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. Hold the filter under your faucet until the top reservoir is entirely filled with water. Then, place the lid on the pitcher to prevent the water from being contaminated by anything in the air, and wait for the water to filter into the lower reservoir. The 10-cup Tahoe pitcher filtered just as quickly as the smaller Brita options, making this the best for capacity and speed. A reverse-osmosis system will also remove everything, with a bigger up-front cost and some wasted water, but a long-term cost savings over ion-exchange filters.
This guide is for people who want a pitcher-type water filter—the kind you fill from the tap and keep in your fridge. The other common methods of filtering tap water are plumbed in, including faucet-mounted, fridge, and under-sink filters. It works much like the Pur Plus 30 Cup Dispenser, and the two models are very similar in size. The Ultramax is a fine option, and for heavy-use households, it’s a great one. But the Ultramax’s handles are less comfortable to hold than those of the Pur dispenser. And its opaque upper tank can make water levels less visible than in the Pur.
On the whole, the filter fits in at an uncomfortable middle ground. It’s cheap enough to buy these filters that it’s usually a viable alternative to bulk bottled water. But if you’ve got more than 300 PPM of dissolved brita water dispenser solids in your water, ZeroWater cartridges will likely need to be replaced every 15 gallons or less. A water softener and reverse-osmosis system might still be cheaper in the long run for some well water.
She’s been testing kitchen appliances professionally since 2013 and is trained in classic culinary arts. To assess claims, we requested third-party data from each water filter pitcher brand. Zero Water’s innovative two-in-one pitcher allows you to pour out of the spout or to dispense water while sits on on the counter with the push-button spigot at the bottom of the pitcher. The Zero Water 5-Stage system comes with a Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter, which indicates the level of dissolved salts and minerals in the water such as calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate and more. Plus, it filters out five chemical contaminants, including chlorine, heavy metals and endocrine distruptors such as PFOA and PFOS, according to our verified review of third-party test data.
We scoured reviews, forums, and Reddit threads to determine which water filters were the most popular and which filters have problems. Clearly Filtered doesn’t use a certifying authority like NSF or the Water Quality Association to test their products, but the results they post on their website are believable because of the long filtration time. Still, this system isn’t giving you the purified taste of ZeroWater, and the price is almost as high. After using the 10-cup ZeroWater pitcher for a year, we had to admit that it’s a bit bigger than we’d like. The spigot at the base of the 10-cup pitcher was a neat idea, but in practice it was so slow to drain, and we rarely used it. Even the new Brita Longlast filter, which removes slightly more minerals in a carefully engineered system to take out lead, won’t do much to change mineral-heavy well water.
Due to the intense filtration system of the ZeroWater filter, it doesn’t last very long at all. While Brita filters may not have super long lifespans, they do last longer than ZeroWater filters but a significant amount. If you have your own well and draw water from it then the chances of harmful bacteria getting in your water are quite slim.
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. In order to determine the best water filter, we’ve used a combination of quantitative and qualitative tests to compare seven different water filters, and we’ve compared them with faucet-mount and reverse osmosis systems.
Even if your wrists are plenty strong, the motion can feel a bit precarious—the last thing you want when filling a glass of water. To see how well the LifeStraw dealt with sediment, Tim used hydrogen peroxide to rapidly convert a piece of #0000 steel wool to fine particles of rust. After 40 cups (2.5 gallons) of this enticing brew went through it, the rust was all used up, but the filter was still working, albeit slightly more slowly than at the start of the test. In contrast with installation of Pur’s filters (which clearly indicate when they’ve been installed incorrectly), when you’re installing Brita’s filters it’s pretty easy to mess up. If you don’t give it that shove, unfiltered water may leak down the filter’s sides when you fill the upper tray—meaning your “filtered” water actually isn’t. We recommend Pur’s Pur Plus Pitcher Replacement Filter or the Pur Pitcher Filter because both have excellent ANSI/NSF certifications, and we found them to be less prone to clogging than the Brita Longlast+.
We switched our top performer, the ZeroWater, from a 10-cup to a 7-cup pitcher because smaller pitchers are slightly easier to handle. With the smaller ZeroWater, you lose the direct-pour spout at the base of the bigger ZeroWater pitchers, but the flow from that spout is only a trickle. The PUR pitcher is available with the lead-removing filters in a smaller pitcher, but Brita only sells the better filters with a 10-cup pitcher like the round-base Monterey. 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. Brita’s system improves the taste of your tap water, and independent tests show it will remove heavy metals.