Sawyer Products One-Gallon Gravity Water Filtration System

The Sawyer One-Gallon Gravity Water Filter works as designed. No instructions on how to use and assemble the filter were included with the filter when it was sent. The instructions had to be found online in a pdf document.

Works well

Great product, easy to use. Just finished a 23 mile through hike on the Pine Mountain Trail, GA. Filtered the water perfectly, 1gal took less than five minutes, taste was perfect. Between the four of us, no one ever got sick or felt sick from drinking the purified water, no other treatment was needed. After the water bottles were filled each night at camp, we would fill it up for cooking water and cleaning dishes. Kept it hung on a 550 cord clothes line we setup and had no issues with the handle or the bag the entire time. If you are looking for a system for more than two people that is effective and easy to use then this is the right fit for you.

To start off, you don't need a water filter to make tap water drinkable - these things are for backpacking. When you're doing that, a couple of things happen. First, no matter what you do, you're going to get silt in your dirty bag, at least a bit. Second, you know that dirty bag has "unsafe" water in it - and every little droplet on the bag, the fitting, the hose, etc. is just waiting to spoil your night by contaminating your clean water.I don't know where other users backpack, but I don't backpack where I have a flat table to lay this thing on. I need to hang it, and the only reasonable way to do that is with a thong through the carrying handle and around a tree trunk or branch. That works great, and even leaves the output hose "port" a little higher than the filler port, which gives silt a place to settle. (If you're using the Sawyer Mini filter you should always let dirty water sit 5-10min or more, trust me, your filter throughput will thank you!)I really wish they sold a pre-filter for this - it would be SO easy at their manufacturing scale to include a high-flow cone-type filter that stuck up into the dirty bag, held in place by the outlet hose attachment. As it was, I put a bandanna over the hole before screwing on the cap. It worked, but wasn't ideal.But now you have this bag hanging down with a hose to the filter itself. Dripping dirty water down onto itself. Hopefully you read the instructions and aren't completely out of water, because you need to save some clean water each "cycle" to rinse off the components before using them.The output of the filter goes to a water-bottle-style pull-to-open drinking valve. This isn't ideal. It's really hard to "aim" into things and the filter is heavy, so it flops around on the end of the hose. Meanwhile precious filtered water is getting tossed around wasted. And especially if you're sharing this system you don't want to be using your dirty mouth to open the valve, but takes a lot more force to open than any bottle I've owned. Once you get it open, water starts flowing and you have to use a dirty mouth/hand to close it again, or lift it up above the dirty bag to stop the gravity flow - potentially letting a few drops you didn't notice hanging on the system fall into your cup, bottle, or whatever.Fortunately, these things are all really easy to fix, I just wish Sawyer did it themselves. Four cheap items dramatically improve the experience:1. A second Sawyer "hydration pack adapter" set, $6 here on Amazon. This gives you another blue and grey screw-on adapter.2. A short length of 1/4" ID silicone hose. Attach the adapters above to the output side of the filter, and then attach the hose. Carry the blue "bottle coupler" with you that comes with this kit as well.3. A pair of tube "pinch clamps", the small plastic kinds that you squeeze to close off a water tube. They're often sold for aquariums and are only a dollar or two apiece (although I bought a 6-pack). Put one apiece on the hoses, about an inch from the filter itself.4. A small plastic "hose clip" designed for holding aquarium air hoses to the tank walls. Clip this to the very end of the new output hose.Here's how this work. When you fill the dirty bag, close the hose clamps above and below the filter. This stops the filter from "losing its prime" (getting air bubbles into it, which cuts the flow in half). You can set it down any which way without worrying about the output side getting dirty or dripped on because it's long enough to set/hang out of the way.When you start filtering, you can set up your output side before opening anything and wasting any water. If you want to filter into a bottle, attach the bottle coupler to the last/unused screw fitting and put it on the end of the hose. Set your bottle so it's stable and angled well, and you can take your time. When you're good, open the pinch clamps and filter away.For one last trick, if you want to filter directly into a pot, hydration bladder, or other vessel, you can use the hose clip to attach the output hose right to the top lip of your pot and it won't flop out and get dirty or waste water. Again, you can do all this with the flow "off" and turn it on when you're ready.These things together only add about $10 (I bet Sawyer could do it for $2) and 4oz to your setup. But they turn the whole experience of filtering water from "sort of touch and go, be careful" to "no sweat, this is easy."

It is very versatile and can be backwashed for extended use. The lifetime of the filter is 100k gallons. That will outlive me. I just wish the directions of use were better. I had to spend a hour online to really feel comfortable with the many configurations and safe use. I HIGHLY suggest this product.

Used this for three days this past weekend, and overall I’m pretty happy with it. It was awesome and easy to fill when I was access to fast moving water, but slow moving water forced me to try and either submerge it or sort of use a scooping motion to get it even halfway filled. There HAS to be a better place for the inlet on a bag like this.The filtering itself was plenty fast for me (a good excuse to drop pack for ten minutes) and the water tasted great. It was nice to fill up at camp and know you had water on tap for cooking, cleaning, drinking, whatever.I took a pic of how I rigged it up most of the time. I would loop the leash of my pole through it and back onto the pole to hold it, then attach the other poles leash and lean them against something with a wide stance, made it super quick and easy.Much better than pumping and is pretty light. Definitely happy with it overall!

Works great! I use it for making a cloudy Lava Lamp clear.

Love this thing. No issues yet really. I agree with other reviewers that the inlet on the scooping bag could be better placed, but honestly that is such a small complaint. The flowrate on this is excellent and I can filter into either a platypus (attachment included), or into 3 nalgenes. Perfect for group camping/canoeing, but i would use it solo too since it packs down pretty small and i love the convenience of a single bag being enough for filtering enough for a mountain house dinner, tea, a nalgene of drinking water, and coffee/oatmeal in the morning. It makes me wonder why it took me so long to switch away from my MSR Miniworks which is slow and you have to pump like a caveman! I backflush once a trip which is a breeze. I will bring the syringe if im going with a group or if the water source is dirty. This is another one that I would definitely replace if i lost it.