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.

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.

Evolve

Too sweet, metallic tasting, and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. I can’t recommend this brand unfortunately – it’s just a bad Red Bull clone and as it’s supplied in a large can, there’s also a lot of it to get through. Too sickly to be enjoyable.

Pulsar Cherry

A pleasant Lucozade wannabe with a refreshing cherry flavour. It doesn’t pack much of a caffeine kick, but it’s still more than the orange version of this product which doesn’t even list any caffeine in the ingredients. Cheap and cheerful (cherryful?)

KX Fiery

This is certainly an original drink. The fiery part of the flavour is from the main flavour ingredient of ginger, and it is very strong! I enjoyed it to start with because I’d never tried an energy drink quite like it. There are other ginger flavoured drinks, but they’re mostly quite watery – this one was strong! After less that half a can though I was struggling. The flavour is so strong that it becomes very sickly to drink, and by the end I was having to force it down on principle. The worse was yet to come because the strongest part of the flavour was collected in the final dregs at the bottom of the can. I felt like I’d gargled pure ginger juice…. it’s certainly full marks for something new though!

Precision Engineered Energy Shot

Billed as being a fruit punch flavour, it’s certainly fruity of an indistinguishable variety. Quite sweet and not too strongly flavoured, it has a very nice balance and was quite an enjoyable shot. Sadly though I’m unable to properly review the strength of the product due to the lack of caffeine information on the label. Customer services were also not forthcoming with the required information and have ignored my request for assistance! There seems to be enough caffeine in the product to wake you up, but I didn’t feel any more of a buzz than I would with any other energy shot so apart from the flavour, it’s not worth the high price tag.

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.