This New Outdoors Water Filter Technology Changes EVERYTHING!

the truth about water filters for hiking camping running and other types of outdoor activities is that they are not all equal and if you get the wrong one you could potentially find yourself unable to get anything to drink or worst case scenario as happened to me you could get sick in this video I've got a few filters to explain what I mean including a new category filter that I've never seen before I'm going to do a taste test with them later in the video to see which one gives the cleanest freshest tasting water and suggest which one might suit you best but I'm also going to be warning you about one type of popular filter that I think you should probably avoid so let's get started water filters are great they give you paace of mind when you're drinking from unfamiliar water sources and they could help you avoid serious illness because in outdoor water sources you could find things like waterborne viruses we've got list here bacteria parasites endotoxins microplastics chlorine Trace pH cical chemicals organic matter poo um heavy metals not that kind of heavy metal uh dirt cloudiness and strange flavors in the water if you're taking from streams rivers and springs maybe high up in the mountains you know you're unlikely to encounter too many of these but if you're taking water from rivers and lakes down low near urban areas or around Farms that's a much higher risk these filters are also great if you're traveling to to countries where you know they're known to not have particularly good quality of water but for this video we're really going to be concentrating on outdoor recreation now there are other treatment methods such as water purification tablets and boiling but filters are a lot more convenient it's kind of hard to stop during a trail race and boil some water and purification tablets can leave a weird flavor in the water so the first type of filter we have here is a fiber based filter these are quite small they're light and they're affordable and have a long lifespan this one here is the Salamon fiber based water filter you can see it there I use this one quite a lot for trail running it consists of the filter with a bit you can drink from and a soft flask there's a number of Brands make similar bottle to this like cadan it's quite simple to use you fill the flask with water you screw in your filter and then you you slurp from that end or you can take that off and squeeze the water through and the tightly bunched fibers inside that filter filter out a range of nasty this is the kind of filter that I've used a lot for trail running hiking or camping in those high mountain areas where I'm taking from water quite clean water sources to start with but maybe there's a few sheep and animals about that have been using the stream as their personal flush toilet so this kind of filter removes protozoa and bacteria protozoa are these little small weird looking single celled animals that look like Pokémon but they can cause all kinds of nasty conditions slurp down too many of the wrong bacteria in the wrong protozoa and you could find yourself projectile emptying your body from both ends this filters those out however if you're going to be potentially drinking from dirtier water sources this might not be enough and I've gotten sick from using this filter I was in a forest where some tree felling had happened fairly recently and I was taking water from a stream in the forest I drank it through this and it had a little weird of a chemical taste I didn't drink that much of it but that night I my look my stomach was not good and I was a little bit sick because this does not filter out chemicals and these fiber filters also don't improve the flavor of water so if you're drinking from say like a really py Source you can still have a bit of a weird py flavor in the water after you filtered it it might be clean it might be safe but it still doesn't taste super nice and fresh on the other end of the spectrum we have this this is the grill Ultra press this orange section on the bottom of the grill that's where the filter is and this thing filters out pretty much everything you might be worried about bacteria protozoa viruses chemicals pesticide heavy metals and toxins this is a filter that I have quite happily used taking water from the River Band which is a river that goes through a lot of Farmland it gets a lot of chemical runoff fertilizers manure all kinds of nasty stuff there's a lot of boats in it I've used this filter in that River drank about 2 lers of water through this no problems you scoop that into the water you then put the top bit back in make sure the cap is loosened and then you just press down on it and use your body weight to filter the water and it'll filter 500 M of water in just a few seconds it's the fastest one of these filters to use it's a really good solid filter and one other Advantage it has over a lot of other types of filters is that there's a one-way valve in this so after you've pressed down and filtered that water you can put flavors in here you can put your favorite Robinson's concentrated ju in there you can put electrolyte tablets the D side with it is it's quite bulky although something I find quite useful for this if you're taking a bike packing is that it fits perfectly into the water bottle holder on a bike now there are a few big differences advantages and disadvantages between these filters and I'll get into those again later but for now I've got one final type of filter to look at and this is one I've just got recently this is a pure clear soft flask filter and it looks pretty pretty much exactly like this in fact it's even smaller than the Salamon filter but there is one massive difference between these two filters and to explain that I'm going to go and do a taste test look at the color of this water it is yellow it looks like I've got a flas full of pee here and that is because that is an incredibly pey water source I'm really interested to see how these are all going to taste particularly difference between these two let's start with the grill most effective one take lid off doesn't taste like anything it just tastes like clean clear fresh delicious water yeah perfect this is Salamon and I kind of know what they expect here cuz I've used this in on this River before so it's fine it's clean but it has an aftertaste there's just a little bit of there's just a little bit of something else in the flavor that isn't there when it's filtered through the grill how's this going to compare and pure clear actually has a couple of extra features it comes with this little plastic cap over the top I don't know whether to keep this on or not maybe it was just pack but it would protect it slightly better I'll probably take it off but what it also has is it has the ability to lock this is currently locked so I squeeze that nothing's really going to come out the Salamon if I squeeze it normally nothing comes out but if I put any pressure on here it will come out and that can sometimes happen if it's in a bag this doesn't do that it clicks down into place so I pull this see that and it pops up and now it's unlocked right the question is how does this taste wow there's no flavor with this I am seriously impressed that tastes so much better than the water through the Salamon filter but why the reason there's such a big difference in flavor between these two is that this is not a fiber filter instead what's in here is basically a miniature version of what is inside the gril filter this tiny filter can filter out got my list here waterborne viruses bacteria parasites endotoxins microplastics chlorine heavy metals stress pharmaceutical chemical reductions organic and chemical matter dirt sand cloudiness and it improves the taste so this one does pretty much everything the grill does except at a fraction of the price so doesn't that make this one the obvious choice this is where we kind of have to get into some major differences between these three filters both the Salamon filters and their bottles are under about 100 G so really really lightweight the grill ultrapress in our hand is 354 G so nearly four times heavier the Salamon RRP is £55 Al you can generally find it for around £45 the gril RRP P I think is over 90 but you can generally find this between 75 and £85 and the pure clear filter retails for30 however when you take the volume of water that can be filtered through each of these before the filters need replaced and then the cost of the replacement filters that changes things once again because the Salamon filter is good for up to 1,000 L of water which means per liter of water is costing you 4.5 pin now these two Advanced filters require replacing more often the grill has the lowest lifespan of 150 L that means each liter of water you filter with this is costing you 55 which is actually more expensive than buying a multi pack of cheap water from a supermarket the pure clear filter can filter up to 200 L of water at cost of 15 P per liter and by the way with all of these filters if you want to get the full lifespan out of them you really need to when you get home take them apart and let the filter dry out if the pure clear filter for example is stored well it only has a lifespan of 2 months so it's important when you get home take it apart and let it dry out and that's the same with all of these it's best just to store them dry unless you're using them on a daily basis when it comes to replacing the Salamon filter you have to replace this entire piece at a cost of £25 it's quite a waste of plastic and similar with the Grail if you want to replace the filter in it it this entire orange section on the bottom comes off and you Chuck it away and you buy a replacement at a cost of £25 the pure clear one on the other hand is quite smart because this comes off and all you have to replace is this little piece the filter itself at a cost of $14.99 so a lot cheaper and produces a lot less waste than the other two now there is one other downside with the pure clear filter compared to the two other filters and that is it has the slowest flow rate allow me to demonstrate so I take the nozzle off the salmon filter turn it upside down squeeze it and that drains all the water out of the bottle pretty quickly compare that with a pure clear filter we take the rubber nozzle off flip it upside down and squeeze it's a much slower flow of waters coming out of this so you're getting a much higher level of filtration a much better tasting water but it does come at the expense of a slower flow than the Salamon water filter or the grill both the Salamon and the pure clear filter fit easily in the front pockets of a trail running vest the uh the grill not so much okay maybe at this point you're slightly confused and wondering which of these filters you should buy well here's my advice if you're only ever going to need a filter for trail running or maybe hiking in Mountain areas I'd probably go for the Salamon filter it's ultra light works well and has has a long lifespan however if you want the convenience of faster filtering more advanced filtering the ability to add flavors and a more physically robust and strong filter well then I probably recommend the gril ultra press this thing saved my skin last year on a bike packing trip where I realized the day after that we've been taking water from a river where just 10 m up from where we were taking the water was a dead and decomposing rabbit so if you don't mind the additional cost and the extra weight p this is you know this is the most solid option here and then if you want the Best of Both Worlds there's the pure clear filter which just happens to be the cheapest of the two and if I'd known about this before I bought my ultra press I might not have bought my ultra press I might just have stuck with this it's a third of the price it's nearly a quarter of the weight it's got cheaper replacement filters and it's got the same level of filtering yeah you do lose out on a few features but it depends on your needs but I know for me that this is almost definitely going to become my most used filter from now on and finally I've got one filter I want to warn you about it I don't recommend it and that is the original LIF straw filter I don't have mine anymore because I got rid of it but basically I got a tube here to help demonstrate it it's basically a filter that's designed to be stuck into a water source then you you slurp through it and it just draws the water through and it seems like a really really great idea and it was the first type of filter I bought it was one of the first fiber filters to Market but the problem with it is you have to have your head a foot from the water source so either you got to carry a cup with you you can scoop in and then you can put it in then you just carry in an extra piece of equipment um or you have to actually get your head right down to the water and what I discovered was if you're trying to take from a river with a steep Bank the only way you can have a drink is to actually get in the river stand in the river and then put your head down it's just yeah it's just a huge faf huge n really difficult to use but a lot of people seem to buy them as their very first filter and then discover how impractical they actually are there are newer versions of those filters including one that pure clear mix where they have uh threads in the bottom so you can screw onto the bottle turned upside down and then squeeze the water through it which is a lot more useful and also the pure clear version of that filter comes with a really long tube so you can sort of drop it in dangle it into water sour and slurp through it but I still think this type of filter is a lot more convenient so I'd be interested to know which one of these that you think would best suit your needs thanks for watching hope you find this video useful and I'll catch you on the next one 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Channel: Stephen J Reid

Views: 60,013

Keywords: water filters, hiking, camping, wild camping

Id: hEqRCDpJaPY

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024