Topic: The Best Backpacking Water Filters of 2023 (Read 27 times)
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When it came time to clean the filters after three rounds of testing, I spent a lot of time on YouTube, learning how to clean ceramic filters and backflush with a SmartWater bottle. But when it was time to clean the BeFree, the instructions were almost co*ically simple. Just take it out of the bag, place it in a clean bowl of water, and swish it around a little. To be honest, I was doubtful this was going to do much, but I knew from conversations with the folks at Katadyn that backflushing this filter was not an option, as it may damage the hollow fibers and impair their ability to weed out protozoa and bacteria.
To my surprise, the swishing appeared to work. The bowl of water quickly became a murky brown. I repeated the process a couple of times and retested: the flow rate had improved by almost 20 percent. Not bad.
The Katadyn BeFree was the second lightest filter I tested, weighing a mere .2 ounces more than the Sawyer Mini despite co*ing with a larger dirty water sack—if you paired the Sawyer Mini with a SmartWater bottle instead of the provided dirty water sack, this would be the lighter of the two. For UL purists looking to update their Sawyer Squeeze, this should definitely be in contention.
There were a couple of things that I wish were different about the Katadyn BeFree. First off, the filter is housed inside of the dirty water bag, which makes it difficult to squeeze all of the water out—most of the time, this won’t be a big deal, but if you’re sitting at a seep in the Southwest, where the water is co*ing out at a trickly liter every 10 minutes, it could start to get old. The other is the design of the lid cap, which basically resembles what you would see on a sports drink at the convenience store. When I lightly twisted it to test the durability it started to snap off. Of course, I can still use the filter as long as I hold onto the cap, but I would rather see a more durable cap in exchange for a few extra grams.
The Sawyer Squeeze has been a backpacking mainstay for decades and testing showed that hikers’ loyalty is well-founded. While this filter was slower than both the Platypus Quickdraw and the Katadyn BeFree during the first round of testing (by about 15 seconds and 25 seconds respectively), it was out ahead of the BeFree by the end of testing, and only 5 second behind the QuickDraw. While my testing showed that the Sawyer Squeeze was faster at the end of testing than it was at the start, I suspect that I had simply gotten used to putting in an excessive amount of elbow grease into the filters after pushing over 40 liters of glacial runoff through 14 filters.
Part of what makes this filter so effective is its backflushing system, which involves filling a simple syringe with water and then pushing its contents into the outflow nozzle on the filter. After running the filters through three liters each of the Puyallup River, I wasn’t surprised to see the water shoot out brown initially, but it cleared up after only a couple of rounds of backflushing.
Unfortunately, the Sawyer Squeeze picked up two ounces of weight between the start and end of testing, suggesting that it’s holding onto more moisture (and potentially unbackflushed grit) inside the filter than other co*parative models.
The mini-me version of the Sawyer Squeeze is the perfect filter for UL enthusiasts—small enough that it won’t take up much real estate in your backpacking backpack and light enough (even after the final weigh-in) that you can scrub an ounce or more off your spreadsheet. Even better, it’s so affordable that it wouldn’t hurt your budget much to just replace it each season. Where it wobbles, unsurprisingly, is in water flow taking about twice as long as the standard Sawyer Squeeze to filter a liter of water. Of course, if you plan to attach the filter directly to a SmartWater bottle and suck the water out from there, that might not matter much to you.
I used the provided dirty bag during testing and was impressed with its durability. Even after squeezing the bag as hard as I could to push the water out over ten rounds of filling and filtering to reach the desired five liters, the bag still looked like new. I only wish that it was larger—the bag that co*es with the mini is 16 ounces rather than the standard liter. Something else I noticed during testing was that the filter itself did not appear to screw onto the bag correctly. Each time I tried to fix it, the angle would still be lopsided. Fortunately, there were no leaks during testing so this appears to be mainly an aesthetic concern.
While the flow rate for the Sawyer Mini was not especially impressive (about four times as long as the Katadyn BeFree), I did appreciate that it came with a lightweight syringe to backflush the filter when it starts to clog too much.
At its core, all a water filtration system needs to do is move dirty water through a filter, without inadvertently contaminating the clean water vessel on the other side. One of the most popular styles of backpacking water filters leans into this simplicity: all a user has to do is fill up a plastic bag with dirty water, attach the filter, and then squeeze the water through into their drinking vessel.
The idea behind a gravity filter is fairly straightforward, instead of squeezing or pumping dirty water into your drinking vessel, let gravity do the work for you. After filling up the dirty bag—which holds up to three liters in the case of Katadyn—you then elevate it by placing it on a large rock, hanging it in a tree, or even holding it yourself, whatever works. The higher the water is, the faster it will flow through the filter, but it will work as long as the bag itself is higher up than the end of the outlet hose. Then you can just walk away while gravity forces the water from the dirty water sources into your clean container.
Of the three gravity filters in my test, the Katadyn Gravity BeFree had the fastest flow both when initially unboxed and after the final stage of testing. It was also lighter than the other two models in my test by several ounces.
One small, but potentially significant, difference between the Katadyn BeFree and the Platypus GravityWorks and LifeStraw Peak Series Gravity is that the hang strap is not attached to the water flask when the gravity is first unboxed. This strap, however, should not be considered optional. The bail handle at the top of the water flask is not intended to be slung over a branch, and is too small for the branch size that you would need for the filter to be safely suspended.
Another difference between the Katadyn Gravity BeFree and the other two filters in my test is that it is not designed for backflushing (which could damage the fibers), but the filter can be cleaned by carefully swishing it in water. While the filter did appear cleaner after I swished it, oddly, the time it took to filter a liter of water increased by a minute (I reran this test to confirm the results).
