12 Hint Water Flavors, Ranked Worst To Best

We love cracking open a can of LaCroix or bubly sparkling water. The intense fizzing, the sharpness of the carbonation on the tongue, and the fun flavor options make sparkling water an always-interesting beverage option. However, what should we reach for when we want the unsweetened fruity experience without the bubbles? Sparkling water helps people break away from soda and other sugary beverage dependencies, but for others, that fizzy madness leads to gassiness, bloating, and overall discomfort (via University of Chicago Medicine). Patients battling GERD and acid reflux may be encouraged to seek still water alternatives, which is disappointing when it's the flavor spectrum of sparkling water that you love.

Enter Hint water. Hint was founded in 2005 by people who wanted to increase options for sugar-free beverage choices (via Drink Hint). Its waters are made with no preservatives, calories, or sweeteners — or carbonation. The brand has a core set of classic, permanent flavors, and an extensive rotating selection of limited edition and online exclusive options. Hint utilizes bottles rather than cans, making it a more portable option than many sparkling water brands, and also offers its own line of energy-infused, sparkling, and kid-friendly water products. Hint's biggest advantage, though, remains its still water. It's difficult to get your hands on every single flavor, especially the limited and exclusive ones, but we tried several Hint flavors and ranked them from worst to best.

Watermelon is a summertime staple. It's hydrating and refreshing, a cool relief on a hot July day. It's easily enjoyed on its own, as part of a salad, or in a glass of agua fresca. Hint's watermelon-flavored still water is just as light and refreshing. The watermelon is mild, but it seems to fit given how unoffensive the intensity of the actual melon is. For the same reason, watermelon taste is best as a standalone flavor, in our opinion; Hint often offers limited-time-only mashups and seasonal combinations, but we like to enjoy watermelon on its own so it's not drowned out by companion flavors.

Because of how balanced and enjoyable the watermelon water is, we had to bump this flavor up above the others. However, if you are at home with the time and resources, we say you ought to just make a fresh, homemade batch of agua fresca for an uplifting, summery watermelon beverage.

It's about clemen-time that more orange-flavored waters exist. In the lemon-lime-dominated world of citrus flavors, we are always happy to see more members of the orange family be given a standalone option. Hint's clementine-flavored water tasted just like a ripe tangerine. However, we could see how some Hint drinkers may be unimpressed with this one. While it does beautifully mirror a juicy wedge of orange, it also exhibits a bizarrely medicinal quality that we definitely could have done without. The closest comparisons we could pinpoint would maybe be a citrus-flavored pre-workout powder or those hard Flintstone multivitamins for children. If you know, you know.

We're not saying that Hint clementine is unlikeable. It's a variety that will likely have die-hard fans as well as Hint enthusiasts that disdainfully avoid it. If you're looking for a way to elevate the clementine, consider making a vodka drink with your favorite Ketel One botanical-flavored vodka.

Hint says that it flavors its still waters with the essence of fruits. The Hint peach water appears to have been flavored with the essence of an essence of an essence instead. We couldn't perceive any taste until we were a third of the way through the bottle, and even then, the strongest peach flavor only comes through in the aftertaste. It's hard to say that this is a flaw of the peach variety, though. The perfect amount of fruit intensity in a still water is going to be subjective from consumer to consumer. To some, a heavier fruit potency may be too much to enjoy as a light, refreshing water, and an option like peach — which really just suggests the flavor of peach — could be much more enjoyable.

If it's any consolation, the peach is tastable once you've taken multiple drinks. It just wasn't enough for us, even at its best.

Peach raspberry is almost a great Hint flavor — almost. Both fruit elements are there, but neither does enough. We can taste the peach and the raspberry (the peach decidedly more so than the raspberry) but you really have to seek the flavors out in order to acknowledge them, and that's more work than we want to put into drinking a bottle of water. It seems like peach raspberry is nothing more than a weakling in the brand's flavor lineup. We weren't at all impressed with the standalone raspberry Hint, either, but the peach one was pleasant if not mediocre. So it appears raspberry is the slacker here.

Despite how underwhelming it was, this Hint had a nice floral overtone, which seems to be a unique product of the marriage between raspberry and peach. A stronger raspberry tartness would have been the perfect balance to this flowery note, but we won't be finding that in this one.

Crisp apple might sound like a fall flavor, but this Hint can be taken and enjoyed all year long. This flavor earned a well-deserved spot high up on the list because it reminds us so much of sinking our teeth into a crisp, tart Granny Smith apple. Even with no sugars or artificial sugars, the apple is peculiarly sweet, like a glass of apple juice that's actually three-quarters water and one-quarter juice. Many of the brand's weaker flavors dissipated almost immediately, leaving no lingering taste of the fruit behind, but the crisp apple sticks around in a very pleasant aftertaste.

Crisp apple is a great flavor to have on hand when you've grown tired of all the berry options. We weren't able to get our hands on it for this review — it is an elusive flavor that rotates in and out of Hint's limited-time-only lineup — but you can add a little bit of variety to the apple taste with Hint's cranberry apple water.

We are far from being experts on market approval of different fruit flavored products, but it seems that cherry-flavored drinks fall into "loathe it" or "love it" categories. Some folks taste cough syrup in every cherry product they encounter, while others get more of a red Starburst essence. Luckily for us, we fall into the latter category. There was something unique about the cherry Hint flavor: As soon as the seal was broken on the lid, we caught wafts of fragrant cherry and cherry blossom. Almost no other flavor had the potency to be perceived by the nostrils before actually taking a drink.

The cherry Hint flavor was a winner for its intense flavor that made the beverage feel like more than just water. This is our no-doubt recommendation for people who tend to find Hint waters to be too weak or are trying to transfer away from sweetened drinks.