Ease of install: 7/10
Depending on your under-sink setup, and availability of a hole to install the spigot, this could easily become a 5/10. But for your average home, that doesn’t have a frustratingly horrible design, this is pretty straight forward. Yes it takes up a good chunk of real estate, but once you start using it, I doubt you’ll want to give it up.
Check the price on Amazon
Material Quality: 8/10
Metal water storage tank is great! These are much easier to clean, less prone to bacteria, and have no way to leach microplastics. Upstream, however, you do have to settle for plastic components – as far as we are aware, there is no alternative on the market, so we are going to call this good. I can say that all of the components are SOLID. This thing is not about to break or crack anytime soon. So that feels nice.
More stainless or brass components, would bump this to 10/10, but as mentioned, that doesn’t exist anywhere on the market.
Filter Efficacy: 10/10
It is worth noting that if get a unit with remineralization and you simply test with a TDS meter, you will get readings as high as 130ppm. This is OK. In fact, it can be great! Remineralization adds necessary calcium, magnesium, sodium, etc back to the water after all the BS has been filtered out – our bodies need this, not to mention it makes the water taste super good.
We tested TDS upline of the remineralization, and got readings in between 5-10ppm.
The city water from upline of the RO system tested as 125-175ppm.
The remineralized water tested at 25ppm.
Tl;dr – this thing works. Very Well.
Here is a youtube video we made comparing it to a few other filters:
Taste Rating: 10/10
Remineralization really does it. After a week of drinking this water, I accidentally filled a bottle from the sink faucet, and just about gagged after taking a swig.
We asked 10 of our friends to rate the taste on a scale of 1 to 10, and the lowest it got was a 9. Now we have 1 less friend.
Noise: 10/10
Now this may depend on how exactly you choose to install the waste line. For us, we followed the manufacturer’s recommendation of installing the waste drip line on a horizontal PVC drain line from the sink. This made sure we wouldn’t here the “drip, drip, drip” of the system’s backwash. The only time we have ever heard a noise from this thing is when we open up the spigot – there can sometimes be a little rumble sound under the sink, just due to water pressure release.
Servicing: 7/10
Pretty run of the mill. Filters will need a replacement every half year or so and cost about $50. Tank will need a cleaning. Access to each of the filters is pretty easy, so we expect this to be a simple swap when the time eventually comes. Replacement RO filter sets for 2 years or more can be found on Amazon.
Our Rating: 9/10
This thing does exactly what it is supposed to do at a super affordable price. The water tastes great, and the company has superb support if you run into any issues on install, or have any questions about their products. Highly recommend. We even installed these at our parents’ houses.
