Journey Reevus reviewed: readily hydrate

Australian technology innovator Journey asks an interesting question with its Reevus bottle: do you need location tracking on a water bottle?

From water bottles to water receptacles, technology is certainly changing. It’s everywhere, even in the places you genuinely don’t expect it to be. And today, that also means the humble drink bottle.

Journey’s Reevus isn’t named like a conventional bottle. It’s not a “quench” or a “splash”, or even just a simple “drink holder”, but it is a bottle with a curious difference: you can find it with your phone, and even use it to hold up your phone once you’ve managed to find its hiding place.

What is the Journey Reevus?

An interesting approach for a water bottle, the Reevus is by an Australian company known for dabbling in MagSafe, a magnetic charging ring used by Apple on the iPhone range, and technically supported by Qi2 on Android, that is if you can find a Qi2 device.

The name might be a little strange for a water bottle — Reevus — but it might have some origin in a less used word for a ring. “Reeve” is a nautical term that means “to pass through a hole, ring, or the like”, which certainly makes sense when you look at the Journey Reevus.

A tall stainless steel drinking bottle, the Reevus is included at Pickr’s gadget reviews not because of the bottle itself, but rather what’s on top: a MagSafe ring and what’s under it.

What does it do?

The MagSafe ring sits on a hinge and essentially turns the Reevus bottle into a phone stand of sorts for recent iPhones, covering anything from the iPhone 12 onwards including the current iPhone 16 and 16 Pro Max.

MagSafe-less models such as the iPhone SE and recent iPhone 16e aren’t supported, though, because there are no magnets in the phone design. However, Journey also includes an adhesive-backed magnetic ring adapter in the box, so you can either strengthen your iPhone case or stick it onto another phone case, not unlike the Mophie Snap adapter from several years ago.

Interestingly, the ring isn’t the only piece of tech the Reevus includes.

Hiding under the MagSafe ring is a small puck providing support for Apple Find My. Wirelessly recharged, this puck is basically a location tracker for your water bottle, using the power of your phone to tell you where you last left your water bottle, and to provide a way back.

Does it do the job?

It definitely does that.

Testing support for Apple Find My in a soccer field found the drink bottle immediately, as we did when we travelled with the drink bottle.

From what we can tell, it’s not the ultra-wideband (UWB) technology used on the Apple AirTag, but more of a previous location and tracked position, allowing iPhones to tell you where the bottle is and has been.

Missing UWB means you can’t turn your iPhone into a GPS navigator of sorts to find your Reevus water bottle, but Apple Maps can be used to give you a map-based navigation system to get where you need to be.

In short, Find My Items integration works well, as does the MagSafe, which provides a way to turn your water bottle into an iPhone stand of sorts.

Not every case will fit comfortably, even those made for MagSafe. In fact, we found the connection can feel loose at times, which might be why Journey includes a MagSafe adhesive adaptor in the box.

The MagSafe ring could also probably be a little firmer. Depending on the case it’s in, merely touching your phone could see it knock the handset off the ring, and that’s even when you’re using a MagSafe case. It’s just not as strong as the standard MagSafe stands we’re used to seeing. It feels as though the ring could be strong.

Maybe snap that extra adaptor into your case and you might feel a little comfier about the whole thing. Maybe.

What does it need?

But the bottle does feel like it needs a better opening for the water.

Maybe we’re a little spoiled with our regular Owala bottle that comes with both a large open mouth and a straw in its design, but most of the bottles we’ve seen typically come with one or the other, and they’re usually smaller openings.

Meanwhile, the opening on the Reevus is pretty much a can with the top cut off. It’s huge. It’s like drinking from a jar of water.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t feel all that a premium an opening, something that matters when the competitive world of water bottles ranges in price from $10 all the way to, well, where this water bottle is priced.

Is it worth your money?

In Australia, that price is $99.95, which is a better conversion of the US price of $89.95 than expected.

Granted, it’s a fairly high priced water bottle, and one that outside of the Find My integration, isn’t dramatically different from other water bottles in the market offering similar functionality: holding water and incorporating a MagSafe ring.

You might look at that last line and say “hang on, water bottles don’t usually include a MagSafe ring”, and you’d be right… until you considered the variation on a theme from Quad Lock, the HydroHold, the AquaStand from Rhino Shield, and the Ringo water bottle, the latter arguably being the model that really kicked this category off with a rather apt Kickstarter campaign.

And that’s before we mention having a simple browse on Temu, where you can probably find similar models that may or may not represent the same quality.

The main difference for Journey appears to be the inclusion of a Find My tracking puck, which does give it an edge, albeit a small one. If that’s worth the extra cost for you, all good.

The near-$100 cost is also better than we expected, largely because the US dollar conversion isn’t always too friendly for Australians. Once you factor sales tax and shipping, living in Australia often sees locals slapped with the “Australia tax”, so we expected closer to $150 in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps Journey being an Australian company has saved Australians from that extra cost, which is a nice surprise.

That said, we’re not entirely sure the Reevus is totally worth its rough $100 price, but given that it costs less than we had expected, and that water bottles can already command a pretty hefty price, Journey isn’t too far off the mark here.

Yay or nay?

It’s difficult to argue for an expensive water bottle. It’s a bottle that holds water, that also just so happens to work as a stand you can track. In a world with disposable income, fair enough, but if you don’t have a good hundred or so to play around with, the Reevus is a difficult argument.

It is both useful and unnecessary: a bottle you can always find so you can readily hydrate.