I like me some carbonated water personally, and tap water in Germany is super clean and tastes nice almost everywhere. However, I’ve heard of some people before that they dislike Sodastreams for some reason or another. What gives?
I recommend that if you go with a home carbonation system, that you look for one you hack your own CO2 refills for.
Some people buy a CO2 tank and regulator, then hook it straight up to their machine. I have a large CO2 tank in the basement with an adapter to refill the individual proprietary canisters. I got the tank free from a friend, and then paid 30 USD to have it certified (good for 10 years) and 30 USD to have it recharged with beverege-grade CO2. Buying an adapter was 40 USD
My large tank holds ~5kg of CO2, and it costs about 17 USD to officially refill one of the small canisters with 500g of CO2. Thus, even if I didn’t get the tank for free (new ones cost ~120 USD), the large tank would still pay for itself after filling it one time.