It’s not a secret: bottled water is terrible for the environment, and bad for your pocketbook. Shipping water all over the world is pretty crazy, and using petroleum products to package it all is wasteful. Not everyone lives in a city with great municipal water supplies, though, and many areas suffer from water with impurities or even pollutants. Whether you’re looking for better taste, or to ease fears of other problems, a good water purifier can keep you healthy.
The Waterlogic Hybrid Home Water Purifier is billed as the world’s first and only water purification device that combines the highest standard in drinking water quality and a great taste with the flexibility of a jug”. It’s kind of like a Keurig coffee machine for clean, fresh water- it sits nicely on your counter, uses a reservoir, and you don’t need to worry much about filters. If you’ve tried other systems, then you’re probably familiar with the constant worry about replacing them every month or few weeks, and with the Hybrid you’ll only need to think about it once a year (for both the filter and the bulb).
Now, you’ll have to set aside some countertop space. And you will need to plug the Hybrid in to power. Further, the Hybrid doesn’t chill or cool the water, which means that we did often end up needing refrigerator space for the 50-ounce reservoir. But you probably won’t mind- it looks great, thanks to fetching design, and works fast. No installation is required, so you can take it on an R/V. The results are cheaper per gallon than bottled water and more pure than filtered water, and they taste great- just fill with tap water, and the unit does the rest. The secret is in the trio of filters and a technology called Firewall- active carbon, bacterial-killing UV, and an interesting material called BioCote that helps prevent the formation of bacteria on exposed surfaces.
What’s left is water that our testers chose over most alternatives, and the Hybrid can handle everything from e. coli to lead, viruses to chlorine. It won’t directly take out fluoride, but also won’t strip out minerals like reverse osmosis. Water purifiers come in a lot of shapes and sizes, styles and costs, but this one is an interesting alternative to in-sink systems or cheap plastic jugs. In fact, the Hybrid is apparently the only non-industrial water technology in the world to be certified to both National Sanitation Foundation (NSF)standards NSF55a and P231 standards. It’s not cheap but feels well-made, and it makes a bit of noise but not enough to be problematic. If you’re tired of old-fashioned water solutions, the Waterlogic Hybrid is simple and pretty quick- and available in stores and online for aroudn $300.
