They’re a practical, inexpensive choice compared with other water filter options that may require a plumber’s installation and maintenance. A specialized alumina filter can also work, as seen in community water projects in India that remove excessive naturally-occurring fluoride. There are now filter pitchers that use alumina, but they’re very slow — the Clearly Filtered alumina filter takes more than ten minutes to filter one cup of water. The Berkey countertop water system is also available with a similar slow-acting alumina filter.
If you want to go a step farther, the ZeroWater – 6-Cup Pitcher deionizes your water to remove nearly everything. A couple of design quibbles make the LifeStraw dispenser a bit less user-friendly than our other dispenser picks. The hollow fiber membrane filter is, by its nature, slower than the carbon filters our other picks use; a complete fill of the upper reservoir takes about 15 minutes to pass through.
We produce high-tech solutions in the field of water purification that meet the most stringent quality standards . Wait for the water to slowly filter into the bottom reservoir (this should take about 10 minutes in total). Once half the water in the top reservoir has filtered into the bottom chamber, top up the top reservoir. This should provide you with enough water to completely fill the bottom chamber with great-tasting water. You can drink from the pitcher as soon as some water is in the bottom reservoir.
Birnur Aral, Ph.D, is the executive director of the Beauty, Health & Sustainability Lab with over a decade of R&D experience she garnered in graduate school and industry. Birnur played a lead role in GH’s investigative story Is Your Tap Water Safe? Recently, she assessed the SafeHome brand DIY water testing kits for the Good Housekeeping Seal. She also helped the brand with the fine-tuning of marketing claims and instruction inserts for the kits, including those for Lead, City Water and Well Water, which now carry the Good Housekeeping Seal and its consumer warranty. We also spoke with representatives and executives from the companies whose water filter pitchers we tested in order to learn more about how their filters work, and what differentiates them from one another. In our first round of research, we read studies on the types of contaminants that need to be filtered out to produce safe and great-tasting drinking water, and how the various water filters on the market work.
We also tested each filter to determine how long it would take, on average, to filter one cup of water. While you might not be worried about this result, it’s worth considering how long it takes to get more filtered water if you’re ever going to fill bottles before a trip or serve water at a party. Brita is the undisputed brita water dispenser market leader, with more than two-thirds of overall water filter pitcher sales. As for the LifeStraw pitchers, they are attractive in their own right and use the same filter, so they would perform the same as the dispenser. If a pitcher fits your needs or aesthetics better than a dispenser, go for it.
Ultimately, ZeroWater is an easy-to-use option for those who want the purest water possible but can’t install a reverse-osmosis system. If you want to add back some flavor, a squeeze of lemon does the trick nicely. Mavea, maker of a former recommended pitcher and filter, no longer operates in North America. Of course, some plumbing systems develop rust or other cloudiness issues, and if you have that problem in your home, we’re confident you’ll get far more mileage out of the LifeStraw filter than Pur’s or Brita’s. After reviewing dozens of filters, these criteria led us to recommend filters by Pur, Brita, and LifeStraw, and to dismiss several other competitors.
Remove the pitcher from its box and get rid of all the packaging. Remove the separate parts, such as the filter and the user manual, and set them to the side. If yours doesn’t have one, then you’ll have to just fill the reservoir up to just below the top. We offer a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee for the first 30 days after purchase.
We experienced some slowing of filtration over the Pur Lead Reduction filter’s 40-gallon lifespan, but not outright clogging. In eight years of researching and testing pitcher-type water filters, we’ve found that Pur’s are the simplest to use. And they have some of the best certifications for filtering contaminants. In our Lab tests, we noticed that this countertop dispenser required more work to set up than others, and the instructions were not as readable.