Seychelle Filtering Water Bottle: Review

I don’t normally do product reviews; because I’m not terribly interested in *products*. Except filtering water bottles. They’re the bomb. Water is heavy, inconvenient to carry, often problematic when coming from natural sources, and *life critical*. That makes highly portable products that make getting clean water fast, convenient, and reliable a blessing…and when they have a long active life as well, doubly so.

Filtering water bottles often come along on my adventures.

Filtering water bottles: Theory of use

There’s no more straightforward water purification product to use. Fill bottle with impure water. Put on lid, which puts the filter in the bottle. Drink pure water from bottle. If the water is really murky, you’ll preserve your filter better if you prefilter through a handkerchief or some such, but that’s not usually necessary.

As you squeeze the bottle, water is drawn through the filter that’s part of the lid assembly and delivered by a tube to the drinking spout.  

Filtering water bottles have the filter as part of the lid assembly.

The filter is the heart of the bottle

Bells and whistles don’t much matter. The filter’s the thing; and it’s the main way in which these water bottles differ.

At the lower end, you have size-based filters that keep out bacteria and protists. These are a *ton* better than nothing, since in many places (including here) bacteria and Giardia lamblia protists are the main water risks — and they’re Significant risks, both common and somewhat dangerous. 

In the mid-range — and what I’ve used historically — there are smaller pore-size particle filters. They add viral control.  That’s big because of the very common noroviruses and rotaviruses. These easily get into water sources when people are around and hygiene is bad. They are responsible for “cruise ship disease” and most cases of “food poisoning”, and bring an unhappy combo of vomiting and diarrhea.

This lake tastes mucky, unless you have a carbon filter in-line.

The top end is where this Seychelle filter sits. It has the smaller pore size, and also an activated carbon filter. Activated carbon absorbs a lot of organic contaminants and heavy metals. 

Carbon filtering bottles; the upsides

No risk of lead poisoning, or agricultural pesticides, or even many of the possible intentionally added poisons getting into your gullet if you have a working activated carbon filter.

Seychelle advertises loudly about how good water tastes coming out of their bottle. They’re not lying. It’s the organics that usually make “wild” water taste bad. 

I gave mine a try this morning while kayaking out at our local lake. I’ve drunk from this lake before, using a particle-size-only filter. It was perfectly safe. And somewhat foul. The particle filter will remove the dangerous elements of bottom muck and fish poo, but not the bad tasting elements. The carbon filter did.

I’m pretty sure there’s beaver poo in this water too.

Carbon filtering bottles; the downsides

The biggest drawback I’ve seen with filtering water bottles is the effort needed to draw the drink. To overcome the filter’s resistance, you have to do some squeezing and some sucking.

The better the filter, the more effort is needed. It’s simple physics. And if it’s harder to draw the water, you’re more likely to under-drink without thinking about it. 

It is true that the carbon filter bottle with the fine pores was fairly effortful to drink from. Pro tip: Avoid the more rigid filtering water bottles. Since you can’t squeeze them, you have to suck much harder. Not fun.

The other downside is active life. The carbon has a limited absorbing power. There’s no plausible way to refresh it in the water bottle assembly. There’s only so much purified water that will ever come out of those filters. It’s a decently high number at least: My model advertises at least 100 gallons. 

They don’t say so, but my chemistry minor tells me the muckier the water, the lower that value will go. At least a “full” carbon filter won’t reduce the microbe removal function.

Care and feeding of filtering water bottles

These aren’t hard to take care of. There are really three things to watch:

1. The cleaner the water going in, the longer they’ll last. Sometimes you can backflush a particle filter if it gets too clogged and hard to draw. Sometimes you can’t. Keeping it cleaner is better. You can prefilter with cloth or coffee filters to help with this.
2. Don’t let them freeze if wet. Water expanding into ice might increase pore size. You’d lose microbe control without noticing. Then again it might not; but since you can’t tell if it happens and the companies won’t promise either way, it’s a crapshoot.
3. This is never mentioned in the literature, but as a biologist: Don’t let mucky water hang around in the bottle when not in use. Particularly, don’t leave them in the sun. I bet algal growth would clog that filter very nicely!

The Seychelle filtering water bottles, in sum

Ok, so I didn’t talk about the Seychelle bottles in particular. That’s ok; they’re a commonly available, high quality example. Take that it’s what I bought (after having used a different model for years) as an indicator of my opinion.

Filtering water bottles in general are about the best thing since sliced bread. They massively improve safe access to water without adding any weight. And they do a really good job. The carbon filter bottles even de-skunk the taste significantly. I have them in every emergency bag/pack we own. 

Pro tip: The worst part of my new bottle is the puny little strap. It’s going to get several feet of paracord added. Why? To get less mucky water and keep dry feet, and sometimes avoid climbing into precarious spots. Hold a long line on water bottle (FIRMLY attached!) Set the lid aside. Toss the bottle several feet into a cleaner part of the water source, let it fill. Haul up and put in filter. Very handy!