The Best Sparkling Water Maker

With a sparkling water maker you don’t need to buy those expensive bottles of old, carbonated water from your local grocery store. Instead you’ll enjoy freshly carbonated water with just the right amount of carbonation to your liking, and you can carbonate your own homemade beverages too. That means no more sodapops full of syrups, sweeteners, and artificial flavors.

Sparkling water makers are great for many purposes, and they’ll save you a considerable amount of money on the long run.

Top sparkling water makers in review

What’s the deal with those sparkling water makers, and what are the best options on the market today?

We’ve taken a deep dive into the market of fizzy water makers, and reviewed some of the best and most popular products right now.

Best sparkling water maker overall: SodaStream Fizzi

Pros:

• Very easy to use
• Nice and sleek design
• Doesn’t take up much space in your kitchen
• No automation means no power cords
• Co2 cylinders, bottles, and flavors included

Cons:

• Risk of overcarbonation if button is pressed for too long
• Made almost solely from plastic
• Included plastic bottles might not last for long

There are plenty of reasons to love the SodaStream Fizzi Sparkling Water Maker. Not only is it deemed one of the best sparkling water makers in our blind test, but multiple sources are rooting for this product too, including Epicurious, GearHungry, and Wirecutter.

It offers amazing value for how much it costs, and in this bundled kit you’ll get anything you need to make your own crispy carbonated drinks.

SodaStream Fizzi carbonates the water using a manual pump action button that enables you to control exactly how much carbonation you want for your beverage. Simply press the button once or twice for a light carbonation, or up to seven times if you want a heavier carbonation for your drink. A puffing noise will sound while the button is pressed down, and you’ll see the liquids bubbling inside the bottle.

We believe this is the best overall sparkling water maker on the market, and the best is that it isn’t even expensive.

However, if you want automated carbonation, check out the SodaStream Fizzi One Touch sparkling water maker. It’s a similar machine, but with an automatic carbonation feature that allows you to carbonate your beverage the your exact liking every time.

Most luxurious sparkling water maker: Aarke Carbonator II

Pros:

• Amazing stainless steel quality
• Stylish look
• Manual pump action means no power cord needed
• Does an amazing job carbonating almost any drink
• Available in multiple colors

Cons

• Pricey
• No automation
• Bigger and heavier than most SodaStreams
• PET bottles included – we’d prefer glass bottles instead

If you want the hottest luxury product of them all, we urge you to check out the Aarke Carbonator II sparkling water maker.

This beauty is made from stainless steel, but if that doesn’t suit your kitchen, you can also get it in brass, white, or black versions.

During our test, we found this sparkling water maker one of the best products on the market. However, it does come with a hefty price tag, so be prepared to shell out a considerable amount of money if you want the most luxurious bubble maker of them all.

According to Sodamakerclub and their stats, the Aarke Carbonator II is actually considered the best sparkling water maker of the bunch. What seems to strike a lot of buyers, is how responsive this company is to addressing any issues and fixing them. They are proactively looking to fix issues instead of ignoring them, and that’s how you distinguish the good companies from the bad ones.

One would probably think that at this price leve you’ll get full automation, but no: The good ol’ lever allows you to manually add the amount of carbonation you like, but that’s no biggie, really. With no electronic components, there’s also no power cord, and no learning curves when adjusting it to your liking. Simply press the lever for carbonation, and you’ll quickly learn exactly how much carbonation you need to add for your favorite sparkling water.

The Strategist also praised this Swedish sparkling water maker for being the best and most stylish at-home soda machine in a recent review, and we fully agree on that.

Only minor tradeoff is the fact that Aarke only offers PET bottles at the moment, and they’ve actually addressed it inside their Customer Support-section. According to Aarke, the glass bottles would need a protective casing due to the risk of explosion, and in order to maintain a sleek design they haven’t included this on the Carbonator II model. We believe that’s a fair statement, and safety should always be your #1 priority when working with pressurized containers of any kind.

Best sparkling water maker with glass carafes: SodaStream Aqua Fizz

Pros:

• Beautiful glass carafes included
• Easy to use and set up
• Protective cylinder adds an extra layer of safety during use
• No power cords needed

Cons:

• Some buyers had issues with faulty units
• Glass bottles aren’t as easy to use as PET bottles

If you prefer glass bottles or glass carafes over those PET bottles that will quickly end up getting scratched and ugly, you’re not alone. In fact, it seems like there’s actually a popular demand for sparkling water makers with glass bottles or glass carafes, because SodaStream actually has one in their line of products. And it’s wildly popular.

SodaStream Aqua Fizz isn’t just all looks though, it comes bundled with two durable glass carafes and a Co2 cylinder to get you started easily, and during our review we enjoyed how easy and safe it felt to use it.

One of the greatest things about the Aqua Fizz sparkling water maker, is the safety cylinder that encapsulates the glass carafes during the carbonation process. That means if you’re bottles happen to explode, there’s no danger. Not that bottles usually explode, but we do actually appreciate the added layer of security that comes with the SodaStream Aqua Fizz.

A reviewer who also enjoyed this sparkling water maker, is Robyn from Mac Sources. Just like us she thought the price was quite high, but she also found it reasonable because it’s a really great machine.

On Sodamakerclub.com this sparkling water maker is also praised by their review panel for being one of the best products in its category.

We do actually think the glass carafes make a significant difference. Not only do they give you a somewhat different taste and feel to the carbonated drink (not sure if this was just us or anyone feel the same), but because they’re glass bottles they’ll also keep looking nice and new for an extended period of time, and you don’t have to worry about ruining them if they get in contact with hot water.

Runner-up: DrinkMate B018K1C3KK

Pros:

• Nozzle is easy to rinse off after use
• Compact design means smaller footprint
• No power cord needed
• Carbonates practically any liquid you can imagine

Cons:

• Some reported issues with leaky bottles
• Overall build quality could be better

DrinkMate might not be as big as SodaStream, but according to their website they’re still the second largest supplier of water carbonator machines worldwide.

It goes without a saying that this sparkling water maker is a great buy. The price is reasonable, and it comes bundled with a Co2 starter cylinder that will make you 10 liters of fizzy drinks before having to shell out additional money on a new Co2 cylinder.

The DrinkMate B018K1C3KK is not only liked by us though, but it is also considered a great purchase by Wirecutter, and we wholeheartedly agree with them about its capabilities of carbonating juices, wines, and other tasteful beverages. We don’t agree with them on its water carbonating capabilities though, because we think it works just as well for both plain water and other beverages.

What we also enjoyed when reviewing this sparkling water maker, is how compact it is. The footprint is visibly smaller than other sparkling water makers, yet it performs just as well.

It doesn’t limit the ease of use though, and, we quickly learned how to use it properly and how much carbonation our beverages needed to get just the right amount of fizz to our liking.

Another important feature is the nozzle design. With other sparkling water makers you can’t really rinse the nozzle off after use, and therefore most of them are limited to carbonating water only, and then adding your flavors, but with the DrinkMaster you can easily rinse the nozzle off after use, which is what makes it such a great choice for those wanting to carbonate any beverage.

How we reviewed and identified the best sparkling water makers

It’s important for us that our readers trust us, and therefore we’ve started to describe our review process to make it less of a mystery how we review the products featured in our buying guides, and why we chose these products over others.

Below is the method we used to identify the best sparkling water makers on the market as of today.

1. Initial product research

We always initiate our research by looking through user ratings. Picking the most popular products make sense in more than one way, because by doing so we’ll reach more people than if we only selected products with few or no user ratings at all.

By reading through user ratings and user reviews, we’ll also get a good idea of what people are generally looking for.

With sparkling water makers, our research showed that most people are looking for these qualities in a sparkling water maker:

• Price
• Ease of use
• Maintenance
• Running costs

We get it. You’re not investing in a sparkling water maker because you want to spend MORE money on beverages you love.

Our research indicated that a lot of people worry about the environment, and they believe the sparkling water makers help them cut down on plastic consumption by reusing the bottles many times instead of buying single-use bottles and dispose of them immediately when they’re emptied.

People also want convenience. They certainly don’t want to fiddle with the machine for hours to figure out how it works, and who wants to spend their time cleaning it?

Running costs is another major factor. Co2 cylinders cost money, and some machines have to be plugged in as well.

2. Selecting the right products

We want to make sure we select a broad spectrum of products, in order to suit most readers.

This is why we make a great deal out of identifying and selecting products within the same category, but with different key features.

With sparkling water makers we wanted to present the reader with the best overall options, best premium options, as well as the best options with glass bottles since most machines feature PET bottles.

3. The actual review process

As part of our review process, we analyze each of the finalists meticulously, in order to get a better understanding of their most important features, advantages, and disadvantages.

When it came to sparkling water makers, we considered these factors:

• Price
• Build quality
• Ease of use
• Performance
• Customization options

By following these factors when reviewing each product, we were able to determine exactly what products were better than others.

4. The verdict

This is the final result. The actual buying guide. Our dedicated team reads through the results, and piece them together into an interesting article with all the product information needed in order to grant you the ability to make the best choice on your own.

How sparkling water makers work

It’s actually quite simple:

At the back of most sparkling water makers, there’s a gas canister. The gas canister contains Co2.

When it’s attached to the nozzle and you press the button on top (granted that it’s a manual pump action machine), Co2 is released into the bottle of water.

The carbonation and the crispness you’re feeling on your tongue when drinking the water, is actually the Co2 in action.

Some sparkling water makers are electric and automatic, which means a lever is released in a fixed amount of time, in order to release an exact amount of carbonation to each and every bottle of water. This is great if you want the process to be as easy as possible, because you literally have to press just one button instead of trying to guess how much carbonation you’ve already added to your water.