Posts Tagged water purifiers
New SteriPEN Freedom: Smaller and USB Rechargeable!
The beloved SteriPEN water purifier keeps getting better. I loved my original Traveler and and the Steripen Opti was even better. I’ve lost count of how many international trips those two items have kept me healthy—dozens. But ever since I laid eyes on a prototype last January, I’ve been looking forward to checking out this new Steripen Freedom.
In case you haven’t heard of this product, it’s like a magic wand for tap water you don’t trust. You wave this around in clear water (not muddy creek water) and it’ll kill the nasties with ultraviolet light. I have yet to get the runs even once while using this and it has enabled me to drink tap water from all kinds of dicey places.
This one takes the best aspects of previous models (like the little LED lights from the Opti version that help you see that it’s on) and adds some very key new features.
1) This one recharges by USB.
The reason this Freedom version is smaller is because it doesn’t require two bulky batteries. Instead there’s one small one that recharges. It has a standard micro-USB female plug and the cord has a regular USB on the other end. So you can use the included cord and plug it into a charger or laptop, or you can use something like a Chargepod or iGo and leave the cord at home. Before you could buy a bulky solar adapter case for the batteries, which works, but under this new system you can carry something more compact and powerful along to harness the sun’s energy instead like a Solio or Brunton Restore charger.
Per the official specs you can purify up to 40 times on one charge, so figure you’ll get at least 15 liters out of it before you need to plug it in again.
2) It’s even lighter
This Steripen Freedom is not just smaller. It weighs in at 2.6 ounces (74 grams). This has gone from “I should have room” to “Help me find this little thing in my bag!”
3) It’s also a flashlight
The Opti model sort of has a flashlight…in a pinch if you didn’t need much light. But this one will really light up the path to the latrine. It’s kind of tricky to get it to come on as that involves some shaking and moving around your hand to make it kick in, but the light is a dedicated one on the opposite end from the purifier lamp. It works pretty well once you get it going and stays on for three minutes.
When you buy this travel gadget (list price $120), you get everything pictured in the right side photo here: purifier, USB cord, wall adapter, and the handy Neoprene case it all fits into. This is a worthy investment for yourself and a nice thing to do for Mother Nature: it can potentially keep 1,000+ single-use plastic water bottles out of the world’s landfills, streams, and oceans. Or if someone near and dear to you is about to depart on an international journey, this would be a very thoughtful and useful gift.
See more at the Steripen.com site and buy this online at REI or Summit Hut.
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Posted by Tim L. in Adventure Gear, General Gear, Kids and Family, Travel Light on December 1st, 2011
A CamelBak Bottle That Makes Your Water Taste Better
I’ve raged and barked plenty on here about the need to carry a re-usable water bottle (and compact water purifier when necessary) in order to keep from soiling our land and oceans on a daily basis. Sure, you can point to your house recycling bin and justify that case of plastic from Costco, but reality is that some 3/4 of those single-use bottles—even in developed countries—just get drunk from and tossed. Here’s what happens to them.
There’s a tendency among many to drink bottled water because it tastes more neutral, with no trace of chlorine. So if we can eliminate that problem, will you stop buying disposable plastic?
CamelBak is hoping you’ll say yes, because they’ve solved that issue with this new Groove water bottle with a built-in filter. All you need to do is fill it up and drink. The built-in filter removes all the tastes you don’t want.
I’ve used a few different bottles with built-in filters before and have been less than satisfied. Either they made me work like a p0rn queen to get the water out or the filter would eventually fall into the bottle and fill it with charcoal.
This one, I’m happy to say, is a different story. CamelBak is one of the best-known manufacturers of water bottles and they seem to be trying harder than anyone to wean our population off their bottled water addiction. So they did this right. This Groove one feels like a regular water bottle, with a flip-top bite nozzle and a normal shape. You don’t have to suck on that nozzle any harder than you would normally.
It’s BPA-free, dishwasher safe, and comes in a variety of colors. (Mine is cool white, but I like this picture because you can see the filter.) It holds 20 ounces of water, or 0.6 liters. The list price is $25 for plastic, $35 for steel.
Alas, as with a hybrid car, eventually you’ve got to cough up more cash to be a good citizen of the planet. Here’s the official word on the filter: “Each Fresh Filter reliably reduces contaminants for 300 refills of the bottle, or approximately 3 months of use at 3–4 full bottles per day.” That adds up to 48 gallons or 180 liters, which even a constantly water-sucking/bathroom-going health nut like my wife will take a while to cycle through. When it’s time to get more, you’ll pay $10 for two filters or $25 for six.
Also, don’t expect to use this in countries where you can’t drink the water to start with, or to drink from a stream where you don’t know the source. This is a primarily a taste filter, not one meant to keep you from getting sick. Think of it as a Brita pitcher to go.
Order the CamelBak Groove filter bottle from Backcountry in BPA-free plastic or metal.
Posted by Tim L. in General Gear, Kids and Family on April 7th, 2011
New SteriPen Adventurer Opti Model Review
In my section of our best and worst travel gear of 2009 post I raved about the SteriPen, classifying it as the product I’d most likely be talked into doing infomercials for—that’s how much I like it. At the Outdoor Retailers show this past January I swung by the parent company’s booth and saw that they had a new model coming out: the SteriPen Adventurer Opti with a built-in L.E.D. light. They sent me one to check out just as it’s hitting the shelves, so here’s my pseudo-infomercial as a demo.
You don’t want to overhaul a product that’s already working well, so thankfully this new version is just an upgrade. The shape, weight, and functionality are the same. What has changed is the addition of a single L.E.D. light. That helps guide you when you’re purifying water in the dark or conversely if you’re having a hard time seeing that it’s working in very bright light. 
It also works as a flashlight in a pinch, if you hold down the single button for three seconds to make it stop flashing, so it now qualifies as double-duty gear.
The SteriPen Adventurer was already a wonder, enabling travelers to avoid chucking hundreds of single-use plastic water bottles into landfills or into the rivers that flow into our oceans. You can’t drink the water in some countries, but that doesn’t mean you can’t carry your own bottle and refill it. Just zap it with this—48 seconds for a half liter, 90 seconds for a liter—and you’re good to go. The ultraviolet light kills any and all microbes.
Everyone I know that travels with one of these raves about it. They may have been skeptical at first, but when you’ve traveled through nine developing countries like I have without getting one case of the runs, you tend to become convinced. My daughter drank water purified with a SteriPen in Mexico (four times), Guatemala, and Belize and stayed healthy too. So did my wife, so three for three.
This item is no trouble to pack as it only weighs 3.6 ounces including the batteries and it’s compact. It comes with disposable batteries that will last about 100 purification sessions. Once those wear out, you can be more eco-friendly by using rechargeable ones. In the video posted above I show off the solar charger accessory you can buy that also doubles as a padded carrying case. It takes about eight hours for the batteries to fully charge, but you can go for 50-60 sessions before you need to do it again.
This product retails for around $100, which is more than a bulky pump, but not unreasonable considering you never have any filters or parts to replace. Even putting aside the question of you personally wrecking the environment by buying throwaway water bottles your whole vacation, do the math on the ROI. You’ll see it doesn’t take too many trips for the SteriPen Adventurer Opti to pay for itself compared to continually buying liter after liter of water in convenience stores and restaurants. After all, tap water is still free most places.
Stop thinking about it and go buy one. The planet will thank you and eventually so will your wallet.
Get the Adventurer Opti at Backcountry.com
Get it at REI.com
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Posted by Tim L. in Adventure Gear, General Gear, Kids and Family on May 12th, 2010
5 Things I Always Pack – Beth Whitman
This month’s guest post with “5 things I always pack” is from Beth Whitman. She is the author and publisher of the Wanderlust and Lipstick guides for women travelers, the editor of WanderlustAndLipstick.com, and leads tours to Bhutan, India, Vietnam and Cambodia. Here’s what she carries with her when she hits the road.
1. SteriPEN
In an effort to reduce my garbage footprint when I travel, I always carry a SteriPen Traveler water purifier. I’ve used this on numerous trips to India, drinking the tap water (hint: it still tastes yucky) and have never gotten Delhi Belly as a result.
2. eReader
I still buy the print versions of guidebooks because nothing beats lying in bed at night and highlighting all the places I want to visit. But for leisure reading, I upload books to an eReader, like Amazon’s Kindle, so that I’m not wasting space in my bag on a heavy tome.
3. Eyeshade
I’m never without an eyeshade that I wear on the plane or in my hotel room when there’s too much light coming through the window. It’s cheap and takes up little space, but is such a lifesaver when I really want/need to sleep.
4. Cable Lock
Nothing beats the added protection of a retractable cable lock. I can lock my backpack to my bed on an overnight train or to a stationary object in my hotel room if I’m staying someplace where I’m a little concerned about leaving my valuables behind.
5. Digital Photo Storage
Of course I always have a camera with me. But, I learned a hard lesson (I lost – but later recovered – about 300 images taken in India) about backing up my images nightly. These are generally small units that have the capacity to hold far more images or video than I’ll ever take on one trip. I use one from Digital Foci.
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Posted by Tim L. in General Gear, Travel Light on December 30th, 2009
