SteriPEN Travel Water Purifier

Took it for 6 day trip in BC. Water wasn't "dirty" so a no brainer. First one I bought did fail, steri replaced quickly with this model. Had a MSR ceramic filter system along as well. I was done in 90 seconds with the pen! Use coffee filters to clean up dirty water, I have not tested that yet. Non-alkaline batteries are not cheap.

I like that it uses AA batteries instead of needing to be recharged, gets about 40L to one set of new batteries.

Wow, these two reviews really surprised me. After a couple of friends of mine spent 3 months in Vietnam and Cambodia with one of these a couple of years ago, I purchased one. I figured it would be so much easier to use rather than being concerned with plugged up filters on either of the two systems I already own. One of the reviewers said they were suspicious about how well it cleaned - well it doesn't clean at all, just kills anything live thing in the water that might be harmful. If you want 'clean' you'll need to revert to a filter system. Even then there is a big difference between a 'filter' and a 'purifier'. With the SteriPen your water is purified if used correctly. With a filter system it depends on what micron size your screens, ceramic or otherwise are. Viruses are extremely small and most regular 'filter' systems do not remove them at all. I believe Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC) has a good write-up with details on the differences. I hope this helps somewhat. As for the reliability of the SteriPen, neither I or my friends have had any issues so far. Luck of the draw or??? My 4 star rating reflects the fact that it isn't always foolproof to use! I made mistakes at first.

So far I have been able to use it about 50 or so times without any problems. Really cool piece of tech but I am a little sceptical that it does the amount of cleaning it's said to do. But so far I haven't gotten anything even when I get my water from strange sources.

I would give this 0 stars if I could. After much research, my husband and I bought a new Steripen for our 4 day backpacking trip in the wilderness. We were skeptical of some reviews about how it fails randomly but we took the chance, and thought if we took care of it that all should be well - boy we were wrong. I tested it once after purchase at home and it worked so we started our trip. After only TWO uses (which worked great at the time), we received the lamp replacement warning and it completely stopped working! We even bought the expensive lithium batteries for it and inserted them only during uses. I thought there was supposed to be over 1000 uses! Thank goodness we brought micropur tablets as we were at least 20 km out in the bush and the tablets saved us. Completely ruined our weekend and was angry. Next time, we are doing tablets and a filter. Do not trust this product. I do not recommend this to anyone.