EcoVessel Tritan Water Bottle Filter

Today I’m going to be reviewing the EcoVessel Filter Water Bottle. This was sent to us from EcoVessel to test out and give it a whirl. A quick note: So these are water filters in water bottles. I personally have a difficult time finding the right use for a water filter bottle. However, I can understand if you’re going to be an ultra lite backpacker, these would be great. If you’re an ultra lite trail runner, it would be great. It’s a great source of water just to stick it into your water belt or something like that.

With that said, this is a pretty cool device. I got my little cheat sheet here. We were using it and filtering it for the last ten minutes, testing it out. So this baby is made, it’s completely BPA free and made from all plant-based materials, so it’s got a very green footprint to it, which is always a nice thing. It’s dishwasher safe, which is great. You can just unscrew this here, throw it in your dishwasher and you’re done. Anything else? So it gets rid of 99% of all giardia and cryptosporidium. So you’re not going to want to use this in the desert or anything, obviously. But any sort of mountain hike, anywhere where there’s going to be running water or still water, this should filter it totally fine, just as good as your stereo pan or your Katadyn or your MSR water filter would do.

One thing that right off the bat I know that I don’t like about it is, you can see right up here, there’s this black water, and when you first use the EcoVessel, you have to go through this black water, which is essentially just carbon dust, they say. It’s completely harmless, but it’s pretty gross. You know, you’re sipping it and you’re spitting out what looks like oil, but it’s just black water. That aside, it’s  pretty cool device.

We’re here at Boulder Creek. I’m going to show you exactly how it works. We got our dog here too to give a little support here in case I happen to fall in. So, just unscrew the top, and this right here is what filters all the water. They give you replacement attachments for this. They give you one longer one and one of the same size. Basically, you know, you just fill it up, freeze your hand a little bit, and just plug it back in. It’s going to overflow because you got to leave a little room since this is going to go in there and take up some of the space of the water.

There you go. This can filter up to 100 gallons of water, each filter. It’s got a little flip top right there. Drinks great. It takes a little while to get it flowing the first time you’re using it. I wasn’t able to get much of a good flow for the first water bottle that I drank from this. But now it’s flowing good. One problem I do have with it is I’m not sure if you can tell, you see that little dot there—that actually just goes straight through and you can see, I’m covering the spout right now and water came out through that. So I guess it’s stored. It’s not still coming out, but I’m guessing it’s stored somewhere in here and every time I turn it upside down, the water comes through there.

So, if you’re drinking it, that then is shooting through and hitting you in the face or in the chin, which is a little annoying. You didn’t really see how this little dot impacted me before when tasting it, so I’m going to show you basically a little close-up to show you how it’s a little bit of a downer on this water bottle. So, it hit me right in the upper lip. Yeah, it’s pretty annoying. You don’t want to be hit in the upper lip with cold water, especially, you’re holding it in your hand, it’s cold. So, still a good device though and I’m sure it’s necessary to get the water to come through here.

Again, it’s 100% plant-based, BPA free, which is always good, keep you safe, keep those carcinogens out of your body. Overall, the big drawbacks to it—that yucky carbon dust that you have to work through. It’s completely harmless but it’s pretty gross. Other than that, this little button right there, it’s a bit annoying. But otherwise, it’s a great little water bottle, a great little filtering water bottle. If you’re taking nalgenes with you all the time when you’re backpacking, you might as well get one of these and just be able to filter water on the go with it. Otherwise, personally I use a water bladder in my backpack and that does the trick for me; I don’t use and nalgenes. But if you’re a water bottle individual, you might as well pick up a water bottle filter such as the EcoVessel here. I know Katadyn has one, I know Camelback recently came out with one, but these guys do a great job and I’d give it four out of five stars.