That viral $40 'self-cleaning' water bottle from TikTok left a green slime ring after 3 days.

I took it apart in my kitchen sink in Austin and found the UV light was just a cheap LED with no seal around the charging port, so how is anyone supposed to actually clean the thing without water getting in the electronics?

3 comments

3 Comments

singh.harper6h ago

Had a buddy in Denver who returned one of these after he took it camping and the charging port got wet just from morning dew on the counter. Said the light flickered once then died. He tried drying it out in a bag of rice for two days but no luck. The thing was toast before he even got to try the self-cleaning gimmick on a real trail.

kellygrant5h ago

Oh come on, that's not really how a bag of rice works for electronics. Rice doesn't actually dry things out that well, it just sits there and maybe absorbs a tiny bit of surface moisture. Your buddy probably killed that flashlight by leaving it in rice for two days instead of taking it apart and letting it air dry properly. The real trick is to pop the thing open if you can, remove the battery, and let the circuit board sit in front of a fan for at least 24 hours. Rice is more of an old wives tale than a real fix, and it can even leave dust inside the ports. So yeah, the charging port being exposed is a bad design, but that flicker and death was likely from the wait, not the dew itself.

fionafoster7h ago

Took me about 30 seconds to see the same issue on mine. I found a tiny dab of food-grade silicone around the charging port fixed the water problem, but the UV light is basically a toy. The green slime is just algae from the water sitting in the crevices around the lid seal. Honestly a good scrub with a bottle brush and some soap every couple days works way better than that little blue light ever will.