I Ranked 30 Energy Drinks, From Celsius to Ghost (2025) | WIRED

Overview

I Tried 30 Popular Energy Drinks. Here’s How They Rank

Buying energy drinks in public is embarrassing. Every time I see someone scanning the cooler for their favorite flavor of Monster or Ghost, I guess which accompanying vape flavor they've picked out, and I know others are making the same assumption about me when I’m scoring a can of Celsius to beat back a hangover or get lifted before a 10-hour bartending shift.

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The good news is that it’s easier than ever to purchase your favorite cans from Amazon, and the great news is that you don’t need to put on your Crocs and Cookie Monster jammies to do it. Throw in a nice little discount for buying in bulk and setting up auto-delivery, and you’re basically being paid to not leave your house. The future is here, and it is jacked up on B vitamins, red dye, and taurine.

As a devoted coffee drinker, I often feel like the misquoted New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael when I see neon-colored tallboys of high-octane energy drinks usurping shelf space from my favorite Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew variants at my local Sheetz. Energy drinks are big business—they raked in close to $20 billion in the US in 2023—yet I don’t know a single person who drinks them on a regular basis.

A good cup of coffee is hard to find at odd hours in the middle of nowhere. Energy drinks, on the other hand, are as no-fuss as it gets. At any hour of the day you can pick out an eye-catching can that boldly advertises its caffeine content, plunk down a few bucks, and shoot into space in just a few swigs. Homebodies and deal junkies don’t even need to leave their domiciles to cop excellent deals with lightning-fast shipping on their most beloved brands, provided they’re Amazon Prime members. I love value, convenience, and caffeine, so I finally caved.

Still thirsty? Check out our other drink-related guides, including the Best Mushroom Coffee and Best Coffee Subscriptions.

Updated March 2026: We've added new drinks from Bloom, Melting Forest, and Liquid Death; removed some discontinued products; and updated links, tasting notes, and prices throughout.

Functional Essential Energy Drink, Sparkling Orange (12-pack)

Though it has less carbonation than most energy drinks, Celsius is punchy without a cloying aftertaste and it does wonders in masking the medicinal notes that are present in similarly potent drinks. This is an absolute unit when it comes to the caffeine-to-volume ratio, and not a single flavor I tried was objectively bad.

Celsius is a hot up-and-comer for a reason, and it’s not shocking to see entire fridges stocked with its whole portfolio right next to the checkout counter at a growing number of gas stations. The can has a whole lot of text I will never read, but it’s attractive and not too much in the extreme gaming or health-nut quackery camps to dissuade potential buyers who care about being seen in public with an energy drink. Like the Beatles or In-N-Out, this is a consensus pick everyone agrees on.

Notes: Nice mellow thrust of energy with very few jitters or butterflies in the stomach. This is a solid road trip or preworkout beverage. A slight dip in energy around 2 pm, but a few jumping jacks got me back on track.

C4’s marketing materials position its sports fuel as the beverage of choice for the athleisure set. Does C4’s “clinically studied Carno Syn beta-alanine” compound help you get swole? Do yoga pants increase flexibility? Who knows, and who cares! Halfway through the can I got happy feet and swapped my Aeron chair for the walking pad. Two miles and 35 minutes later I was still zooming, so I took my dog for a 2-mile run and felt like a million bucks at the end. I crushed a gas station salad for lunch and felt like a Healthy Person for one of the first times in my life.

Notes: With flavors like Frozen Bombsicle and Mango Foxtrot in C4’s arsenal, concerns of this “NSF-certified” drink tasting like saccharine gloop are valid, but the Midnight Cherry was a pleasant surprise. An intense cherry flavor—imagine a Dr. Brown’s dialed up to 11—hits on the frontend, and only a mild trace of diet flavor lingers in the aftertaste. Marketing be damned, you could add this to the rotation at a Taco Bell and no one would know (or care) about its alleged postgains powers.

Classic citrus flavor with minimal aftertaste and plenty of carbonation. That first sip brings back memories of all-night drives, marathon Excel sessions for the computer science class I took before I quit business school, and the countless “bomb” shots I consumed during this era. The gold standard for energy drinks. Minimal negative social baggage, maximal uplift.

Notes: The sugar high is sharp and abrasive, and the caffeine hits once the sugar wears off for stable energy well into the afternoon.

The realm of low- or no-calorie energy drinks offers two options for sweeteners: an unwieldy list of chemicals with confusing names, or allegedly “natural” options like stevia and monkfruit. The former camp commands the lion’s share of the market, but the latter is ascendant and willing to pay a premium for an energy drink with as few ingredients as possible. Naked’s entry in the field is our pick for the best of the woo-woo options that align more closely with yoga than gaming or deadlifting, and the few other options in this field aren’t even close as far as taste and firepower are concerned. Naked boasts just six ingredients, principal among them being fermented sugar and monkfruit. While we loved Jocko Go when it initially blazed the trail for monkfruit-based energy drinks, the mellow tang of Naked outclasses the sharp and astringent sweetness of the signature beverage of the wellness world’s favorite ex-Navy Seal/human-sized clenched fist.

Notes: Tastes like homemade lemonade boosted with just a hit of carbonation, with a barely noticeable “diet” finish that’s much easier to grow accustomed to than Jocko Go. It packs more than double the caffeine, making it a no-brainer when A/B-ing the two. The can is simple and devoid of aggro branding as well, which we’ll concede has no bearing on performance but is still a thing to consider if you’re worried about being seen slurping an energy drink in the office or at the gym.

I never thought I would miss the flavor of old-school sugar-free energy drinks until I embarked upon this lifestyle. Monkfruit and Stevia certainly have their fans in the health and wellness space, but there’s something about the trashy delight of a fizzy, citrusy sucralose bomb of a sugar-free Red Bull that hits differently in this day and age. Gen Z’s endearing rebrand of Diet Coke as “fridge cigarettes” leads me to believe the kids love a little danger, and I’m not convinced a little hit of the S-word every now and then will kill me any faster than microplastics or the ambient thrum emitted by the data centers that are popping up all over my home state of Ohio.

Enter Bloom, which has all the aesthetics of a very-online wellness girlie product without any of the questionable flavors or adjuncts. Bloom’s 180 grams of green tea-derived caffeine does work during the early-afternoon doldrums, and the cute and crushable little can is one of the least offensive items one can be seen sipping on during an 8 am Zoom call or while commuting to the office. I still missed my morningly cup of coffee while I was trying this on for a week, but the tandem of caffeine and B vitamins tricked my brain into adopting a healthful effervescence that came in handy when a mountain of repetitive customer outreach tasks hit my inbox first thing on a Monday morning. This is a fun and friendly fizz-bomb that checks just about every box one may have when searching for a low-cal energy option that’s easy to find at just about any large chain store in the US.

Notes: The Juicy Orange flavor is dangerously close to the exaggerated citrusy sweetness of a Mountain Dew Kickstart—my personal favorite for hangovers and morning indulgence—all with none of the high fructose corn syrup and only one-sixth of the calories in a 12-ounce dose. The last few sips yielded a dry, almost prickly sensation against the back of my throat, but the flavor profile of Bloom is otherwise impeccable. Sucralose leads the charge on sweetness, with a modest dose of ginseng, lychee, green tea, and apple cider vinegar bringing up the rear. I did a double-take when I saw vinegar on the ingredients list, since the sip clocks in little to no bitterness to speak of.

The manosphere is rife with snake oil merchants, and Jocko Willink is no exception. In addition to a Master Class about leadership, the ex-Navy SEAL also hawks Jocko Go, a monkfruit-sweetened energy drink that makes highfalutin claims about “balanced energy,” “increased focus,” and “memory support.”

After just a few sips of this fizzy concoction I was overtaken by an urge to start a podcast about crypto and male decline. Instead of doing that I spiked the remainder of the can with a shot of Smirnoff and blasted off to the moon. I missed the memo that “bomb” drinks are out and borg-ing is in, but I have a strong feeling that Mr. Willink’s vitamin-rich riff on Turbo Fuel is sloshing around in gallon jugs at state colleges all across the land. It’s hard to tell where the caffeine ends and the 100 milligrams of B vitamins (more than 4,000 percent of the daily recommendation!) begin, but either way this tiny black can packs a wallop.

Notes: The flavor hits like a combo of Sunny D and stevia, which is an acquired taste for some.

Due to its branding, lack of carbonation, and overall vibes, Guayakí Yerba Mate is a caffeinated beverage that’s somehow exempt from being regarded as a capital-E Energy Drink by polite society. The stats on its cheery, GVC-inspired can say it contains no corn syrup or bizarre extracts—chemical or otherwise—and an absence of bubbles makes it dangerously chuggable compared to other drinks.

This is the caffeine vehicle of choice for liberal arts grads who spend their weekends wandering farmers markets with a hangover and a New Yorker tote filled with vegan junk food. You may not be able to dose a Mormon with one of these, but your “California sober” friend will gladly cut loose with a Guayakí while you take advantage of his offer to be the DD for the night.

Notes: The lack of bubbles is weird, but a hefty chug of one of these during a short break in Zoom meeting hell gave me just the boost I needed to draft (then delete) a subtly dickish email to a “cross-functional partner” about how they need to stop making Slack channels for everything. I finished the second half after work and was able to hustle through some household chores while still managing to crash by 10 pm—a win I never thought I would relish until I turned 40.

While Gorilla Mind isn’t No. 1 on this list for flavor, value, or energy boost, it’s now the new reigning champion in the “can with the most icons and superfluous stats” category. Esoteric compounds like N-Acetyl-L-Tyrosine and Alpha-GPC promise amplified focus and enhanced memory like some mad scientist who has devoted their life to optimizing the brains of gamers and programmers across the land. I engage in neither, but it only took a few sips of this smooth, juicy concoction to get me unreasonably hyped about combing through a spreadsheet of past Amazon purchases and spinning up a query that would group all of them by keyword.

Notes: The flavor is intensely orangey with a creamy finish that hits like the first few suckles of an Orange Julius. Or at least what I remember an Orange Julius tasted like before the location in my local mall closed then reopened as a subsidiary of a poorly run Dairy Queen. The flavor feels a bit over the top about halfway into the can, but the idea of home-brewing Sparks (RIP) with this as the base is something I may investigate prior to the upcoming Justice tour.

This is the smooth, user-friendly “mama bear” of energy drinks. It tastes a little like juice, a little like Dew, and a little like gaming. The caffeine content is on the lower end compared to comparable brands that hump the esports/incel aesthetic much harder, but the combo of its smooth, juicy mouthfeel and a familiar citrus flavor is a pleasant surprise. This and a sandwich from the warming bin of a gas station is an all-star breakfast for a blue-collar hoss or a city slicker who’s on safari in the hinterlands of America. If gaming bars sold brunch this would make an excellent mimosa base.

Notes: The caffeine in Kickstart hits more like a traditional can of Dew than a proper energy drink, but you’re trading sugar for vitamins and a more mellow citrus flavor that even the staunchest anti-Dew crusader could get behind if you added this to their cocktail.

The tagline on Lucky’s latest batch of cans is “Zero Sugar—Zero Aftertaste.” Nearly 40 cans into this experiment I assumed aftertaste versus calories was the central paradox of the energy drink market, but I may be wrong. The jolt of energy from the 200 milligrams of caffeine in the can is a slow trickle of good vibes and boosted focus that I found myself returning to well after the taste-testing period on Lucky was over. This is the energy drink for people who think they hate energy drinks.

Notes: There’s nothing incredibly memorable about the mild orange flavor of Lucky, and that seems to be the entire point. Every third or fourth sip will melt away into a mysteriously savory undertone that reminds me of brushing my teeth the morning after I crushed some street meat at an odd hour after a bar crawl. It’s completely random, and I don’t mind it at all.

While I love the keyed-up orange flavor of Celsius, the hefty smack of sweetness it’s known for is not for everyone. The classic orange flavor offered by PHX hits all the same notes with about 60 percent of the intensity of Celsius, which makes it a more appropriate daily go-to for those who are averse to sugary beverages but still need a little something to mask the electrolytes and vitamins that are crowded into this 12-ounce can.

Notes: I crushed one of these after a brewery-sponsored run club event got a little too rowdy for a Wednesday, and I was back to about 90 percent (I’m 41 and haven’t felt “100” in decades) in less than an hour. Cracking packets of liquid IV into energy drinks seems a bit sus, so your best bet is to open a can of PHX and enjoy your hangover remedy without the need for supplementary magic powders and elixirs.

Subdued mango taste at the front, pleasantly sour lemonade finish. Mango can taste like a pine cone if it’s done wrong, so this is impressive. No chemical taste to speak of. Excellent balance of magical caffeinated ingredients and flavor. The flavor got a bit tiring three-quarters of the way through the can, but I still finished it.

Notes: A pleasant little jolt that helped me focus on a tedious spreadsheet for an hour straight. I hit a wall during an unnecessary meeting around 1 pm, but I can’t give this drink all the blame for that.

This wannabe Goop product tastes like Diet Peach Snapple diluted with club soda. Very noticeable “diet flavor” at the front, but a nice clean finish. Enough sweetness to trick your brain into thinking it’s having a treat. If you don’t hate diet drinks, you’ll enjoy it. Bonus points for the vibey can, which would look great staged in a Kinfolk photoshoot or brochure for a yoga studio.

Notes: No physical jolt to speak of; however, I did get the urge to organize my Google Drive about 20 minutes after cracking this one. No crash later, just a mellow, buzz-free productivity bump.

Melting Forest first hit the scene with a mushroom coffee blend that had a mellow, bitter taste that most old hippies who are afraid of modern coffee trends would find endearing. The brand is back on the scene with a full gamut of sparkling energy drinks, and they’re just as quirky and understated as Melting Forest's brown wonder dust. As for an energy boost, I didn’t feel much when I desperately needed a kick in the pants after a morning of back-to-back customer calls. This is more of a 5 o’clock sipper for me when I need something bubbly to replace the can of lager or pilsner I usually crack open when I start prepping dinner after work. The flavor is subtle and inoffensive, if a bit odd, and the caffeine rush is a slow trickle that won’t overwhelm anyone who consumes caffeinated beverages throughout the day. There’s a time and a place for such a beverage, so I’ll add Melting Forest to my ever-expanding utility belt filled with elixirs, potions, and snake oils with decent drinkability and questionable efficacy.

Notes: The black cherry flavor was the most appealing of the handful of flavors included in the brand's variety pack, which also includes Orange Cream, Mango Guava, and Strawberry Lemonade. Less is more if your main priority when pursuing sugar-free energy drinks is to avoid the uncanny valley of chemical flavors and off-notes, and in the case of Black Cherry, its muted medicinal flavor was familiar, if not a bit off-putting. Cough syrup is not a flavor I reach for when my brain is deep in the post-lunch doldrums, but I admire its honesty!

Pretty close to Red Bull, but with no sugar. Excellent carbonation. Much better than sugar-free Red Bull. Very strong lingering sweetener flavor, like getting a Jolly Rancher stuck in your teeth. The aftertaste was underwhelming, but not a deal-breaker.

Notes: Very mild energy boost that didn’t hit until about 90 minutes later, at which point I was tapping my foot and rapidly clicking a pen while on a Zoom call. I crashed a couple hours later and found myself zombified by 2 pm.

Liquid Death burst onto the scene in the late 2010s with a concept so simple you’d kick yourself for not thinking of it first. Canned water for heshers would’ve sounded insane on Shark Tank, yet there you are, baking in the sun at an all-day metal festival in a parking lot, surrounded by ponytailed dudes named Anders and Zug in battle vests, slurping down water from a can that vaguely resembles the poster of a John Carpenter film. It was only a matter of time until the strength of Liquid Death's branding caused its marketing team to boomerang back to non-water products, so the recent drop of Liquid Death Sparkling Energy makes perfect sense.

What does not make much sense at first glance is the brand's embrace of “unextreme caffeine,” which clocks only 100 mg of caffeine per can. One could imagine the logic behind this paltry dose of the good stuff is that similarly positioned rawk-adjacent brands like Monster and Rockstar have the market for sugary 200+ mg caffeine bombs cornered, so a more mellow approach to microdosing caffeine is a more appropriate lane for a brand that makes mildness seems like the new extreme. This line has four flavors in it—Scary Strawberry, Murder Mystery, Tropical Terror, and Orange Horror. Liquid Death proudly exclaims its lack of aspartame, sucralose, and taurine in the flavor stack, so your best bet is to grab a flavor your mind can easily imagine before taking that first sip. After a year into this experiment, I’m warming up to the idea of gentler caffeination, and the Liquid Death Sparkling Energy family slots in nicely alongside the new line from Melting Forest as well as the stately boosted teas offered by Yerba Mate. While your butt-rock-loving buds pregame with Fireball shots at a strip mall tavern with a name like Scores or the Penalty Box, you’re sipping a can of Orange Horror while walking home from a metalhead yoga class that eschews electro-wallpaper music for the satisfying crunch of Sleep and Electric Wizard. You don’t need vanilla chill beats to get limber, and you don’t need a sugary caffeine bomb to get lifted.

Notes: Orange Horror tasted the best after repeat use, with a light tickle of citrus on the nose and a whisper of creamy tang on the finish. If you’ve wondered what would happen if Polar ratched up the flavor of its Orange Vanilla variant from a .05 to a 3, then this is a pretty close match of what you have in mind. It lingers on the palate long enough to encourage you to ponder what exactly is happening in your mouth, and then poof! It’s gone. The same can be said about the extremely mild caffeine buzz you’ll cop after drinking one of these.

Ex-WWE star Ric Flair’s signature “dietary supplement” tastes exactly like it looks: bright and obnoxious, but in an uncommitted way. I can deal with a few calories if they’re put to good use, which is thankfully the case here. The can alleges an “herbal mushroom blend” and 1,500 milligrams of “Cognitive Cap Complex” do the heavy lifting. Like wrestling, that’s probably not real, but it’s still kinda fun and silly.

Notes: Flair’s snake oil never got me jacked up enough to engage in “Woo Girl” behavior, but I did get a nice little jolt of energy that mellowed out after an hour with no crash to speak of.

This is a mild energy drink with 150 milligrams of caffeine that doesn’t cause headaches or jitters. The peach flavor is not overly sweet, but other flavors are discounted as well, including Tropical Punch and Rocket Pop.

Accelerator is an inoffensive and unassuming option for folks who don’t like brand names or flashy cans. The carbonation is adequate, and the peach flavor is juicy but not over the top. It should appeal to the three people left on the planet who still prefer generic gas station peach rings over the vastly superior Haribo option that’s hanging from the next rack.

Notes: The energy level offered by Accelerator is a tad underwhelming, but it didn’t hurt my brain or put me in a sugar coma, so I’ll chalk that up as a minor win.

The crack of the can shocks the senses with a strong whiff of vape juice and gaming. Pop Rocks up front, with a mild hint of Tums on the finish. Blue raspberry is an unholy flavor you’ll never find in nature, but this manages to mask the insane caffeine content with just enough flavor while barely plunging into the netherworld of fake sweeteners replicating flavors that aren’t even real.

Notes: The buzz provided by Bang is an aggressive wallop of caffeine that’s best microdosed unless you want your body to be on the verge of a heart attack one minute then slumped over in your gaming chair like a heap of dirty laundry the next.

Phorm recently hit the scene from out of nowhere, much like the mysteriously hot homeschooled kid who shows up the first day of high school shrouded in mystery and ill-fitting department store duds. The can is understated and normal to the point of being conspicuous. A bit of digging led back to none other than Anheuser-Busch at the helm of what appears to be a private-label entry in the energy space from America’s most familiar macro brewery. I wanted to hate Phorm because of this stealthy maneuver, but the subtle orange flavor and velvety-smooth carbonation won me over within just a few sips.

Notes: As one would expect from a megacorp beverage, the ingredients section is lousy with enough chemicals and extracts to trigger the state of California into submission, but decent caffeine buzz and inoffensive flavor did all the talking with each of the 16 ounces that went straight to my brain.

This Whole Foods standby presents a small hint of blackberry sweetness up front and a dull tinge of old bubble gum on the finish. The carbonation is nice. This is the least appalling option you’ll find at Whole Foods, which is not saying much. For the caloric spend I would much rather have a Guayakí Yerba Mate.

Notes: Clean Cause gave me a mellow boost that burned slow and low for a few hours. I powered through some spreadsheets then cruised at 3.5 mph on the treadmill for about 45 minutes right after.

Since launching in 2002, Monster has been all in on being the bratty, buttrock-loving stepbrother of Red Bull’s more refined European sensibility. At the time of publication the So Cal beverage giant has almost 40 flavors in its Monster portfolio, but the original flavor in the black-and-green can is an American icon for good reason.

The sweet, citric tang hits harder than Red Bull, which is either a plus or a minus depending on how EXTREME you’re feeling when you crush this for breakfast at the crack of noon. Downing an entire can is nearly impossible without a honey bun and some Jack Link's sent down the hatch as advance fortification.

Notes: A throbbing sugar high put me one step closer to the edge, and the aggressive creep of the caffeine buzz had me feeling like I was about to break. A set of burpees set to the pace of “Push It” by Static-X failed to quell the stinging pain forming in my frontal cortex, so I cracked a CBD soda and spun some Wilco to fight back against the Darren Aronofsky scene unfolding in my brain. To say Monster Energy “has zero chill” is a gross understatement.

Considering the gargantuan size of the energy drink market, it’s curious that only a few cross-branding efforts exist outside candy companies lending their intellectual property for branded flavor recognition. In the wake of the massive success of the Fast and the Furious franchise, it makes perfect sense that Holley Performance, which owns the trademark on nitrous-oxide systems, or NOS for short, would collect royalties on every can of this sickly sweet concoction that’s sold.

The staggering sugar content of this “high performance energy” drink will give even the most loyal Mountain Dew stan pause, though it does wonders to obfuscate the laundry list of dyes and adjuncts that clutter the bottom half of the snazzy can’s nutrition facts. If you ever wished OG Mountain Dew was just “more,” then this is the drink for you. Make sure your dental insurance is up to date before you get too wild with this one.

Notes: I’ve never experienced the pleasure of juicing the engine of a tricked-out Mitsubishi Eclipse with a boost of nitrous, but I’ve thrown my fair share of newspaper on bonfires at Boy Scout camp. The kick in the pants provided by NOS’s unwieldy sugar content hits the same way, with very little substance on the back end to prevent total flameout on the shoulder of the highway of life.

Alani Nu gets high marks for vibes and aesthetics, which hit somewhere between Alaska Airlines chic and Margaritaville with an ’80s synthwave twist. The actual drink, on the other hand, is a chaotic mess. An overwhelmingly sweet cherry flavor belies the lack of calories, which raises suspicion at how a low-cal can like this can somehow be the sweetest drink of the entire lot. The end result hits somewhere between a mouthful of cherry Luden’s Cough Drops and a high-volume tiki drink one would purchase on the 311 cruise.

Notes: This one gave me a mild bump in energy that might’ve been real, but it was probably just my brain getting excited about a long night of flaming sugary drinks and Jimmy Buffett tunes. About half an hour later my brain realized it was lied to and chilled out a bit.

Full Throttle pitches itself as “heavy-duty energy for hardworking Americans.” The can looks like something you’d see onscreen during the intro of The Colbert Report, but this is not a joke. The flavor is halfway between original Red Bull and Mountain Dew at a poorly run Taco Bell with a shoddy soda machine.

Notes: I cracked one of these during an eight-hour bartending shift and I didn’t feel much aside from a brief sugar high and a bizarre sense of patriotism. I lifted myself up by my own bootstraps and powered through the shift for less than minimum wage, and I felt very American—and very tired—while doing so.

If video games finally gain the legitimacy needed to join the Olympics, then G Fuel’s very overt aspirations to be the Gatorade of gaming will finally come true. The can says it’s the official energy drink of esports, and the website is a sensory overload of colors and text that flashed words like “Tetris” and “Pew Die Pie” before I got a headache and slammed my laptop shut. The caffeine content of 300 milligrams is nothing to scoff at, and I did get quite a jolt after choking this down during the span of an episode of Rick and Morty I queued up while plowing ahead on the treadmill. Ninety minutes later my joints turned to rubber and I napped for what felt like three hours.

Notes: All of this fanfare, yet the end product tastes like nothing in particular. If you try hard enough you can get trace notes of the white Airheads flavor, which is usually the flavor left at the bottom of the bucket because no one knows what it’s supposed to taste like. A Reddit commenter said it “tastes like what a clown would taste like.” Shut it down.

The music industry has collapsed and rebuilt itself several times over since Rockstar first launched in 2001. In that span, the very concept of what a “rockstar” even is has been rewritten ad infinitum, with the most current iteration functioning as an ideal assembled from poptimism, monoculture, consolidation, and psychopathic “stanning.”

In other words, the model followed by musicians—forming bands to meet strippers to do drugs with—has been blown up completely, and consumers' appetites for branding that’s hitched to that ethos have bottomed out accordingly. Rockstar is now owned by Pepsi, and the flavor of this energy drink that is famously not Red Bull tastes exactly like you’d expect it to with this in mind. A nondescript citrus flavor serves as a poorly made Trojan horse for high fructose corn syrup and a synthetic aftertaste that’s hard to tolerate unless you’ve been chain-smoking Parliaments most of your adult life.

Notes: Partying with a can of Rockstar is a white-knuckle affair that commonly leads to grinding teeth, anguished pacing, and an overwhelming urge to argue with strangers on the internet about how the music of Buckcherry is actually good. This is the kind of energy drink that’s only appropriate to drink after midnight before you’re about to do even worse things to your body.

Black Rifle Coffee Company was founded in 2014 by a former Green Beret with a mission to “serve coffee and culture to people who love America.” That’s a noble goal taken at face value, and no reasonable person would argue that military veterans shouldn’t reap some sort of financial benefit from a commercial enterprise that so brazenly hitches its wagon to their valor. This is America, however, and a business that’s as invested in selling culture as it is a consumable product is immune from the perversions of hyper-partisanship and the cheap thrills of owning the libs. Between Black Rife's pledge to hire 10,000 veterans as a direct response to a similar pledge made by Starbucks to hire just as many refugees; the Blue Lives Matter-adjacent aesthetic of its merch; and its weekly podcast, which serves as a hyper-macho who’s who of conservative politicians, venture capitalists, and manosphere snake oil salesmen, it’s easy to guess which side of the aisle butters BRCC’s bread.

Notes: Freedom Punch is the least offensive option one would find in BRCC’s mixed 12-pack, which also includes Project Mango, Wild Frost, and Ranger Berry. I liked the above-average carbonation level, but the vague hint of Tahitian Treat at the front of the gulp immediately dissipates into a tingly chemical aftertaste followed by a dry mouthfeel that’s a little bit concerning. I would reach for this if I were suffering a stomach bug and avoiding things with pronounced flavors, or if Alex Garland’s 2024 film Civil War came to life and a roving gang of right-wing marauders rolled by and threatened to beat my liberal ass unless I proved my fealty to their king. Two hundred milligrams of caffeine is not nothin’, but it’s stretched a bit too far across the can's volume to really pack the wallop I’d need to outrun Landry and his crew of Pantera-loving degenerates without having to stop to pee along the way. This isn’t the energy drink America needs, but it might just be the energy drink it deserves. Sigh.

Have you ever thrown up all night after eating too many vodka-soaked Skittles you snuck into a bar because you’re a broke college kid? This is like that, only instead of consuming it from a plastic bag hidden in a cargo short pocket, it comes from a can that looks a lot like the disposable polyester shirts worn in the movie Idiocracy. Do not leave the basement with one of these cans in hand. You will be rightfully mocked and shamed.

Notes: An explosion of jittery energy for about an hour, followed by bubble guts and a mild headache for the next hour. The one upside is that this drink is strong, and it should keep you on the edge of your seat if you can keep it all down.

Ardor Tropical Mango (12-Pack) for $38: This is the best of all the Ardor flavors we tried, and it still tastes like someone rinsed out a glass that contained a mango White Claw with plain seltzer. It’s 99 percent flavorless. On the bright side, this may be drinkable if you have food poisoning and need to get caffeine in you without throwing up. I copped a bigger buzz watching commercials for Mountain Dew Kickstart on You Tube. This one is a hard no all around.

Key Keytone Energy Drink Pineapple Passionfruit (12-Pack) for $40: Key is an “all natural” energy drink that’s very proud of its vegan and keto-friendly ingredients. It’s made with Avela, which is described as a “ketogenic ingredient intended for adult use” on its incredibly vague fitness-adjacent website. That’s all well and good if chasing ketosis is your hobby. If it’s not, you should run as far away from this beverage as possible. The initial hit of flavor is a muddled medley of faux-sweetness akin to woo-woo sugar replacements like Stevia or monkfruit, but what comes next is nowhere near as merciful. The astringent aftertaste hits somewhere between the final coat of goop your dental hygienist doles out and that last can of Mom Water that’s left in the cooler after a long day at the pool. The impact of so many foreign substances definitely had me feeling a certain kind of way within just a few minutes, but my attention swung wildly between work tasks, domestic minutiae, and creeping dread about our country's unraveling social fabric.

Across the span of a year, I sampled different energy drinks from an amalgamation of readily available gas station staples, brands the Amazon algorithm was pimping extra hard that day, everything in the Whole Foods end cap that advertised its caffeine content, and a couple oddballs from the past you probably don’t remember.

I graded on taste, which is obviously subjective, and the palpable effects of the caffeine after knocking back a can at 8:30 am every day, after my daily 1.5-mile run with my dog. The extra cans were deployed two hours into shifts at my part-time bartending gig. I took one day off from the experiment due to gut-wrenching stomach pain and horrible night sweats. If there’s a Ghost-addled gamer in your basement as you read this, please consider offering them a wellness check, or a refill on their tendies at the very least.

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Key Takeaways

• I Tried 30 Popular Energy Drinks

• Buying energy drinks in public is embarrassing

• The good news is that it’s easier than ever to purchase your favorite cans from Amazon, and the great news is that you don’t need to put on your Crocs and Cookie Monster jammies to do it

• As a devoted coffee drinker, I often feel like the misquoted New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael when I see neon-colored tallboys of high-octane energy drinks usurping shelf space from my favorite Dr

• A good cup of coffee is hard to find at odd hours in the middle of nowhere