Welp, I got the water-based Astroglide and … I’m not happy in the results.
It does last a bit longer than the oil but only a bit. It lasts longer than that if you’re not sensitive to the ‘tugging’ (see below).
The real issue is the slipperiness. It suffers from what I feared: drying out. Now maybe I’m just more sensitive to it, but I felt more tugging than usual. It wasn’t drying out in the sense that say the oil did (where enough of it was pushed away from the head) but it got a little tacky and tuggy and not in the fun way.
I would get a good amount of sensation from when I first applied it. And true, it is easier to apply in a proper container rather than something you have to dip your fingers into (ie: I poured it right into the sleeve from the open top). Of course cleanup is pretty amazing, before I could even soap anything up the water rinsed it off, so I guess there’s that?