Blood Alcohol Breathalyzer

Breathalyzer Reviews: BACtrack SingleShot Review

The BACtrack SingleShot is a single use disposable breathalyzer. This breathalyzer review will explain the concept of disposable breathalyzers as well as taking a look at the BACtrack SingleShot in detail.

Single use breathalyzers, or disposable breathalyzers, are designed to be compact, easy to use alcohol testers. They are mainly targeted at infrequent users of blood alcohol breathalyzers. Disposable breathalyzers are meant to be thrown in a bag and forgotten about until that rare occasion when you're worried about your blood alcohol level.

Disposable breathalyzers have no electronic parts. They operate through the use of solid chemicals that produce a negative or positive result via a visual indicator, such as a color change. Since they are so simple in construction they are usually very reliable and do not break down, as well as being very lightweight and small.

The BACtrack SingleShot is certainly easy to use. The device is a 7cm long tube filled with crystals. You just squeeze the center of the tube to activate the breathalyzer and then breathe into the tube. The crystals change color if your blood alcohol is above a specific level. Simpler than even the simplest of electronic breathalyzers.

Three different SingleShots are available which test for three different blood alcohol levels - 0.02, 0.05 and 0.08%. Remember, the BACtrack can't tell you what level of alcohol you have, only a positive or negative result. So a color change on a 0.02 SingleShot just indicates that your blood alcohol content is equal to or greater than 0.02%. You may in fact have a BAC of 0.09%. This type of test will not suit a lot of people who will want a more accurate reading.

Although there is no warm up time compared to an electronic breathalyzer, you do have to wait at least 3 minutes for the alcohol sensitive crystals to change color. Again, this long wait will not suit many people.

The most fundamental problem we found while carrying out this breathalyzer review however is its not always that easy to tell if you have had a color change or not, ie. if you have a positive result or not. The crystals are supposed to change from yellow to blue-green for a positive result, but these two colors can look quite similar making it hard to determine whether your blood alcohol level has reached the threshold or not. It would be even harder if you were slightly color blind. It would be much better if the alcohol sensitive crystals changed from say white to red, two very different colors, but I'm sure this chemically isn't possible.

While I was writing the BACtrack SingleShot disposable breathalyzer review it occurred to me that I don't really see the point of single use breathalyzers anymore. It used to be that they were a lot smaller than electronic breathalyzers but with the miniaturization of breathalyzers in the last couple of years this is no longer the case. The size of the single shot is 3 inches. You can get keyring breathalyzers and iPhone breathalyzers which are smaller than this and far more cost effective. The BACtrack SingleShot's retail price is around $20 for five, so they're not cheap. Electronic breathalyzers are also very simple to use these days. I've thought hard and I can't think of a single reason why I would buy a disposable breathalyzer over a digital blood alcohol breathalyzer.

Alcohol Sensor: Alcohol Reactive Chemical Crystals
Power Supply: None
Blowing Time: 12 seconds
Response Time: 120 seconds
BAC Detection: 0.02, 0.05, and 0.08 %BAC
Display: None
Recalibration: N/A
Warranty: N/A
Size: 6.9 x 0.9 x 0.9 cm
Weight: 5.7 grams

Images of the BACtrack SingleShot breathalyzer: