It’s £1.19 per can, which was the same price as two of the other Rockstar varieties I bought, which seemed nice given its extra claims. Now – to the interesting bit: the taste test! Well, they were definitely right about it not being carbonated. Sadly, they failed to mention that while it is fairly easy on the tongue to begin with and leaves no aftertaste, helpful if your throat is still “recovering” from whatever, it has a horrible too-much-lemon-squash taste in the middle of your drink. Nasty. As far as the refreshment goes, I didn’t really feel anything noticably different from the effects of any other caffeine drink, although once down, my throat felt a bit better I guess. It packs 32mg/100ml into the £1.19 500ml can, resulting in a mid-range caffeine-by-price of 1.34mg/p. A mixed drink.

Taste: 4/10
Value: 5/10
Experience: 7/10
Overall: 5/10

Looks nice and refreshing, doesn’t it? Well surprisingly enough, it is – at least a refreshing break from the “mixed fruit” flavours of other drinks. I’m not quite sure what it tastes of, but it has a sort of citrus tang to it, instead of a sickly sugar-overload taste. Peculiar. It tastes like a slightly medicinal fruit punch.

Taste: 7/10
Value: 2/10
Experience: 5/10
Overall: 5/10

Nothing special. They even have the same colour code as Source. And the horrible colour. So: do they taste any different?

Short answer: No. You could put these pretty much side by side with their Morrisons counterparts and be unable to tell the difference. If anything, they feel ever so slightly less syrupy, but that’s about it.

So, as there’s nothing else really to say, here are the scores. Same as Source, if you were wondering. Even the value is the same; same price and concentration.

Taste (regular): 6/10
Taste (sugar free): 3/10
Value: 7/10
Experience: 5/10
Overall (regular): 6/10
Overall (sugar-free): 4/10

Well, despite my initial beliefs that a cheap lucozade tie-in could only be a bad thing, I was surprised as I realised that the flavour was “Lemon Zing”, which actually sounded quite nice, especially as the drink marketed itself as something to wake you up in the morning. It also boasted about having a relatively low number of calories unlike the original Lucozade brands, which is another point that differentiates it from most energy drinks.

Pouring it out, it was nice to see that the drink is fizzy but transparent, and does in fact, taste exactly like regular diet lemonade. That’s pretty much all that there is to be said about that really. It is just like lemonade.

Of course, the brand tie-in comes at a price. The drink does pack caffeine at 32mg/100ml, but at 89p for each 250ml can, it’s pretty pricey – 0.90mg/p of caffeine, which is second last, beating only Red Bull. However, the drink does have its own selling points of low calories and a popular flavour. Overall, not so bad, but the price is irritating.

Taste: 8/10
Value: 2/10
Experience: 9/10
Overall: 6/10

Bad photography.

So far, so boring. Crack open the can. The drink is yellow, but not the usual nasty energy drink colour. It’s cloudy yellow, a bit like orange squash. Which makes sense, as this flavour of Relentless imitates the taste of a nice, branded fizzy orange drink – and it does it very well. It’s basically Fanta with caffeine. Talking of caffeine, like other 500ml drinks so far, it has a concentration of – you guessed it – 32mg/100ml, and mg per penny of 1.28, the same as Monster or Origin. If you’d prefer a usual orange soda flavour to the tang of Monster, sweetness of Relentless Origin, or “mixed fruit” atrocity of other brands, then you’re in luck, Relentless Inferno pulls it off very well indeed.

Taste: 9/10
Value: 5/10
Experience: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

It comes in a rather flimsy can, but it does the job alright, and the design is pretty nice. There’s a lot of pretentious marketing stuff on the back which appears to compare people drinking Relentless with great artists and poets.

It’s not particularly price-efficient either, at somewhere around £1.25 a can – and it has the 32mg/100ml concentration that I’ve by now come to realise is not just a coincidence, but the mandated maximum concentration by EU law. So, the mg/p ratio is 1.28, exactly the same as Monster’s branded drinks.

The taste is quite sweet, and although the flavour is described as “mixed fruit”, it doesn’t retain any of the budget energy drink oversweetness or aftertaste – there’s actually no aftertaste at all. It’s generally an incredibly pleasant drink to have. After a couple of hours your mouth might feel a bit dry due to the high level of sugar, but otherwise it is probably the best tasting drink, even after trying all the other ones so far.

Taste: 9/10
Value: 5/10
Experience: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

The taste: As many times as I’ve said that other energy drinks taste vaguely of pineapple, this one does too. But much more so. This time they’ve actually put fruit juice in, making up a whole 50% of the drink. The fruits are a blend of apple, passion fruit, pineapple and guava, and you can properly taste them. The taste only carries a hint of usual Monster, although you can tell quite quickly that the sugar content of the drink is still pretty high. Again Monster have made a drink with a taste that you wouldn’t usually expect from the energy drinks market.

Taste: 8/10
Value: 5/10
Experience: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

Being a major brand, it costs quite a lot, somewhere around £1.25 per can. Looks pretty nice, and with a caffeine content of 32mg/100ml, one of the highest I’ve seen yet, it’s pretty good value for a 500ml can, and a major brand, with the caffeine per price rate at 1.28mg for the penny.

What really makes monster different from the other drinks I’ve tried so far is that it seems to have a fairly unique flavour. There are hints of the mixed-fruit generic oversweet taste, but the actual main flavour is very hard to describe. To me it tastes sort of clinical, but that’s not really a fair way of describing it as it’s not actually bad, just very strange. I know some people who absolutely love it and swear by the taste, and others who hate it. Oh well, I guess this is just one drink you’ve got to make your own mind up about.

Taste: 7/10 for potential
Value: 5/10
Experience: 8/10
Overall: 7/10

The caffeine content is nice and high – 32mg/100ml – but taking into consideration the price, it comes out at 1.17mg per penny. Not a patch on the budget drinks, but just about double as much as Red Bull. It’s also 3p cheaper than Red Bull overall.

Anyway, the taste: very strange. It’s like pineapple mixed with some kind of industrial solvent. The taste is genuinely nasty, but at least the aftertaste doesn’t stay too long. It’s a bit of a let-down after the packaging and price led me to believe they might actually make it taste good. Oh well, that’s marketing for you.

Taste: 4/10
Value: 5/10
Experience: 8/10
Overall: 6/10

Surprisingly, the packaging is fairly colourful looking, with a colour distinction to help you tell the normal and sugar-free versions apart – the sugar-free variant is in the “lighter” shade of blue.

Starting with the regular, sugared version – the taste is fairly in line with every other budget can so far, a “mixed fruit” flavour with a sweet aftertaste, which is in this case bearable at least. Nothing special here.

Taste (regular): 6/10

After hurriedly chugging the rest of the regular to get a comparative taste of the sugar free version, I was surprised at the difference in taste. It actually tastes quite markedly worse, but I guess that’s to be expected, by the fact none of the other brands have a sugar-free or diet version I’ve seen yet. It’s sweeter then the regular, but not as sickly, it just tastes of horrible diluted pineapple and orange squash. There’s also a nasty aftertaste. But on the other hand, at least there won’t be a sugar comedown afterwards if you have a lot – unless you wash your mouth out with coke or something, which may seem tempting after tasting it.

Taste (sugar free): 3/10

Both variants have the same concentration and strength by price as emerge too – 30mg/100ml, 2.14mg/p.

Value: 7/10
Experience: 5/10
Overall (regular): 6/10
Overall (sugar-free): 4/10

Alright as a budget drink, but unless you’re on a major diet or unable to taste, stay the hell away from the sugar free version!