PLEASE do not buy Lifesaver products. Get something from a reputable company such as Sawyer or Katadyn.
Like most crap/inferior products, they have a pitch or a "cause" and spend quite a bit of their efforts on advertising. Sawyer works, Katadyn works and MSR works. Lifesaver filters are not high quality products that I would trust my life to. (YMMV) Read the filter article that I linked above. Sawyer makes a 0.02 absolute filter with a bucket attachment. Use your own 5 gallon can or container. Done.
Summary
It doesn't work — we used it in Canada. Carbon filter crumbled nearly choking my 5-year-old. It leaked everywhere and we still got Diarrhea. On our return we investigated this British company, they pretend to be humanitarians but are not. Don't buy these products.
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Well, I bought this item with some excitement thinking this was my answer to using chemical tablets and boiling. Was I wrong.
I read all the positive reviews and watched the videos and thought this was my answer to hiking in the wilds and minimizing weight. When I got the item I followed the instructions to the letter primed etc and noticed small deposits of carbon from the filter passing and settling at the bottom of a test glass, but put this down to it being new.
Went away for the weekend and used water from a fast flowering stream and pumped the water into my canteen. When I got to an area to camp I did the same and got water from a similar stream and pumped the water into a mess tin and found to my horror the water to have a brown tint. I boiled the water to kill off any germs as I had no other clean water, but the damage was done and I had the runs for a couple of days after. Whilst away the system just got steadily worse and leaked from both ends and the water flow was poor.
When I got home I investigated to clean out the filter etc and the carbon filter snapped of in my hand! I have quite a few mates that have done tours in Afghanistan and were issued these and they all said they didn't trust them, hence you see loads on ebay with their other kit for sale. Honestly, if you're a true outdoors type of person, avoid and save your money.
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I bought this bottle 1 year ago. The first results had a strong plastic taste. After one trip outdoors the filter stopped filtering. It blocked completely. I was on a trip for a week; this you don't want in the field. So the trust in this system was damaged immediately.
I sent it back to the shop and received another one. The same issue. After one use just a few drops. I contacted the lifesaver bottle company and didn't receive any answer. So is bad service, bad function, bad taste. This bottle has also a unhandy size. It is too thick and too heavy to carry comfortably in a backpack.
The built quality is also not very durable. It is a kind of plastic that breaks when it falls, so no go for a hard job. I'm really disappointed in this product. Their marketing is much better then their product. This is sad! I bought an MSR, those systems you can trust.
