The Sawyer Mini Water Filter is one of the most popular personal water filters. It is a lightweight, low volume water filter which is perfect for bug out bags and Every Day Carry Kits.
My family and I own several Sawyer Minis. We use them regularly when camping, hiking and travelling abroad. We have one in each bug out bag, and carry them in our EDC kit too.
What’s In The Box?
- Sawyer Mini water filter – the filter itself
- Squeeze bag – you fill this with unfiltered water and attach to the filter
- Straw – for attaching to the filter to drink directly from a water source
- Cleaning syringe – to push clean water backwards through the filter to clean it
Sawyer Mini Water Filter
The filter itself is very durable. It has a tough plastic exterior, containing a filter with a 0.1 micron filtration size. That’s one thousandth of a millimetre, approximately one tenth of the size of a human red blood cell.
The filter removes 99.9999% of bacteria, including salmonella, cholera and E.coli, 99.9999% of all protozoa including giardia and cryptosporidium, and 100% of microplastics.
Sawyer claims that the filter is rated for 100,000 gallons (nearly 380,000 litres). That’s a lot of water! Just to put that in to perspective, if you filter 2 litres of water per day it’ll take you over 500 years to filter that much water. In other words, the Sawyer Mini should last you for a long time.
The only slight negative with the Sawyer Mini is the speed at which it filters water. Using a brand new Sawyer Mini, it took around 2 minutes to filter a litre of water. I have never found this to be a problem, but it may feel slow if you’re in a rush!
The filter has a threaded end that is the same size as many disposable plastic bottles, such as pop bottles. This means that you can fill bottles with unfiltered water and attach them to the filter. Alternatively, you can use the squeeze bag included in the kit for the same purpose.
Squeeze Bag
The squeeze bag attaches to the top of the filter. Fill the squeeze bag with unfiltered water, attach it to the filter, and gently squeeze to push the water through the filter. This makes it very easy to collect water for filtering. Treat the squeeze bag with care, as it is not as tough as the filter. If you squeeze too hard, the bag will split at the seams.
Straw
The straw attaches to the filter, and makes it easier to use the filter to drink directly from a water source. This is great if you want to get a quick drink from a stream, or you don’t have a bottle to filter water in to. You can use the filter alone for this, but attaching the straw makes it a little easier as you don’t have to bend as close to the water.
Cleaning Syringe
After a number of uses, you may find the water flowing more slowly through the filter. This means that the filter needs cleaning. Cleaning the Sawyer Mini is simple, you just need to force clean water backwards through the filter. The syringe included in the kit is designed for this. You simply fill the syringe with clean water, attach it to the output end of the filter, and squeeze clean water through.
The need for cleaning will depend on how dirty the water being filtered is. I only have to clean my filters after many uses, but I generally try to find reasonably clean looking water. If you drink water from a muddy puddle, the filter will need cleaning more often.
Sawyer Mini Water Filtration System Review
Summary
The Sawyer Mini is an extremely lightweight, useful and durable personal water filter. It’s great for keeping in a backpack and very easy to use when you need to top up your drinking water.
It’s not very fast, but plenty fast enough for filling up a drinking water bottle, or drinking from a stream using the straw.
Here at ukprepper.life, the Sawyer Mini is our favourite water filter. It’s a great filter to take camping, travelling abroad where you don’t trust the tap water, keeping in your bug out bag, and in your EDC kit.
Highly recommended, everyone should have at least one!
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