I had a field day with the fruit Upshot. Yuck. This shot is hardly bearable. It tastes like stale chocolate coffee. Not the greatest in taste. There is sugar in this shot as well. If theres going to be sugar, it better taste damn good! There is a lot of competition out there that has no sugar and tastes amazing. C’mon Upshot. We love your design. We don’t love your taste. Energy was OK. C’mon Upshot… give me something to write home about. I know you dont like me nagging. drinksthatwork.com [2/5 STARS]

In our search for the best energy enhancer, we came across Gu energy gel. Is it a drink? Is it a food? We may never know. What we do know is that this stuff is rad! This little pouch packs some serious energy with very low sugar content. I would take these on hiking trips, biking trips, or any other activity where I didn’t feel like lugging around bottles that take up space. These could be placed into a pocket without even knowing they were there. The vanilla flavor was excellent, and went down smooth. Thumbs up for energy gels. guenergy.com [5/5 STARS]

This whopper is a 4.26 fl oz energy shot that lives up to it’s label. Speaking of the label, there is a see-thru strip on the side of the label so you can measure how much you consume (this is a double shot so this feature came in handy!). I thought this was very clever on behalf of their packaging designer. Although I was not SUPER impressed by the flavoring, this shot was not bad. I could not find a flavor on the label besides “original” but this is a fruit/berry mix. This shot gave me sustained energy throughout the whole day. We bought these at $3.99 a bottle, which is awesome because this is 2 shots in one and should be consumed as such.  Great effort from Spike. How can we get our hands on some of their carbonated stuff?! spikeshooter.com [4/5 STARS]

The packaging is slick. Nice and clean text with no crazy claims of infinite energy. It’s clean. We like that. Holograms on the label (the big Z is a hologram) add cool points as well. This shot had a very strange smell and not enough orange flavor coming through to mask. Did anyone else think this stuff smells weird? This thing is packed with vitamin b12. Delivers what you need, but could use some better flavoring. shotzenergy.com [2/5 STARS]