The SIGG bottles with 'Touch' finish are sweet

My one complaint about SIGG bottles to this point has been the slick enamel finish on most bottles. It looks great, goes well over SIGG's unique designs and is no problem to hold with bare hands. However, if you put gloves on, it is very slick to hold.

Enter the 'Touch' finish.

The touch finish is an epoxy coating with a texture additive. It is very simple, and under use has proven itself to be very durable. The texture coating offers a firm grip but it is not uncomfortably rough on bare hands. Currently SIGG offers this finish in both their 1L Traveler water bottle and in their .75L Active style.

The downside to the 'Touch' finish is that it can't be applied over any of SIGG's unique designs. While there is no official word on why, I would suspect the texture additive exhibits too much opacity to allow effective use in a clear coating. For my personal tastes this is no problem as I naturally prefer the solid colors.

I recently used the 1L Traveler Blue Touch on a two week trip to Mumbai, India. While there I put it through its paces as my primary drinking accessory. If you travel in the third world, it is good to have a plan for your drinking water. Even in Western-style hotels and modern cities, the water supply can be contaminated with a variety of objectionable nasties. I poured boiling sterilized water into it with no harm to the inner liner or to the exterior paint coating (try that with a Nalgene bottle!). I treated water inside it with Sodium Chlorite tablets at no detrimental effect to the bottle. And finally, it survived 16,000 miles of airline travel with no problems in my checked baggage.

I used it extensively in my hotel rooms and while traveling to various companies I was visiting. I was always able to maintain a good grip on it even when wet and had no problems with the 1L size.

For my purposes, this seems to be the perfect water container.