I got a SodaStream carbonator for my birthday in August, and I think we're now sufficiently far along in my ownership to give it a review.
First off, I go through a lot of fizzy water, aka seltzer (where I come from, at least). I tend to drink this in lieu of regular water; there's something about the fizz that's pleasant and settles the old stomach for me. I previously was running through about five or six 1.25 liter bottles of Crystal Geyser a week. (Yes, yes, my ugly assault on the planet by using up plastic bottles will be addressed below.) Neither I nor anyone else in the household drinks flavored soda drinks -- which is what this brand is ostensibly aimed at -- so this is not reviewing the use of this as "coke" replacement (although we tried the free bottle of orange soda mix that came with the unit, and found it to be incredibly gross and undrinkable, fwiw.)
You get two reusable heavy-duty one-liter plastic bottles, a very cheap housing for holding the bottles, and one big CO2 cartridge that mounts in the back (see picture below). You have to chill the water to get the best effect, so one has to remember to keep the 'spare' bottle filled and in the back of the fridge at all times. This proved easier than I thought it would be, though. The cartridge is sort of the tricky part and the nub of the issue about whether this is worth the fuss or not -- whether this would join the pasta maker in the dusty recesses of the pantry or hang out with our oft-used break maker among the pantheon of kitchen appliances you didn't know you needed.
The cartridges are advertised as making about 60 liters of seltzer per cartridge before a refill is necessary, and in practice I've been averaging about 50. The cartridges have a proprietary nozzle on them, so they can't be refilled except by exchanging a cartridge either by mail or at a store. I'm not about to pay for shipping or wait for a cartridge to be returned, so it's the store exchange or nothing as far as I'm concerned. Mika bought this originally under the belief that Kohl's was going to exchange them, but I found out they won't -- but Williams Sonoma will. The exchange process costs $15 to get a new cartridge. So far WIlliams Sonoma has had them in stock, although every time I have gone in the clerk had to disappear to go find the replacement. (The bad news of this system, of course, is that you have to go into WIlliams Sonoma every time to get a replacement. The good news is I have an excuse to go into WIlliams Sonoma once a month. I know this is helping Williams Sonoma make sales, but I am aware that as ancillary costs go, this may end up being a very expensive little kitchen appliance.) So, doing the math here, the "operational" costs of this are about 30 cents a liter, compared to 71 cents per liter for the 1.25 Crystal Geyser bottles I had been buying.
Now we also have the $90 investment from the person who bought this for me to consider. Taking the 41-cent difference in cost into account, it's going to take 220 liters before we're at the break-even point for costs, not counting all the CRV (California Redemption Value) deposits we usually waste on the 1.25-liter bottles we were buying (getting stuff with deposit value back and getting one's money is more difficult in California than you might think, so we end up just recycling a lot of the supposedly returnable bottles rather than getting the CRV back). At my consumption level, that's just over 5 months. There's also the question of replacement one-liter bottles, which supposedly will last three years but I'll believe it when I see it. (You really need the company's version, proprietary screw top on it, and so forth.) The replacements are currently $15 for two. If we get realistic and decide these need to be replaced once a year, that adds a couple of cents cost to each liter.
The question about whether the soda maker itself is going to last is an interesting one. The plastic housing seems to be a little flimsy, but on the other hand the only real important parts are the nozzles. If these break down within a year or two, I am not going to buy a replacement maker, that's for sure. We'll see.
In terms of convenience, I actually think it's easier overall to have to make one extra side trip once in awhile than schlep around six bottles a week -- our Williams Sonoma is adjacent (across the parking lot) from our main grocery store. If WS ever decides to drop the cartridge refills, the experiment will be over.
As far as the operation, it's pretty simple. You screw the cartridge with the CO2 into the back of the plastic housing and leave it there. It's all pressure-powered, no batteries. You then take your pre-chilled one-liter bottle, and screw it on, and press a release valve at the top of the maker. You hold it down until you get a little triple-burp from the overpressure valve. You can release early for fewer bubbles, later for more bubbles.
The fizz stays in for a while, although overnight it's noticeably flatter, but usually drinkable. More than a full day, it won't last. We've also noticed that if you put the cap on quickly, or you have extra bubbles, there's a fair amount of pressure so that when you take off the cap you have to be careful to release slowly or it will pop up like a champagne cork. (No casualties thus far from flying caps, although we've had one or two close calls).
Are these better for the environment than the old habit of buying new bottles and then recycling them? I don't know. There's a skeptical blog entry on the subject here. I tend to think this is probably neutral, all things considered, and probably far worse than if I could simply bring myself to drink regular filtered tap water (unfiltered is not an option where we are) like everybody else in the household does.
Home carbonators are nothing new; a century ago the seltzer bottle was a part of the middle class kitchen. Back in Pittsburgh, there was a company that had bought up vintage seltzer dispensers and would drop off a supply once a week, sort of like an old milk man. The re-launch of home carbonators may or may not take off; they do seem to be aimed at making your own syrupy sodas more than for fizzy water drinkers like me, so whether I'll be able to get my cartridges a few years hence will depend on whether the fad sticks or not. I tend to think proprietary systems fail over time (the nozzles and lack of ability to get refills) so I'm skeptical this will last. And like I said, in limited experience with the soda syrup they're hawking, it was gross. The carbonator is set up to only do one-liter bottles -- you can't individually carbonate a glass of water, alas, which would be nice for the times when we want to make pomegranate soda or fizzy orange juice. As it is, of course, we can just make a liter of soda water and do some hand mixing, which is nearly as good.
However, for the time being, it's got a few advantages over the bottle buying and appears to be about half as expensive given my level of consumption, so we'll stick with it for now.
