind from bike motion easily melts all ice in the insulated Polar bottle in less than an hour. So I drink from the Polar bottle first. After the first hour, both bottles have the same temperature, and the bigger volume of the Zefal becomes an advantage. I didn't have to stop for refill along the way, ...well, at least not on colder days. The extra 9 ounces isn't trivial, considering that a coke can is 12 ounces and that there's no place to hold a third bottle on most bikes.Both bottles have large cap opening for mixing Gatorate powder, and can be squeezed for easy drinking on the bike. There's a slight plastic smell on the Zefal that goes away after a few uses. Cleaning the cap is easier than the CamelBak Podium, as there are less crevices for mildew to get caught into. I use a long-handle brush to clean the bottle interior Rubbermaid Comfort Grip Bottle Brush, Bottle Brush (FG6C1900)---------Update 6 months laterThe Zefal bottle will leak if I don't pull the mouth piece out completely before squeezing. The Polar bottle is much tighter, which makes pulling in and out with my teeth more difficult, but it doesn't leak even if I only pulled out half way.

Many of my rides are unsupported long solo rides in rural areas where potable water is hard to find. These magnum water bottles are great for making it between water sources. Like a couple of other reviewers, I dropped a bottle (it was empty) and it landed on the bite valve and the lid cracked. That was disappointing, but when I emailed Zefal to see if I could buy just a lid, they sent me a new one free of charge. That is great customer service.While waiting for the new lid to arrive, I tried fixing the broken one with a glue gun. It kind of worked and stopped the majority of the leak, but wasn't quite satisfactory.I then used a soldering iron to melt the plastic along the crack. If I needed some extra material, I carved it from the outer edge of the lid where it doesn't affect the seal. This worked great. The idea came from a youtube video where a guy repairs small engine gasoline tanks. I now have a repaired lid that works and doesn't leak, though it is ugly as anything. Working from the outside of the lid is best; working from the inside is difficult and you may end up melting the threads. The pictures are of the broken lid, the fixed lid, and a carved area.

Soft easy to squeeze, but cracks easy? Broke first ride out. Cracked and fell out of aero bar cage. For the 30 min it was on the bike it didn't leak. Good design on the lid, easy to refill aero reservoir.

The bottle is claimed to hold 975 ml, but I found (by weighing it: 85 grams empty without the lid, 998 grams filled with water to the rim, also without the lid) that its true volume is 914 ml (if you forgot physics, 1 liter of water weighs 1 kg; 1 milliliter of water weighs 1 gram).For those who does not understand metric system, 914 ml is 30.9 fluid oz by volume. Or, if you go with same volume of water but by weight, 914 grams is 32.24 ounces by weight. Go figure. Anyhow, it looks like "33 oz" is the result of a creative way of conversion from metric to the U.S. system of units combined with "wishful thinking" rounding of numbers. You can fit into this bottle almost 33 oz of water by weight, but only about 31 fluid oz by volume. Thank the SAE system for this confusion.Aside from that, the bottles are still quite a bit larger than average, fit nicely and tightly into a bottle holder (tested with Bontrager bottle cage), and do not leak (so one can disregard reports of leaking bottles from the past model years). The visual appearance of these bottles (Zefal Magnum) is not an exact match to the appearance of bottles (Zefal Magnum) on the manufacturers web site. Last year's model? A special model for the U.S.? Hard to say. The label says "Made in France".