Asda Blue Charge Diet Summer Fruits

Asda are really trying hard with their energy drinks… but not quite hitting the spot. They’re going for variety of range over quality and it shows. Fancy a berry flavoured drink? They have one! Tropical? yup! Diet? Most of them! This is a berry drink, and it is sugar free (at least, I haven’t found a non-diet version yet). It’s very strong in flavour – like it is almost 50% cordial! Overall though it’s only average so it gets average scores.

28 White

This is just the sugar-free version of 28 Black. It tastes more or less the same so it gets the same scores! It also contains the recently hyped Stevia (read about that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia) and is the first energy drink I’ve seen to contain this sugar substitute. I expect to see a lot more Stevia based drinks in the near future.

Black Energy Zero Sugar

Usually you can taste the sweeteners in a low calorie energy drink especially when compared to its full fat cousin. This time, they’ve done an excellent job in making a zero sugar version taste just like the original. Other than that, I’ll refer you to the review of the original Black Energy because the drink is pretty much identical, including the Mike Tyson endorsement.

Power Booster Sugar Free

Much better (yes, I know I’m biased to sugar free drinks) than the full fat version, but not only due to the sweeteners. It appears to have a different taste to the sugary version –  slightly more sour but not too much. It’s still a Red Bull clone, and a cheap tasting one at that so probably not worth hunting down if you’re in to that.

Go Splash: Energy Lightning Red

This is an unusual product. It’s a concentrated product which you add to water. The bottle contains 48ml of ‘energy squash’, and you are supposed to add 0.8ml of product to every 100ml of water, so per 100ml you only get 20mg of caffeine. But, the bottle has enough juice in it to supply 6 litres of water with caffeinated goodness – that’s 24 cans of Red Bull in a liquid comparison, or about 16 cans if comparing caffeine content. In other words, be careful to water it down enough or you could end up with serious jitters.

In reality though, what you end up with is quite a watery tasting drink. I experimented with different concentrations but you’re never really too sure how much to put in. The directions say 1 squirt per 200ml, but how big is a squirt? I ended up with about 3 medium squirts in 200ml of water just to get a drink that didn’t taste like manky water, but even at that concentration it tasted more like watered down flat generic energy drink. A good idea, but needs more work.

Here’s a tip – don’t use water! I made an acceptable drink by squirting a decent amount in to a glass first, then pouring in Sprite afterwards to make a fizzy and sweet mix-up. Much better than mixing it with water.

She

Low calorie, in a pink can, and peach flavoured. It’s aimed clearly at women, with a share of profits going to the She Charity funding projects supporting women and children. Sadly, I don’t think they’ll sell many cans unless they tweak the flavour slightly – the peach really didn’t work for me and I found it far too sharp. On the plus side it does contain things like ginseng and aloe vera… lovely.

Rip It – G-Force Sugar Free

Again, credit to Rip It for making their sugar-free and regular varieties of drinks taste the same. No chewy feeling from the sweeteners at all in this drink making it just as pleasant as the regular G-Force. Other than that, identical to it if a little lower in the caffeine department.

Rip It – Citrus X Sugar Free

As with the full-fat version, I wasn’t too impressed with this drink. The sharp orange taste is just too overpowering. There are many other flavours in the Rip It range, so spend your money on those instead.

Rip It – Power Sugar Free

I was a little disappointed I have to say. Whereas most energy drinks in my opinion taste better in their sugar-free versions, Rip It have made their full-fat versions so nice that the sugar-free ones fail to equal the taste. It was nice, but not as nice as the normal version so I’d suggest you go for that one instead. Aside from that, it’s the same unique flavour as Rip It Power which you can’t get anywhere else.