Quick Summary
Product: Black Onyx Shatter by Muscletech
Flavor: Fruit Candy
Category: Pre-workout
Mixability: 5/5 – mixes easily in water
Flavor: 5/5 – Tastes like crushed up Smarties candies
Effectiveness: 5/5 – got me moving!
Value: 3/5 – $36.50 for 20 servings on Amazon
TOTAL: 18/20
Detailed Review
Preworkouts are my favorite products to review. You never quite know what you’re getting into when you take that first sip. For reference – because my experience may not be the same as yours – I do my workouts first thing in the morning, and I take my preworkout on an empty stomach mixed with just water, and follow it up with a protein shake about 5-10 minutes later and then hit the gym around 20-30 minutes after I’ve taken the preworkout. I also do relatively short (45-60 minute) workouts where I’m doing fairly low volume, relatively heavy weights. You may have totally different results if you’re taking it on a full stomach, or you workout differently than I do.
Mixability
Mixed it up in a standard shaker with cold water – 30 seconds of shaking and it was nicely mixed up even though I probably should have put in more water.
Flavor
Like I mentioned – I didn’t put in enough water, so the flavor was very strong, but REALLY good! Tasted like someone took a bunch of packs of Smarties candies and smashed them up and mixed them up in water. Definitely would do this one again.
Effectiveness
We’ll need a visual aid here – let me show you the label:
See anything that looks a little bit insane on there? How about 3.2 GRAMS OF BETA-ALANINE??? Okay, so if you haven’t had beta-alanine before you may not understand why this is insane. Beta-alanine is a research proven and effective supplement that is best taken in small doses (less than 1g) throughout the day because it is very water soluble (aka you pee it out quickly). Taking more than 1g at a time will give you a fun sensation of spiders crawling all over your skin, especially the skin of your face. 3.2 GRAMS gives you the sensation of having an entire colony of ants crawling inside of your skin! That feeling starts almost immediately and intensifies for about 20 minutes before it starts to slowly subside. I don’t understand why companies do this – aside from trying to fool people into thinking “If I feel it it must be working”. All it means in this case is that you’re going to be peeing out and wasting a bunch of beta-alanine after you get done being assaulted by ants.
Anyway – as the ant assault was getting more intense I did notice that I was suddenly feeling more alert and more awake – no surprise there considering the 300mg of caffeine anhydrous in there. I did feel more alert and focused throughout the workout, so it definitely did its job.
Value
Currently on Amazon it is around $37 for 20 servings… so that’s $1.85 per serving which I don’t think is a really good value for what the product has in it.
Final Conclusion
This stuff tastes good and does a great job of making you feel like your face is being consumed by thousands of ants. It also does a really good job of waking you up and helping with staying focused during the workout. I personally feel it is overpriced for what you get with it, so I won’t be buying this in the future. If you can find a deal on it, or get some free samples definitely give it a try yourself, you might feel that it is worth nearly $2 a pop.
