21 Bottled Water Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

Who would've guessed that the market for bottled water would explode into an entire sector of the beverage industry? From its origins as a solution for making fresh water portable and potable to its reputation as a status symbol for celebrities to show off, bottled water has saturated the market to become the preferred drink of the hydration set. With water consumption becoming a measure of good health among the self-care set, it's also an easy way to make sure you get your ounces throughout the day

But water is water is water, to misquote Shakespeare, and unless it comes from a glacier or a magical well, it's pretty much the same substance ... or is it? We tracked down as many bottled water brands as we could get our hands on and tested them to see if claims of spring goodness and purification come through in the taste. Some of the higher-priced premium brands have their work cut out if they hope to justify the cost — and the proliferation of single-use plastics cluttering the planet. Jump in the deep end with us and see which bottles make the biggest splash and which are circling the drain.

Costco does its bulk-shopping thing with Kirkland bottled water, helping families to keep their fridges stocked with sugarless cold drinks within easy reach. It's too tempting not to pick up a 40-pack for under $4, even if your cart is already full of Roombas and swing sets and croissants by the dozen. And if you need lots of water while maintaining your budget, it's an unbeatable deal for sure, and one you can load up on every time you hit the warehouse, thanks to the company's seemingly never-ending supply.

But there's a reason Kirkland bottled water is so low-priced; it's also low-quality. You may not notice if your thirst is overwhelming and all you're looking for is something to squelch the parch. But in a more controlled setting, you might notice there's too much mineral flavor here, leaving an aftertaste that feels like you've spit out your bubble gum but your taste buds think you're still chewing.

If you run a small restaurant or a snack bar, you might be happy to know that Sam's Club provides a Member's Mark version of bottled water that's perfect for filling up your fridge. This is the sort of product warehouse shopping was invented for, a major haul of things you use the most, scooped up in one fell swoop to keep you from making multiple shopping trips. But if you're looking for water that makes you happy, you should know that Member's misses the Mark by quite a wide margin.

To our surprise, this bottle — a simple copy-and-paste of so many other bottled water options — comes out of the spout tasting flatter than most. It's an odd quality for water without carbonation, which is all considered flat. But this is akin to water you've left out on the counter overnight. It's the sort of flavor that makes you empty your cup and fill it up afresh. You wouldn't accept that sort of treatment from water out of your pipes. Why would you ever pay extra for such disappointment? Even for the price, Member's Mark bottled water is a soggy selection.

Farmers-market-in-a-grocery-store Sprouts stocks a flush selection of bottled waters to remind you that good health doesn't always come from your sink. With all the fancy-schmancy upmarket brands to try, the one that seemed most logical to try was also the most affordable: Sprouts' own store-brand bottled water, a competitor for the many-bottle multipack. We had every confidence that a chain focused on a more natural product selection would make drinking this bottle a special affair. We should really temper our hopes when it comes to beverages.

How can water be flavorless yet also have a taste? However it happens, Sprouts has captured the essence. Is it the tingle activating your taste buds in some ghostly way that makes you think your detecting sweetness when there is none? Whatever the phenomenon, Sprouts has a bottom-shelf water in its product line that is literally on the bottom-shelf, so low we almost missed it on our shopping excursion. Maybe the company hopes to prioritize the better-known and higher-priced bottles over its own brand. After tasting Sprouts water, we think that's a good idea.

Arrowhead is one of the more prevalent bottled water brands on the market, making appearances at snack bars and in lunch boxes just about everywhere. That's what happens when you price your water at $4 or so for 24 bottles at some of the country's biggest grocery stores. Of course, availability and price aren't always indicators of quality, and water drinkers looking for a bargain may be willing to forgo taste ... which, in the case of Arrowhead, they certainly seem to be.

How not-great is Arrowhead bottled water? This taste-test proved it to be a step above tap water. There's nothing that grabs your tongue and says, "Now you've been refreshed!" It's a passable potable for anyone who needs a quick quench and has no other options, but even at such a workable price, it seems like a waste of money. A Brita pitcher and a Yeti to hold your home-filtered water are better investments.

You wouldn't name your water Pure Life if it wasn't capable of providing everything you need to live. The label even features graphics of a stylized family carping the heck out of their diem, undoubtedly due to their habit of drinking this bottled sustenance. But Nestlé, manufacturer of Pure Life, is better-known for its candy bars than its healthful beverages. A higher reach in the form of clear, clean water could be a pivot in a more health-friendly direction, if it wasn't for the quality of the product.

The description may denote that Pure Life is purified and enhanced with minerals, but it ends up tasting like you filled your empty Kool-Aid cup with water. There's a bit of unexpected fruit-like sweetness that lingers after the first sip, which isn't entirely intrusive but also dispels the notion that this water is actually as pure as it claims to be.

Why Walmart would compete with its own branded water by doubling-up with Sam's Choice purified drinking water is anyone's guess. Our hope was that we'd encounter a distinctly different drinking experience with each bottle, one standing cap-and-shoulders above the other to prove that the company has a premium and a subordinate brand to offer its customers. Otherwise, Walmart is just squeezing itself out of shelf space by providing two different takes on the same product when one would do just fine. So which is it?

Suffice it to say, Sam's Choice wouldn't be our choice for the premium brand. It's troublingly sweet-tasting for an unsweetened water, like someone spilled syrup in the vat somewhere in the bottling process, but not enough to make soda. Having the cleaner-tasting Great Value sitting right next to Sam's in the water section means you may try them both once, but Sam's is the obvious runner-up you won't be running back to.

How many times have you gazed at the label of a Fiji water bottle and felt yourself being transported to another realm? It's easy to get swept away in the illusion of paradise cast by this tropical sip, though not many of us have actually drunk the waters of Fiji to even know how close the bottled version comes. Maybe all that fresh air and sunshine actually makes the water taste worse. Yes, we know how ridiculous that sounds. But our taste-test didn't exactly spirit us away.

It seems unlikely that bottled water with such snazzy visual presentation should taste so bland, but somehow Fiji sinks to the occasion. Natural artesian water from lush islands as the label describes should hit your tongue with the magical essence of an exotic adventure, but this tastes like someone soaked flowers in tap water and put it in a bottle with a pretty label. It's an all flash-no splash version of bottled water that may stick out on shelves but doesn't deliver what it promises.

If you can't count on water from a glacier to provide premier bottled water action, can you really count on anything in life? Icelandic slides into view in the water aisle and it feels like there might be hope for a top-tier water that lives up to its own description. After all, it isn't every day you get to drink water that comes directly from nature's own icebox. On second thought, if you shop at Walmart or Target, you can drink it whenever you want, for under $2 a bottle. Maybe this isn't the wonder water it sounds like.

Cracking the lid and taking a swig of glacial spring water from Iceland with a pH of 8.4 turns out to be fine, but it doesn't strike the taste buds with anything particularly glacier related, or even glacier-adjacent. It tastes like a decent drink that you wouldn't do a double-take over before going back to your spin class. And the crinkled top of the bottle that's meant to mimic the shape of a glacier ends up looking more like Icelandic is sold in recycled plastic that's been crushed and not reformed.

Evian was an early adopter of the bottled water lifestyle, offering a higher class of quencher for the discerning drinker. Of course, when word got around that Evian spelled backward is "naïve," the snooty sippers were likely less excited to spend money for water both in bottle form and in their utility bill. Even with the long-winded history linking the brand to French springs and its bottled origins in the late-19^th century, Evian still carries an air of hoity-toity frillery that gives it a lot of legacy to live up to.

Sadly, it doesn't rise to meet the moment. Maybe we're just so used to bottled water that Evian no longer holds its original mystique. Instead of being refreshing, a full swig made the back of the throat tingle, perhaps the result of all those natural spring electrolytes the company brags about on the label. Even a French pedigree can't keep this bottle afloat.

So this is what it's like when water tries too hard to be impressive. Essentia is a study in marketing gloss, from the sleek black-and-red label to the modern typeface to the mortar shell-shaped bottle that keeps its contours sleek and savvy for easy shelving. All this sloshy showbiz could mean the water behind the finery must be missing something. Any bottle that looks this gorgeous must be compensating for something.

Taste — it's compensating for taste. If the sweetness in Essentia comes from the electrolyte content displayed prominently on the front, then this bottle should pull way back on the inclusion of those components or tinker with the formula, at least. Water shouldn't have an aftertaste you can feel in the back of your throat, but that's exactly what Essentia imparts. Ambition helps it rise to nearly the center of the ranking; there's something to be said for a water that runs its game this way. It's just too bad the best part of this top-shelf bottled water brand is the part you throw away when you're finished.

It's not a question of whether Great Value bottled water saves you money; it's a question of whether buying a Walmart version of water is worth spending money at all. The convenience Walmart offers by having these pre-filled vessels ready to fridge and go helps families on the run keep their thirst quenched while keeping up with their busy schedules. But even spending under $4 for a 24-pack may be more than necessary if the water tastes no better than the stuff in the tap.

Great Value is purely middle of the road water — not like a puddle but like a water that does the job without making you kick up your heels. It's fantastic if you're throwing a party and need reachable beverages to serve your guests without springing for the good stuff. If you're a water connoisseur hoping for an upmarket pour, you'll definitely end up feeling all washed out. As long as you can go in with your hopes in check and you'll be fine. Otherwise, keep shopping.

If there's a national brand of any product sitting on an Aldi shelf, chances are there's also a house brand version of the same product hovering nearby. Bottled water is no exception. Reverse osmosis-purified PurAqua is Aldi's ante in the high stakes bottled water game, a 20-pack flat that rings up at under $4 to keep in line with the chain's reputation for discounted goods. This makes it possible to pack up your rented cart while grabbing all the weird stuff from the center aisle, saving you a trip to a bigger national chain to fulfill your beverage needs.

While there's nothing amazing about the water behind the PurAqua label, there's nothing terrible about it, either. It's one of those drinks you'd take blindly if offered, though you certainly wouldn't do a spit take and ask your host where they bought it. In this instance, price and quality coincide, meaning you could easily go with PurAqua over a better-known brand and be perfectly happy with your purchase. You might never know what you're missing among the shinier brands, but it's water that does what you need it to do, and isn't that refreshing?

Vapor distilled! Electrolytes included for taste! Purely pH-balanced! Smartwater says all the sweet things you want to hear your bottled water say, even as it holds court as a Coca-Cola product (under the Glaceau banner), albeit one without the over-sweetened soda profile of the company's more prominent portfolio items. A water brave enough to call itself "smart" is setting itself up for failure if it can't come through in a clutch; nobody goes shopping for water of average intellect if a brainier version is available. Smartwater is just clever enough to pull it off.

The trickery here makes the water in the bottle smooth and flavorless ... maybe the electrolytes are in there to mask whatever you might taste otherwise. But it's a return to water basics flavor-wise, a steady version of the way water tastes when you're realizing your thirst has been quenched without wondering how it got that way. That's what the really smart water does: sneaks in with refreshment without making a scene. Even if the name is a bold proclamation, Smartwater is a shrewd selection for water buyers looking for a step up from the bottom rung.

It's logical to wonder about the process used to create so-called purified water like the kind Kroger sells under its store label. The word "purified" is used so liberally in the world of bottled water, it could mean any of a number of things. While Kroger doesn't go to a whole lot of trouble to reveal its methods, the beverage is pleasant enough to make us think they know how to do the dance — or swim the stroke, as the case may be.

Rather than having no flavor whatsoever, Kroger's bottled water has an oddly citrusy essence, though that's obviously not the objective. There's no mention made of minerals on the label, just purified water. But something about the subtle zest and zing feels well-advised, as if the company knows how to set itself apart without trying to steal the show. It's always enough to do your best, and Kroger purified bottled water knows where its sweet spot is.

One of the OGs on the bottled water scene, Crystal Geyser erupted in 1977 and has been dousing the thirst of parched drinkers ever since. The generous pour is most notable in an oversized 50.72-ounce bottle filled with natural alpine spring water "bottled at the source," which is somewhere near the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. This means the company can lay claim to a pure source for its sloshy pour, even if it comes in a crinkly, crunchy plastic bottle that doesn't do the planet any favors.

Packaging choices notwithstanding, Crystal Geyser produces pure pleasure in water form, a pleasing swig that glides over the tongue with just a touch of sweet zing. We went back for seconds of this one, wondering if there was more to the equation. It turns out purity is the secret ingredient in making bottled water that works. This is the perfect bottle for chugging after a long hike through the hills without having to find your own personal mountain spring to sip from.

Life WTR boasting of "whole body hydration" feels like a cheat, since all water hydrates your whole body and feeds life, the name is kind of hoodwinking water fans, too. And the flashy artful label combined with the internet-ready name with missing vowels are tricky eye candy that could compel customers to give the beverage a try before thinking through their decisions. Just how many layers of razzle-dazzle should a bottle of water be allowed to have, anyway?

Fortunately for Life WTR, it all comes together beautifully in a bottled beverage with just the right amount of clean tongue tingle with no strange taste or lingering sizzle in the throat. It's as close to distilled water as any of our test bottles comes, a pure and refreshing chug that goes down smoothly. It's one of the few waters that made us go back for a second round, a sure sign that the $2 price point is justified.

When Coca-Cola threw its cap into the bottled water ring with Dasani, it seemed that the world's largest and possibly best-known beverage distributor was set to dominate the aisle. Stripping back the sugar and crackle of a Coke would presumably leave behind an A-one bottled water that could capture the attention of drinkers who preferred to stick with water rather than gulping down corn syrup. Would undoing what made the soda giant famous water down the company's legacy?

Not if the water in the bottle has anything to say about it. Dasani is remarkably clear-tasting and thirst-quenching, which should describe water in general, but somehow feels more appropriate here. We've had Dasani when it's the only thing available in vending machines or in party coolers, but until we slowed down and gave it our attention, we never noticed how crisp and clean it tastes. Maybe the choice of minerals is a proprietary blend that makes Dasani a stand-out. Wherever the magic lies, this bottle easily cracks the top five.

There's no grocery category Target hasn't expanded its Good & Gather label to, and that includes the realm of bottled water. In fact, the big red bullseye provides a full suite of water solutions for a thirsty world, including jugs of distilled water and multipacks of mini-bottles that fit perfectly in your youngster's lunch bags. We zeroed in on the purified water, but rather than going for the same-old squeezable plastic bottle, we found a more thoughtful version that we thought deserved our attention.

Served in a recyclable aluminum bottle that makes it feel more like you're drinking out of a canteen, Good & Gather purified water provides a perfectly palatable still version of liquid refreshment that uses reverse osmosis for purification and tosses in minerals and electrolytes to make things taste better. It's a thoroughly flavorless experience, which is probably the point; the less you taste the water, the purer it must be ... right? We're going to say "yes," largely because the experience was more pleasant than expected.

Safeway and Albertsons keep creating house-brand items that level-up the game for the whole grocery industry, and the company's Signature Select Refreshe water is no exception. You might lump this selection in with the other store specialty waters that favor low price over high quality, but you'd be passing up a well-made water that offers all the best bits without going overboard — or underboard, for that matter.

Set sail with a bottle of Refreshe and you'll enjoy a very nice water, which sounds weird, but we know you get where we're coming from. There's a mellow mineral flavor here that's light and sufficient but doesn't chase away the water-specific crystal clarity your taste buds are looking for. At $4 for 24 bottles, it's in line price-wise with the other multi-packs, which means making a Safeway or Albertsons run for water may be in your best interest, if taste is something you're particular about.

Core hits at the heart of the bottled water issue by providing water purported to be "perfectly balanced pH purified." That's the sort of laboratory lingo that we've seen on so many bottles of water, it's hard to know what exactly it offers the drinker. Do you feel a sense of peace and well-being after the first sip? Is enlightenment around the corner as soon as your cells are saturated? The mind reels at the possibilities of how much fulfillment a water this outspoken can bring.

Fun fact: Core is the only water on our list that comes with its own cup built into the cap. Aside from this clever detail, the water itself is light and fresh-tasting with a touch of bright mineral essence that doesn't reach the realm of sweetness like some of the other bottles we tried. Maybe the 7.4 pH level and seven-stage purification process set up the base for the addition of minerals and electrolytes? We're no water scientists, and we don't know how the dials are twisted and turned on all of those processes. Whatever Core is doing, it gets the balance just right, providing a peak bottled water product worth toasting to.

Sometimes, you need to leave water quality up to the experts to ensure a more natural drinking experience. In those moments, Tuscany spring water Acqua Panna is on the scene to deliver a deluxe bottled water moment you won't soon forget. That may sound like hyperbole, but after testing 20 bottles, the difference is stark and well-received, like an oasis in a desert filled with ... well, with other bottled water, but not as oasis-worthy as this one. This is how the water gods meant for their liquid refreshment to taste.

The Italian name may translate to "creamy water" in English, but there's nothing but water in the bottle, thank goodness. There's only water with enough of a flavor to tell you that you're drinking something without making you wonder why your water has a taste. No need to wonder about sparkling versus still water and all that jazz; this is just good-tasting water without fizz, and that's that. And speaking of taste, the label proudly states that this water is served in restaurants — that's right, restaurants! And not just any restaurants, but the best restaurants. It doesn't say which those are, but isn't it nice to think you're drinking restaurant-quality water that justifies the $2-per-bottle cost? Bottoms up, water drinkers — Acqua Panna is a clear winner.

It was hard to look beyond the pretty bottles with shiny labels to see the water within; so many water brands tap into luxury as a marketing angle that the artful containers and splashy logos make it easy to gloss over the fact that you're buying water – the stuff that already makes up at least half of our physiology. Packaging aside, we shopped for waters that were commonly found in refrigerator sections and beverage aisles of the most familiar grocery chains in the U.S. Some of these were specialty items, which added range while providing a chance to prove or disprove the value of high-end bottled water when measured next to more sensibly-priced selections.

While many bottled waters are value priced in multi-packs, we also taste-tested several premium brands in larger bottles. These options tended to have more specialized profiles, such as added electrolytes and notable pH balances listed on the label. If the hope for these brands is that calling out the special processes helps make the water of a notably higher quality, the taste of each was a free-for-all that didn't always fall in line with the so-called premium selections being more satisfying.