Since we moved into our house five years ago we haven't enjoyed the taste of the tap water. I don't know if it is our pipes or something else because we happily drink water at our neighbours houses, but it has always had a funny taste here. As such, each week I order bottled water and of course I know this isn't a great thing to do as it creates too much plastic waste and costs us £4.50 a week for 12 x 2 litre bottles.
That means we are paying out £234 a year (at least, we order more in the summer) on water and of course that money could be better spent elsewhere. With that in mind I was very happy to hear about the ZeroWater filter that has a unique 5-stage filter which removes virtually all total dissolved solids (TDS), a claim which no other filter jug or dispenser can make. We did have a water filter jug before (the well known one) and we didn't find that this improved the taste of our water enough to sustain using it.
We've been using the ZeroWater filter for a couple of weeks now and I can confirm the taste of our water is much better and I'd be happy ongoing to use this rather than buying in water, from a taste point of view. The jug we received retails for £39.99 and it is a 2.8 litre (12 cup) model. I have to admit that when full I found it heavy to lift and my 11 year old girls couldn't lift it at all. This isn't such a problem as it has a one-handed 'push to dispense' button under the handle and this would be perfect, except ours is pretty stiff to press. So it is hit or miss if you can do it with one hand.
Here is Miss M using the 'push to dispense' button to fill her glass.
I have to say I was over the moon when I first realised that the ZeroWater filter would produce water that was good enough in taste that we could use it and not have to buy bottled water. At first I thought this was going to end up saving me about £200 a year and that would be excellent but you have to take the cost of the water filters into consideration.
Have a look at the TDS readings here, the first is tap water, with a high 333 reading, the next is the normal bottled water I buy (reading of 93) and the last, at just 004 is the ZeroWater filtered water.
Now because my tap water reading is so high (we have a local bore hole here that our water comes from) it means that my filter will only last for a reduced amount of water filtration, see the chart below -
This suggests that the level in my area is exceptionally high and even at the best case scenario, the filter would only last for 55 litres. I've seen that if you buy a single filter the cost is £19.99 per filter and if you buy 8 at a time, they work out to £11.24 per filter, but of course you've then just forked out £89.99 in one go instead of my usual £4.50 per week.
If each filter will only last me 55 litres (best case scenario), it means that the cost of the 8 filters will give me 440 litres of filtered water for £89.99. Whereas I could get 479 litres of bottled water for the same price, so unfortunately the ZeroWater actually works out more expensive. Of course it does save on all the plastic recycling, which is a great thing and I could choose to use my filter for far longer than the recommendation to change it when the TDS rating gets to 006 or higher. When you think that my bottled water has a reading of 93 and we've been happy with that for over 5 years, I think it means we can leave it for longer and make the filter more cost effective.
It is good to know that the water we are drinking from the ZeroWater filter is better for us as well. I'm not going to try and convince you though as truthfully, this isn't an area that I have any knowledge of. So take a look at the comparison chart and see how the ZeroWater filter compares to its competitor.
The headlines that stood out for me are that it is 3rd party tested to remove 99% of Chlorine, Fluoride, Radium and Asbestos and that it is certified to remove lead and other heavy metals.
Conclusion
In all we really like our ZeroWater filter, it works super well and produces a much better tasting water that is safer for us to drink. I'd just like the filters to be a better price, hopefully they will come down with time.
Disclosure: We were sent the water filter for the purpose of this review. I have not been instructed what to write and I remain honest.
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