Alright, it's late, I'm tired but I feel like ranting about water filters...
Ceramic
When I first started backpacking, I used the
MSR Miniworks. It's a solid filter, very reliable and if you're not a dumbass, totally field-serviceable. If it gets plugged up, remove the cartridge and scrub it a bit, keep going. It's really a great filter. But it's slow. At it's peak efficiency you're looking at .83 liters per minute. Not bad but not great. The second issue I had was the small parts. Back around 2005 I was on a trip in Death Hollow. We had two Miniworks on hand amongst the three of us. Mine was newer so we were using it. But despite the clear looking water, it was getting plugged up. So there we sat alongside Mamie Creek, disassembling this field-serviceable filter when I heard 'plop plop'. There goes the critical parts of the filter into the river. Yeah, I know, we were idiots for doing it over running water. Not the filters fault. But still, too many small parts! The Miniworks is definitely one of the best filters on the market for reliability and being field serviceable but if you pack one, make sure you pack a
spare parts kit too.
The ultimate deal breaker for the Miniworks was the speed, particularly when it isn't at the top of it's game. This video of
Smokey and his Miniworks on our
2011 trip to Shingle Creek pretty much covers it.
Chemical
My next filter after the Miniworks was the
MSR Miox. It's claim to fame was that it was super light and killed everything. It weighed 3.5 ounces compared to 16 ounces for the pump. DuhhhhH!! No brainer, right? Yeah not so much. It was light but it wasn't much different from pouring bleach into your water. It made that wonderful mountain water taste terrible. Anyone want to buy a used Miox?
Purifiers
My next purifier was a
First Needs XL. It weighs about the same as the Miniworks at 16 ounces but it pumps
FAST. 1.83 liters per minute, more than twice as fast as the Miniworks and most other pump style filters. And when it gets plugged up, just flip the cartridge around and run some clean water through it. Easy and there's no losing critical parts. It also cleans out viruses which the ceramic filters can't do. Probably not something I'll ever worry about in the backcountry but it's nice to know it gets everything. If you have the time to gravity filter, the XL comes with a bag but I've never used it. I really like the First Needs XL.
Ultraviolet
The First Needs works well but after backpacking a few times with
lostlandscapes, I was hooked on the
SteriPen AdventurerOpti. It weighs nothing, the water tastes like it should and there is no pumping. Perfection! It kills harmful bacteria with ultraviolet light by swirling it in a nalgene, pot or bladder for around a minute. I believe Taylor said it well when he called it the 'techno magic water blessing stick'. It's really quite magical. For the first month after using it, every time I had even an inkling of stomach illness, I thought it must be that damn SteriPen. But it never happened, that thing is rock solid. I'll still use my First Needs if I'm going anywhere that the water might be silty or otherwise murky, but for everything else, I'm sold on the Steripen.
As for all the other stuff, I can't say because I haven't used it. I've backpacked with friends who used the MSR Sweetwater (wasn't impressed). And m buddy Nate uses the Katadyn Hiker Pro which is pretty light but pumps just as slow as the Miniworks. I will say that the filters like the MSR HyperFlow using HollowFiber scare the bejeesus out of me. Think about it, if you let it freeze or drop it, it won't work anymore but it will appear to work like normal. How scary is that?
So ultimately I would rate it like this.
#1
SteriPen AdventurerOpti
#2
First Needs XL
#3 Everything else
And I always keep a backup water treatment method like
Aquamira in my first aid kit.
That's my two cents.
