Best Bottom Loading Water Dispensers for Hot and Cold Drinking

How the Five Compare on the Numbers

Every one of these five sells the same headline, three temperature settings, and exactly one of them says what those temperatures are. NEWBULIG publishes hot water up to 200 F, cold as low as 58 F and a third outlet it calls room temperature at 98 F. Brio, Avalon, Manastin and Tehanld all name hot, cold and room temperature settings and publish no figure for any of them.

The published weights split the group in two. Brio is the heaviest of the five at 40.5 pounds, with Avalon at 38.1, and both of those have steel cabinets. NEWBULIG is 23.15 pounds with a body of ABS and PP plastic and iron side panels, which is consistent with the figure. Manastin and Tehanld publish no weight at all, so two of the five cannot be weighed.

The table cannot tell you how cold the cold water gets on four of these five, which is the single most important thing a buyer wants to know. It also cannot tell you how long a full bottle takes to cool, or how much hot water comes out before the tank needs to reheat, because no listing in this pool publishes a tank capacity for either the hot side or the cold side.

What Three Temperature Settings Actually Means

The One Listing With Figures, and Its Strange Middle Setting

NEWBULIG is the only listing here that turns its three spouts into numbers: hot up to 200 F for tea, cold as low as 58 F, and a third outlet described as room temperature water at 98 F. The first two are useful and specific. The third is worth reading twice, because 98 F is close to body temperature and is not room temperature by any ordinary definition.

What that probably means is a lightly warmed outlet rather than an unheated one, which is a sensible thing to offer and a poor thing to label. Either way it is the only dispenser in this group whose middle setting can be planned around. If you want water that is genuinely at the temperature of your kitchen, this listing does not describe it and the other four do not quantify it.

Four Listings That Name Settings Without Numbers

Brio, Avalon, Manastin and Tehanld all publish the same claim in slightly different words. Avalon calls its output crisp cold, cool or piping hot. Brio offers hot, cold and room temperature functions. Manastin lists three preset temperature settings. Tehanld names hot, cold and room temperature water. Not one of the four states a degree figure for any of the three outlets anywhere on its listing.

That matters because the word cold covers a range wide enough to include water you would call refreshing and water you would call merely cool, and nothing on four of these listings says which one you are buying. The only figure in the pool, 58 F, sits at the cool end rather than the cold end, which may be part of why the other four stay quiet about it.

Power, Noise and the Parts Nobody Names

The Only Wattage Figures in the Group

Avalon is alone in publishing what the machine draws, 420 W for heating and 100 W for cooling, and it is also the only pick claiming UL and Energy Star approval. Those two facts sit well together: a listing willing to state its power draw is usually one that has been through a certification that requires it. Nobody else in this pool publishes a wattage of any kind.

Avalon adds two things nobody else does. There is a built in nightlight to make the spouts visible in the dark, and a BioGuard antimicrobial coating on high contact areas, which is the only hygiene treatment named anywhere here. Against that, it is the one pick of the five whose listing never mentions a child lock on the hot spout, which the other four all do.

One Compressor Named and One Noise Figure Published

Tehanld is the only listing that names the part doing the cooling, an R134a compressor, and describes a ventilated side panel for heat dissipation and metal side material rather than plastic. That is more mechanical detail than the rest of the pool offers combined. It calls the compressor low noise and then publishes no figure, which is where the detail stops being useful.

NEWBULIG is the only one that gives the figure, stating operation under 50 dB and naming home offices and bedrooms as the reason. It also publishes dual thermal protection and grounding protection. Between the two of them you get a named compressor with no number and a number with no named compressor, and no listing in the group offers both.

Cabinets, Heights and Borrowed Text

Metal, Plastic and Aluminum Alloy

Avalon publishes a stainless steel cabinet and Brio a stainless steel accent, which is a smaller claim than it sounds: an accent is a trim piece, not a body. Manastin claims a body of aluminum alloy, the only listing to name that material. Tehanld says its side material is metal and argues that this is more durable than plastic, which is a comparison with the rest of this pool.

NEWBULIG is the one that admits to plastic, naming ABS and PP components with iron side panels, and its 23.15 pound weight backs that up. Heights cluster tightly: 42.52 inches for Brio, 41.34 for NEWBULIG, 41 for Avalon and Manastin, and 38.21 for Tehanld, which is the one that will clear a low shelf the others will not.

A Listing That Names a Rival in Its Own Bullet

Tehanld’s temperature bullet says, in the maker’s own text, to customize your drinking experience with the Brio Essential water dispenser. Brio is a different brand and is also in this pool. The same bullet structure and several of the same phrases appear on both listings, so the Tehanld specification text has been carried over from another product and cannot be treated as a description of this one.

Brio has a smaller version of the same problem. Its dimension fields give a height of 42.52 inches while its size field reads 41.4 with no unit attached. A difference of more than an inch is enough to matter under a shelf, and since neither figure appears in a sentence the maker wrote, there is no way to tell which one describes the cabinet.

Which One Fits Your Kitchen

You want to know how cold the cold water is. NEWBULIG is the only pick that publishes temperatures, 200 F hot, 58 F cold and a 98 F middle outlet, along with the only noise figure here, under 50 dB. It takes 5 gallon bottles and weighs 23.15 pounds.

Running costs and certification matter to you. Avalon is the only pick to publish power, 420 W heating and 100 W cooling, with UL and Energy Star approval, a stainless steel cabinet, a nightlight over the spouts and a BioGuard coating on high contact areas.

Small children in the house. Brio publishes a two step lock on the hot spout, an LED display with an empty bottle alert, and a cabinet that takes either a 3 or a 5 gallon jug. At 40.5 pounds it is the heaviest here, which also makes it the hardest to tip.

You care what it is made of. Manastin is the only listing claiming an aluminum alloy body, with buttons on the top of the unit instead of the front, a low water reminder and a child safety button above the hot spout. It publishes no weight.

A low shelf or a tight alcove. Tehanld’s fields give 38.21 inches, the one height in this group that is clearly under the other four, with a named R134a compressor, metal side panels and a ventilation design. Read its specification text with care.

What We Could Not Verify

Six things a buyer would want from these five listings and cannot get.

• Four of the five publish no temperature figure for any of their three outlets, so cold, room and hot are words rather than specifications on those listings.
• The one listing that does publish figures calls a 98 F outlet room temperature, which is close to body temperature and is not what most buyers mean by the phrase.
• No listing publishes a hot tank or cold tank capacity, so none of them can tell you how many cups you get before it has to recover.
• Two of the five publish no weight at all, including the one claiming an aluminum alloy body, where weight would be the obvious check on that claim.
• Tehanld’s feature text names the Brio Essential dispenser, a different brand in this same pool, so its specification wording has been carried over from another listing.
• Brio’s size field reads 41.4 with no unit while its dimension fields give 42.52 inches, and nothing on the listing says which figure is the cabinet height.