Here’s some rankings of energy drinks based onmy personal experience. See my previous post: Energy drink ingredients – do they work? A science-based review

Monster Java
Taste: Pretty good for beverages of this type. Strong coffee taste.
Energy: good

Monster Khaos :
Taste: poor!
Energy: seemed like a quick “taurine” buzz. moderate caffeine buzz.
Ingredients: Too much taurine. A bit too much sugar. Too many B vitamins.

AMP

Taste: tastes like a bit more punchy mountain dew.

Energy: depends on sugar tolerance / how fast you drink. Expect a crash if drunk too quickly.

Ingredients: pretty good.. WAY too much sugar. (>60g / can).

**GURU

** GURU is an “organic” energy drink.

Taste: tastes ok, pretty strong sticky-sweet flavor with a lot of white grape juice concentrate. Also has light carbonation.

Energy: packs 125mg of caffeine and a lot of guarana. For sweetening it uses a mixture of cane sugar and with stevia and contains 22g of sugar alcohols. This is all concentrated in 8.3oz, so you probably want to drink slowly.

Ingredients: the ingredients are the real selling point. It has no taurine, and is mostly guarana. Contains 125mg of guarana-derived caffeine.  It also contains a handful of herbs including gingko biobia and some others that probably don’t do much. It also contains luo han guo fruit extract, mentioned above, which doubles as a sweetener as well. The downside of this drink is the high price (~$2.50).


 **Sugar free AMP

Taste:** tastes like watered-down mountain dew. Crisper, lower viscosity.

Energy: caffeine buzz.

Ingredients: pretty good.

Purple Stuff
Taste: horrible. Tastes like very watered down pepto-bismal with generic “fruit” flavor. Slight metallic taste.
Energy: none. This is actually a “relaxation beverage”. It made me feel woozy. Highly not recommended.
Ingredients: Valarian root, L-Theianine.

Sobe Cirtus Energy**

Taste: strong citrus flavor. Very good and sweet.

Energy: packs a lot of energy and a lot of sugar. Best if drunk slowly, due to high sugar content.

Key ingredients: 60+ g. of sugar

**Starbucks: Doubleshot Energy + Coffee (Mocha flavor)

** Taste: pretty good, if you need energy. If you looking for the rich, tingling, aromatic coffee experience you certainly won’t find it here, or with any caned coffee-flavored beverage. However, the flavor is superior to __ Monster Java, in part due to slightly lower Taurine content.(1800mg per can vs 2000+mg per can)_

_ Key ingredients: Maltodextrin (2000mg), Taurine (1800mg), L-Carnitine (450mg), Inositol (180mg), Panax Ginseng (325mg), Guarana (90mg).