GRAYL GeoPress 24 oz Water Purifier Bottle – Filter for Hiking, Camping, Survival, Travel (Peak White)

Effective and quick water purification system
We’re going to Oxaca, Mexico with friends. A friend who has been there several times suggested we get a water purification method rather than buying multiple bottle of water, which would be environmentally wasteful. She and a public health nurse discussed several methods of water purification including tablets and the pros and cons of each.Grayl is considered the gold standard since it removes all potential contaminents, is quick to use and has been tested and certified to meet the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Guide Standard and Protocol for testing microbiological water purifiers. The nurse said there are other products that are just as good but haven’t paid to become tested and certified.We bought this to have peace of mind the water we drink is safe, so hopefully we will not get sick on vacation.

No Quality Control for Replacement Filters
GRAYL GeoPress 24 oz – Purchased July 2023.My town’s tap water has a strong smell and taste of chlorine. I just can’t drink it. My eyes are always red and burn a bit after I shower and my bathroom always smells like I just cleaned with mild bleach afterward even though I don’t use bleach cleaners. You can even smell chlorine when you flush the toilet. I’ve been using a small under-sink 3-stage filter system for about 10 years in my kitchen, but I am selling my house sometime in the next year to travel full time on my motorcycle. I thought I would try out a few portable filter systems that could remove chemicals like chlorine along with harmful micro-critters if I need to drink ‘creek water’.For the most part, I liked the Grayl GeoPress as packaged. When I bought it I also purchased a spare filter, both items were sold by Grayl / shipped from Amazon. I keep a count of how many times I use the filter via an app called ‘Tally’ on my phone that I trigger via a shortcut on my watch. Even though Grayl recommends replacing the filter after roughly 350 uses, I did not notice any additional resistance in a press with the original filter and continued to use it until 400 uses. I didn’t think it would be much of an issue since I was only filtering tap water, and as far as I could tell, it worked great.The only issue I had using the original filter was the fill line on the outer container (‘dirty’ water) is marked a little too high. If you fill to that line you are going to get overflow spill from the side as soon as you start to plunge. Not a big deal, just fill to about a centimeter (~3/8 inch) below that line and it worked great.Replacement filters are the real issue …So, I had to travel out of town several hours away for business, and while I was in ‘the big city’, I took advantage and went to an REI to pick up a little camping gear. While I was there I picked up another replacement Grayl GeoPress filter cartridge and had them order a third to ship to my house (they only had one in stock, and, remember, I purchased one when I bought the GeoPress).A few weeks later after I hit 400 uses, I removed the original filter, washed the GeoPress and opened one of the replacement filters I had in the drawer. I’m not sure which was which as I didn’t mark where they came from. With the new filter on, just like before I pressed through some tap water, made some coffee with it and went about my day. I think I used it again later that evening to boil some water for dinner.The next morning I went to filter some water for coffee … the smell from the filter when I pulled the inner container from the outer about knocked me over. It was so foul. Its like someone smacked me in the face with a dead squirrel that had been baking in the sun for 3 days. I don’t know if that was a used filter that was dried, carefully re-packaged, and re-sold or maybe some critter parts ended up in the filter during manufacturing, but it was absolutely awful. I just chalked that one up to a loss. These things might happen one in a million, right? No big deal.I removed that filter and put it in a zipper freezer bag and tossed it in the trash. I grabbed another spare filter (again, not sure which one came from where) and attached it to a freshly washed GeoPress. I filled up the outer container a centimeter below the fill line and put the filter container in to press a fresh container of water. Nope. Filter container wouldn’t budge. I continued to apply more pressure until I was actually pushing myself up on the counter. Catastrophic o-ring failure – water sprays out of the side everywhere.I clean up the water, remove the filter, shake off and inspect it. Looks pretty normal so I get the original filter out of the trash to compare. The o-ring on the replacement filter is much thicker and is now partially out of the groove. These things are much wider than I expected. They aren’t actually just rings and the way they are shaped would require a lot of work to force out of the groove. I use the back end of an egg-spoon to force it back in place and put it back on the GeoPress. I try again and the inner container will not press down; I didn’t force it this time.At this point I thoroughly rinsed the original filter and put it back on the GeoPress. It pressed out a full container of filtered water with little effort so I switched the filters again. And again, the 2nd spare would not budge. So irritated at a more than $60 loss in replacement filters, I tossed both the 2nd replacement and original in the trash. I thoroughly dried the now filterless GeoPress and stuck it in the drawer with the last spare cartridge and purchased new cartridges for my under-sink filter (another $110).Fast-forward a few weeks and I’m watching a motocamping vid on YouTube. I notice the camper is carrying a GeoPress and pours out some water into a pot for his dinner. I think, “I’ll give that another go with the last filter cartridge. What are the odds I get 3 out of 3 duds?” I got my answer on first use of the last filter. I put the last filter on the GeoPress, filled the outer container about 1 cm below the fill line, start to press down and without much effort water sprays out from between the containers all over me and the counter. I take a deep breath, clean up the mess and start over, pressing MUCH slower this time. Doesn’t matter, I hear a little gurgling through the open spout and as soon as pressure starts to build it sprays water all over the place again. Frustrated, I dump it, wipe it down and set it aside. I still have the under-sink filter for at least another 8 months while I try out a few more portable filters.This review is already way too long, and I doubt anyone’s actually going to read it this far, but I have been using the GeoPress at least once per day trying to figure out if I’m doing something so drastically different since the original filter cartridge (nearly flawless 400 uses). I have to hold a towel around it because it WILL spray out of the side every time, even if I only fill it half way. I have removed this 3rd (and final) cartridge and inspected it multiple times but I can’t see anything obviously wrong with it. It *does* filter water (no chlorine smell or taste), but it still sprays water out every time, too.My advice is skip this. Forget all the ‘rainbow and unicorn’ reviews online that have likely not used this filter past the original cartridge and try something else. At roughly $100 for the device with one filter + $30 (+tax) per replacement filter that seem to be nowhere near the quality of the one that comes with it, this is an insanely expensive 300-400 use disposable system. If I find another portable system to recommend I will update this review to recommend that. For now, I’m back to square one.

Great bottle
Using it while traveling in South America for a year. So far it works great with all sources of water. Haven’t gotten sick from drinking the water! Easy to attach to my back pack. Love it

Compact and easy to use
My husband needs to drink a lot of water in a day and we don’t like bottled water when traveling. Our home filtration system isn’t portable so We use this to filter water to pour into his glass bottles he can use hot soapy water to clean.