We’ve all seen that moment in an advert or infomercial where some glossy-skinned waif is begging us to consume at least eight glasses of water a day. Then, we get on with our lives slugging a few coffees, sodas or beers and wondering why our skin looks like crap in the morning.
If you’re the kind of person who has nightmares over wrinkles, or hopes that high water intake will counteract all the cheeseburgers or other rubbish we eat, then hope is at hand.
We say ‘hope’ because scientists can’t agree on how much water is needed or is good for the human body, and have firmly tossed the idea that detoxing through drinking lots of water is a smart one.
Even so, here’s the Mark One Pryme Vessyl, a crowded funded product, and its smartphone app to help you keep counting your water intake, to theoretically make your life better.
As we know, the placebo effect, or simply doing something different can make anyone feel better, so why not give it a shot?
Key Features
The Mark One Pryme Vessyl is another appallingly bad attempt at making a trademarkable name. Beyond that, you get a white, grippy, plastic cup (or should that be ‘whyte’?). The inside is made of glass to keep hot drinks hot and cold ones cool, with a metal base for charging.
The ‘smart’ in the Pryme Vessyl comes with its Bluetooth connection to your smartphone and the blue light and white LED that glows when you’re on the path to adequate water intake.
Having used the app to enter your vital statistics, it can link into other health apps to measure your exercise, the weather and other factors, and keep nudging you to take more drinks when needed. Drinks are registered as the cup drains, and there’s a fill line to keep it topped up for the best accuracy.
The device charges through a base unit, called the coaster, that can be powered by any micro USB cable, with a tiny LED that shows the cup is charging. The lid opens with a push of the thumb and you can either sip from the cup, or pour your drink into a cup.
Pros of the Mark One Pryme Vessyl Review
The Pryme Vessyl will certainly help you feel that you’ve acquired a premium and stylish product. The product is good to hold, and everyone loves a glowing light.
The app helps by providing plenty of pretty charts and stylish data points to show you how well you are doing, but at the end of the day, this product is about how much water you take in – and there are plenty of problems with that (see below).
What it can help with is showing that people who exercise more require more fluids, and those with different body shapes may have different needs. However, that should be blindingly obvious, and anyone into sports is well aware of the need for hydration.
When you are at your ideal hydration level, the aim is to stay there through regular sips of water. For this the Pryme Vessyl deserves credit, as it could help train people who don’t take regular drinks into doing so.
With encouragement from the iOS app, which works on iPhone and Apple Watch, it could definitely help make a difference. The app is well rated and regularly updated.
When you’re drinking from other source than the cup, it will help you enter information manually to help keep track, and can take into account alcohol consumption and the effect that can have on your water levels. What it doesn’t handle is food intake, which is where a decent amount of our water comes from.
Cons of the Mark One Pryme Vessyl Review
The first concern is the advertising for the product, claiming that it can help with mental alertness, physical strength, metabolism, skin hydration and so on.
If all of that really worked, everyone on the planet would have one of these glued to their palms right now. All of our smiling, wrinkle-free faces lit up by the happy blue glow as we sip.
As a more technical and practical consideration, many users report that the Bluetooth connection is pretty poor, and the device needs resyncing to the phone too often.
Users also report that the measurements are inaccurate, that it insists users have been drinking when the cup is untouched and so on. There are also reports of leaks, something that no amount of app updates will fix.
The other issues could all be software bugs, eliminated with a firmware or app update, or it could be a low quality component in the product that may only be replaced by newer models.
If you are an Android user, there’s still no app for your phone, so that may be
a consideration.
Finally customer support, as with many start-ups and crowdfunded efforts is pretty basic, and there’s no easy fix for a dying product. So, be prepared to make use of your store’s returns policy, as the company has no listed warranty as
of writing.
Final Recommendation
If you want to go for a cheaper alternative, take this simple one. Next time you urinate, if it is yellow in color then you need a drink. That’s one way to look at the Pryme Vessyl.
However, there are many thousands of people that struggle through their busy day and rely on all sorts of apps and crutches to remind them of a hundred different things.
If you are one of those people, then its price isn’t a lot of money to ensure you are drinking properly, with a feel good factor and reward at the end. Tying into plenty of other health apps can make it just another part of the smart-age approach to wellbeing.
Since many people in that class have medical issues related to hydration, this makes the app a valuable tool, but still leaves the cup feeling rather like a gimmick.
Further read, The Simplehuman Wide View Sensor Mirror Review
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