Sawyer Products Mini Water Filtration System

Absolutely love my Sawyer water filter., that’s well in my backpack and we take it on every wild camp. And it’s good for every day use

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.

I had a Sawyer Mini filter for a while but was attracted by the DrinkSafe WaterStraw's promise of better filtering than the Sawyer Mini. The DrinkSafe promises to remove chemicals, viruses and foul tastes - whereas the Sawyer Mini just removes bacteria, cysts and sediment from water.When the DrinkSafe WaterStraw arrived I was impressed - seemed very professional and easy to use.Excited to find out how much better it was than my Sawyer mini I nipped down to my pond in the garden with its slightly green cloudy water. Put some in a bottle, added a bit of mud and shook it to mix it up.End result a rather greeny mud brown water - yuk!Now to filter it.First I tried the Sawyer Mini - expecting poor results. But hey presto from rather muddly green water it produced crystal clear water - wow!Ok on to the much better Waterstraw. Much harder to test without taking the water in my mouth first - so I rigged up the backflush adapter to a syringe and after a bit of effort got a glass worth.Now it was clearer than the original unfiltered water - but not crystal clear - compared to the clear water of the sawyer mini it was a little bit murky.I was rather disappointed. I thought I must have messed up somewhere and tried a second time. Same result.Maybe its broken? As I happened I had bought two - one for me, one for my partner. I tried hers - same result - slightly cloudy water with a hint of brown.To demonstrate the difference I put the water in 3 identical glasses and took a photo ( see images with review )The very obviously muddy brown is the original unfiltered pond water with added mud!The slightly murky glass in the middle of the photos is muddy pond water filtered using the Drinksafe WaterstrawThe crystal clear water in the glass is from the same pond but filtered by the Sawyer Mini.The differences are as clear as mud ( or clearer! )Anyway this has left me a bit concerned about how good the Waterstraw is. Perhaps it can filter bacteria and viruses but not green algae and mud. I'm not an expert on filtration and this is just simple unsophisticated testing.The DrinkSafe WaterStraw's failure to produce clear water leaves me with a loss of trust. And lets face it when you use any water filter you have no easy way of testing if the bad stuff really has been removed - you take it on trust it has.But I won't personally be trusting the DrinkSafe WaterStraw and I'll be sticking to the Sawyer Mini from now on!