ZeroWater Review

You’ve seen the commercials on TV right?  If you watch Fox News during the Glenn Beck hour you have, because that repeating commercial is what caught our attention over and over again.  The ones that claim ‘use the ZeroWater Filtration Pitcher and you’ll get quality bottled water taste using tap water’.  

I am not a big water drinker, mostly because I hate the way our water tastes.  I enjoy bottled water, but am too cheap to buy it, I figure we already pay for water, have a fridge water dispenser and I’m not going to go out and buy bottled water to drink.  So I don’t drink it at all (or very rarely anyway), or I “mask” it with Crystal Light or something.

When the ZeroWater Pitcher arrived in our home a couple of weeks ago, I was so excited to try it.  I wanted to see if those commercials were really true.  Could it possibly filter the tap water in our home to bottled water taste?  Was our fridge filter (which we pay an exorbitant amount of money for), doing its job and providing us with clean water to drink?  How about that Brita water pitcher that I picked up on clearance sitting in the cupboard, how does that measure up?  Oh so many questions!

Let’s start with how ZeroWater actually works.

ZeroWater water filters utilize a patented 5 stage Ion Exchange system that removes 100% of detectable dissolved solids and provides more complete filtration than conventional carbon water filters.  ZeroWater is the ONLY filtered water that meets the FDA definition for purified bottled water.  In side by side tests, ZeroWater scores a perfect 000 for detectable dissolved solids as measured by a TDS meter.  Products include pitcher water filters, cooler systems, replacement water filter cartridges and laboratory grade TDS meters. *Filtered potable tap water tested by an independent lab (not the FDA) to meet specifically the water quality requirements for using the label “purified”. †Compared to water produced by leading gravity fed filters.

Okay now that we know purified water gets a 000 on a TDS meter, let me show you comparisons.

First we tested our tap water.  We have REALLY hard water where we live.  It’s one of the hardest water levels in the country.  I can only imagine the dissolved solids that are in there.  Uh yeah it scored a 330.  Epic fail.

Then we tested the filter that we use in our fridge dispenser.  That also makes our ice.  And we pay about $45 for this cartridge.  To show you how thorough I really was being to see if ZeroWater held up to its claims, I even took a picture indicating that our water filter in our fridge was still “good” according to the fridge anyway.  It scored an unimpressive 317.  Bah!

Last year we found a great clearance bargain on a Brita filter pitcher at Sam’s with 2 cartridges and 2 water bottles.  I actually just bought it for the water bottles.  We picked up a couple of them.  One we gave away as a wedding shower gift (sorry!), and the other sat in our closet until the ZeroWater pitcher arrived.  Since we weren’t doing anything with it anyway (except using the water bottles that had come with the package), I decided to see how it compared to the ZeroWater.  I ended up testing it three times because I could not believe that it actually scored higher than our tap water!

And now for the culmination.  How did ZeroWater do?  Well the first time we tested it, we got a 002.  Still extremely impressive but I was looking for the 000.

Reading through the instruction manual it noted that soap left on your glass from dishwashing could attribute to a higher count.  So we rinsed and re-dried the glass (which by the way we did for all of the other tests as well, we used the same glass dried out so the results would be comparable).   Which resulted in….

So clearly ZeroWater lives up to its claims.   The water really does taste as if you’re drinking bottled water, as I can attest to, because I’m waterlogged at the moment.   Dehydration has no hold on me now!

The pitcher is streamlined enough to fit in a fridge, although not ours.  Not the fault of the pitcher, I apparently just have too much other food and beverages in our fridge.  What I have been doing is leaving the ZeroWater pitcher on the counter and filling up 16 oz or 20 oz water bottles and fitting those in the fridge where I can.  That makes it easy to grab and go though too, so I always have clean, fresh water for when I go to exercise.

If you think you need to switch out your current water filtration system or don’t use one yet, you can view more information about ZeroWater at their website or find one to purchase at a retailer near you.  ZeroWater is available at Amazon.com for $31.99.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received the product mentioned above for free for review purposes from JB Cumberland on behalf of ZeroWater for facilitating my honest opinion in the writing of this post.