Sawyer Products Mini Water Filtration System

Excellent, small, light and works well : ideal for travel.The tube itself is small and very easy to use with Clear instructions printed upon it;(basically pull water through one end, and draw out of the other, as marked with arrows).Supplied with an extension straw for drinking and a syringe for purge cleaning.The filter itself also has a standard thread so can be attached to (any standard) water bottle.The flat pack bag, supplied, takes no space at all, and is reusable; the neck of the bag is also designed to screw onto the filter. Its a good size to carry when both both full and empty.This can do a considerable amount of water filtration, so it's a tremendous SAVING both financially and to the environment from the scourge of plastic water bottles waste.See the Sawyer web site for the technical details, but this is a high specification purification system.Would HIGHLY recommend it is small easy to carry size and use.

I have considered buying this filter for over a year. Having recently treated myself I have certainly not been disappointed.My plan was to use it on walking trips to reduce the weight of my bag. However, I have found it so good at improving the taste of the tap water in my house that I use it to fill my water bottle for the day. I have conducted a taste test on my wife who wouldn't usually approve of such purchases. However, she picked the filter water as tasting better and commented on the crispness of the taste.It is very simple to use, simply fill the pouch from any water source, attach the filter and squeeze. The flow rate is pretty quick considering what it is achieving. It is also very light but appears to be very sturdy.27th April Update - You must be careful to ensure this product doesn't experience freezing temperatures. I had left mine in the back of the car over the xmas period. When using it in Feb I started to doubt its filtering ability as it appeared to let small visible bits through. This might have been in my head as it made me stress out a little. However there was an element of doubt that prevented me being able to use it. I have binned it and since brought another. From now on it will be stored indoors!I am currently looking to find a bottle that it attaches to and understand that a smart water bottle is what I should be looking for.I very much recommend this product for anyone going abroad wishing to make their water safer and to use on day and multiday hikes. It is difficult to go wrong considering the relatively low price.

The Sawyer Mini is an excellent bit of kit for those occasions where one cannot carry enough drinking water, and where weight carried is a prime consideration. There’s not a lot that can be added to Sawyer’s technical overview of the unit, suffice to say, provided that it is used correctly, it works. – Competently, and with a minimum of fuss!A couple of points worth noting are: -1) Some reviewers suggest that Sawyer’s collapsible water bags are very difficult to fill, unless there is a strong flow of water. The simple way to ensure that the bottle fills easily, regardless of whether there is strong water flow or not, is to “inflate” the bottle before presenting it to the water supply - by blowing into it as if you were blowing up a balloon.Of course this advice comes with the caveat that your mouth will come into contact with the bottle’s outlet, which may carry contamination from previous fillings with unfiltered water. Only the user in the particular circumstance involved can decide whether there might be any riskinvolved.2) It has been suggested that the threads of the Sawyer filter are the same as those of other makes of collapsible bottle such as Platypus,and of various plastic drink bottles.I cannot comment on the use of plastic drink bottles, but I can say definitively, that the threads of Platypus collapsible bottles are NOT exactly the same as those of the Sawyer Mini.Although a Platypus will actually screw onto the Sawyer, it will only do so with a very slight “cross threading”. In the case of the Platypus bottles I’ve tried, this resulted in a slight seepage of water from around the unfiltered “neck” side of the Sawyer. Meaning that unfiltered watercould easily end up in whatever filtered water container was being used at the time. The seepage increases when squeezing the Platypus in order to speed up liquid flow through the filter.Personally I’ve not had any real problems in using Sawyer’s own bottles, although I find the 32oz. is much to be preferred over the 16oz.The one small gripe I do have, and the distinct advantage a Platypus bottle would have, (assuming a perfect connection to the Sawyer could be made), is that the Platypus range includes a fully transparent bottle, so its content can be seen and inspected for any obvious debris or other matter. It also makes it easy to see whether the inside of the bottle has been properly cleaned and dried before long term storage.EDIT (27 May 2016)One reviewer has given a one star rating which, on the basis of his comments, I think is inappropriate.I have made a comment on that particular review, but copy that comment here, as I think it has some general relevance: -The Sawyer Mini is designed to filter out bacteria and protozoa. It is not designed for, and will not, remove dissolved solids, (which consist of minerals, salts, metals, cations, and anions dissolved in the water), Neither will it filter out chemicals in general, nor any associated tastes or smells.Totally pure water is virtually electrically non-conductive, whereas any "non-pure" water will have some measureable degree of electrical conductivity. TDS meters use this conductivity in order to display the amount of dissolved solids present in the sample being tested.Since dissolved solids won't be filtered out by the Sawyer Mini, it is unsurprising that filtered/non-filtered TDS meter results would be the same. To give the product a one star rating based on an assumption that it should be doing something it was never designed for, is, in my opinion, not justifiable.There is plenty of information on the Mini's technical specification, along with numerous FAQ's as well, on the Sawyer website. Elsewhere, there is plenty of online information to be found on Total Dissolved Solids in drinking water.Reverse Osmosis, Activated Carbon type filters, Deionisation, and Distillation, are all options that will remove some, but not necessarily all, dissolved solids.