Ninja Thirsti Review: Does This Drink System Work?

Welcome back, everybody today. I'm back with the Ninja Thirsty. It's a drink system that allows you to make custom-made carbonated drinks with a press of a button

But does it work and is it worth a $108 price tag? Let's find out in today's review. Starting with the unboxing

All right, it's a big box here. Let's open it up and see what's inside. Quick start guide to start off. That's nice

A starter eight pack. A rather heavy CO2 canister. A piece of cardboard

here's a canister that says keep me cold on the top there's an empty box nothing in there it even says there's no

nothing inside empty here is the unit itself so we got the unit the quick start guide

CO2 canister starter eight pack now I paid 17999 for this the claims are they say it's a one-of-a-kind drink

machine they say it allows you to create almost any drink you can think of. It uses flavored water drops that are either sweetened or unsweetened

The drinks can be carbonated or non-carbonated. There's four levels from no carbonation up to high

fizz. They say you can combine any two drinks and create drinks from six to 24 ounces. Each one

of these proprietary CO2 canisters costs somewhere between $30 and $35 and makes about a hundred drinks

I look for pros and cons online. I didn't really see much as far as reviews go except for on the ninja site and I take those as a grain of salt. So I guess I'm kind of on my own with this one

I'm going to read over these instructions and then we're going to get started. All right, it's unboxed. It's cleaned off. I ran through a rinse cycle. That only took about a minute

The first thing you're supposed to do was install the CO2 canister. That's just a matter of pulling the black cap off

Open the door, pulling the collar out, twist in a place. Very simple. Next up was to put the water reservoir on the dock. That was just a matter of filling with ice and water and put it on there

Now we're on to step three of a setup, which is the flavored drops. Now they've got quite a few categories of these drops here. They got splash, hydrate, vitamins, energy

Splash is the non-sweetened one. rest of them are sweetened. Kind of reminds me the circle. They've got their

they're different categories of what they call sips. It reminds me a lot of those. But I put two of the flavored drops in here. I put the energy peach mango and the splash

tart lemon here. So then what you're supposed to do is just three steps to choosing the drink

you want to make. Number one is to choose a fizz level. You can go from no fizz to three levels

of fizz, so four total. Then you select your size, six 12, 18, and 24 ounces. Six ounces can't

combine flavors and it always dispenses and six ounce bursts. Last thing to do is to adjust your

flavor. Right here you can adjust the strength of either one of these. You can go zero, one or two

for either one. You can mix and match however you want. You can go strong on one, light on the other

So that's pretty much it. The next page, that's troubleshooting. They're pretty much done

So my first test, I'm just going to do one flavor or a six ounce to just see how it goes

They even have a tray here for smaller cups. I'm going to put a glass right there. Later on, I'll make bigger amounts and I'll add some ice. I just want to see how it looks the first time

Choosing the fizz level. I think I'm going to go on the low end of fizz here. Level one, low fizz

Select the size. We're going to go. Where is the size? Go over here. We're going six ounces

Flavor strength. We're going regular on just the peach mango. And we're leaving the lemon tart off for this particular test

Then we press start and we should have a nice fizzy drink Here we go And I having memories of the Bartesian here which was an alcoholic kind of version of this Ooh I just heard some CO2 unloading in there Oh here we go Here we go

We got the, start off with just water. Now we got flavor coming in here. It's very fizzy

The tone that lets you know when it's done is the exact same tone they use for the Ninja Foody oven

because I use that all the time. I recognize it. It looks pretty nondescript. Let's say, give it a shot

There we go. It tastes pretty good. The amount of fizz isn't really that bad. I can't imagine going a lot fizzier than that

If that's the low fizz, I can only imagine what the high piz is going to be, which I'm going to try pretty soon

I'm pretty good. Creating a one-flavored drink is cool, but not that impressive. Let's try a multi-flavored drink here

I'm going to put a beer glass with some ice down here. All right, I'm going to try the bold strength for the peach mango and regular strength for the tart lemon

which is a nice combo here and I'm gonna go 12 ounces and I'm bumping up the fizz level to number two

This is what they call medium fizz. So we go, this should be a very different drink. Let's see. Start

And you can see the water going down here pretty quickly. There it goes

First it starts with just water and then it seems to kick over to the flavor. That looks pretty fizzy

That looks a lot fizzier than the first one. the first one tasted fine

Round two now. Should I hope my glass isn't too small. All right, this one came out in two different dispensing cycles

but it looks almost like I need to stir it. Let's taste it first. Oh, wow, that first taste was nothing but carbonated water

I gotta stir this. Very fizzy. Very fizzy. That's already quite, and that's not even the highest level fizz yet

There we go. All right, so this one is much different than the first one

This one seems maybe a little bit weaker even, even though the first one was supposed to be less bold

But that one didn't have any ice and it wasn't mixing into flavors. It was only six ounces. But with that said, it is pretty good

I'm not sure the lemon really cuts through as much, but let me keep going. I'm going to make some more drinks and see what we got

One thing I haven't done yet is try to remove one of these cartridges. Let's try that. I think you should be able to pull it out

Oh yeah, it comes off easy. Fortunately, that wasn't too hard. Let's try a different one to put it in there. I'm going to try the watermelon for this one

Pull it back. It only goes in one way, which is good

Snap into place, close it up. It's pretty simple to replace those, so that's a good thing

In fact, I'm going to take the lemon out too. I'm going to put a different one in there as well. I'm going to try their kiwi strawberry

I'm going to have two hydrates in there and see what happens. These are easy to install, but this, this packaging can sometimes be a little bit of a problem

There we go. Pull it back. Stick it in there. Snap it in place

Close it in place. Close it. Locked and loaded. All right, I'm going to put a glass here. I going to try 12 ounces of the watermelon on the highest bold level and the highest fizz level and see what happens Okay so we going high bold That one going off for right now Size 12 ounces and we going the highest fizz

The second one was pretty fizzy. I can't even imagine how high the highest fizz is going to be

but I'll find out in just a second. And start. I'm really curious about this fizz level

It makes some interesting sounds before it actually starts dispensing. Very fizzy

Look at that. Now that's the first one. Now we have more coming out of here

Is this glass too small? I don't know. I think this glass might not be big enough. I guess I'll find out in a second

Is it gonna overflow? Hopefully not. It's gonna be close. Oh, is that gonna be close

Is it gonna overflow? No! Oh, right. Okay, maybe I should have a bigger glass next time

It's all the way to the top. It's all the way to the top, but I made it

Let me take a sip of this. Even though it's supposed to be watermelon lime, it kind of reminds me a strawberry soda I used to drink when I was a kid

It's very fizzy, but it's very good. I think the fizz level is almost too high for me and I like fizzy drinks, but this is very fizzy

I'm gonna try another drink here. I think I'm gonna stick with a low fizz level. Even though I thought I liked fizzy drinks, I guess maybe I don't like them as fizzy as I thought

as I thought I did. But I'm going to try going the highest bold flavor on both of these and

see what happens. Also looks like we're getting a little bit low in the water. I think that might have one more drinks worth here. Let's see. So I got the lowest fizz level, 12 ounces

both of them maxed out on the boldness. Here we go. It looks like water comes out first, then the flavor

Dang, I thought this was a bigger glass. This was going to be kind of full too

Once you can, we'll see if it overflows my glass. I thought my glasses are big enough

Oh, it's going to be close. Oh, it's going to be close. You can stop right now

Oh, it did. Wow, I got lucky both times. Look how close that is at the top

And you can tell that it's mostly water on the top, but I have to stir this. Fortunately, if it had overflowed, there is

is a drip tray down here, so it wouldn't go over the counter. So they did account for that

because I guess you don't always know how big a glass to use. I may have put too much ice in there too. Personal opinion, everybody's gonna have a different idea, but to me the low fizz level is perfect

I mix kind of two similar flavors. I got a watermelon lime, strawberry

kiwi. Just a very berry tasting drink, but it's very good. So I got three 12 ounce drinks and

one six ounce drink on one fill up and it is now empty, so it's time to refill that

Doesn't seem too bad really. It seems very simple. I thought it was going to be more elaborate than it is. It really isn't

The flavors are easy to put in there and take out whenever you need to. And they do close back up for easy storage

They say the CO2 cancer will last about 100 drinks, so that means I have about 96 more to go, which really isn't that bad

So I've got a few drinks here. I got a drink while I ponder the pros and cons of the Ninja Thirsty

So I just sat down and wrote down my list of pros and cons, but before I get to that I have one more very quick test I want to try out Now I had mentioned that I got this starter pack with the Ninja Thirsty but I also bought a whole bunch of other other flavors as well And one of those flavors is the coconut pineapple Now my current favorite sparkling drink is the pineapple coconut by Zoa

Now these aren't very cheap, but I do like them quite a bit. I'm just wondering how much the coconut pineapple can compare to the pineapple coconut

I'm gonna pour the the Zoa into a glass and see how the fizz level looks

Now that looks like kind of a maybe a medium fizz level compared to what I'm gonna

I made earlier. I refilled the container full of water here. Let me just replace this with the

coconut pineapple. All right, so I set it for the regular boldness, six ounces, the medium

fizz. I think we're good to go. Pull the tray down here. Put a glass there. Let's get

started. Here we go. So this is the Ninja Thirsty Coconut. So this is the Ninja Thirsty Coconut

and this is the Zoha pineapple coconut. Let's see how they compare

Zoa first. Now on the Zoha the pineapple comes out most, the coconut's kind of in the background

and it's kind of a moderate fizz level. Ninja Thirsty. I would say it's the opposite

The coconut comes through most, the pineapples in the background, and maybe the fizz level's a little bit too high

I mean, it should have just gone with a low fizz level. Let me go back and forth. All right, so maybe that wasn't an exact replacement

but it was pretty good. I could probably drink the thirsty almost as much as I could drink

to Zoas, so I think they're on the same level. Before my pros and cons also, I want to talk a little bit

about the cost of these. How much it costs you is going to depend on the boldness level and the

fizz level that you use. It'll also depend on if you buy one canister of CO2 at time or multiple

or join the refill club. To generalize, though, one of these makes about 20, 12 ounce drinks

At seven bucks a piece, that's approximately 35 cents per drink for just the drops. The CO2 canister

is about $30 to $35.00. It makes about 100 drinks, so also around 30 to 35 cents a piece for that

So when you count the CO2 canister and the drops, it's about 65 to 70 cents per drink with just those

not including the cost of the unit itself. So let's take a look at the pros and cons. Now, the pros would be that it's very simple to use and the drinks are all quite good

Everything I tried, I liked. I believe that that alone is probably a compelling enough reason to justify buying this for people that don't mind spend $180 on the unit

I also like how customizable they are. When you consider that you can have two flavor pods at a time, four levels of fizz, two levels of boldness

That's a lot of combinations. But now it's time for a few cons. There aren't that many, but I would say the first con that came to mind is that you really can't just leave it out for instant use because the water has to be pretty cold, maybe even ice cold

And although the individual drinks are pretty cheap, the unit itself is 180 bucks, which could be prohibitive for some people

You also have to always make sure that you're stocked up on the CO2 canisters. If you don't have one of those and you really can't make any carbonated drinks

Now, I'm a fan of Ninja products. I like the foodie oven. I like the foodie grill. I like the Ninja Creamy

And now I have the Ninja Thirsty, which I do think that I'm a fan of. Those who don't mind the price, I think will find

a solid offering with effective results. If you've tried this, tell me what you think

in the comments below. I appreciate you watching and I'll see you next time. There's a canister that says keep..

There's a canister that says keep..