Saturday, April 21, 2012

Monster Nitrous Extra Strength Black Ice Energy Drink Review


This Monster energy drink has been out for a while in the US, but this is the first time I see it in Canada. At $3.99 for a can, the cost is a bit high, but it looks like all other energy drinks are slowly going up in price. For $4 I can get 3 Junior Chicken sandwiches from McDonald's.

Taste

The first sip of this reminded me of Monster Nitrous' Super Dry, which is heavily based on the original Monster flavour. This one, however, has a bit more candy-sweetness to it, it is more carbonated, it is creamy and has a lime zing at the end. The original flavour is still present, but it comes and goes at various stages.

The aftertaste is of candy-sweetness with remnants of tuned down original Monster flavour and a bit of lime. At this stage it is very similar to Monster Import. Also, surprisingly, this Monster does not have the same zero-calorie sweetener aftertaste as all other Monster low cal/diet energy drinks do.

I liked this Monster energy drink and will definitely pick it over the regular one.

Energy

Though it says "Extra Strength", there are only 160 mg of caffeine. Why do I say only? Well because other Nitrous flavours come with 163 mg and the same additional medicinal ingredients. How this qualifies as an Extra Strength energy drink is beyond me. Still, 160 mg of caffeine go a long way.

I felt the effects within about 10 minutes and since I drank the can quickly, the sugar rush made me jittery but instantly awake. I became even more jittery in the next 10 minutes, but fortunately the jitters peaked around this time and I started calming down in the next little bit. I felt greatly energized and productive.

The effects lasted for 3-4 hours and there was a bit of a crash at the end, but this was easily resolved with some water and a shot of espresso.

Not a bad performing Monster, but I wouldn't call it Extra Strength.

Scores:
Cost - $3.99 from 7-11
Taste - 8.2/10
Energy - 8/10

Overall - 16.2/20...pretty good taste and performance, but this is not Extra Strength

No comments:

Post a Comment