Travel Gear Review: SteriPEN UV Water Purifier

By Travel Drunk, August 16, 2010 5:33 am

I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure that everyone needs to drink water. Most people in a foreign country end up buying bottled water to avoid getting super-explosive diarrhea. This is stupid (buying the water, not the diarrhea avoidance) for two reasons:

1) There are pipes pretty much everywhere people live, and water comes out of them….for free!

2) Pumping, packaging, and transporting water is one of the most wasteful and environmentally damaging practices going (I bet you didn’t think I was a tree hugger, huh?).

Having said that, there are a few ways to create your own safe drinking water: adding a chemical sterilizer (something like iodine tablets), pumping through a specialized filter, or using a handheld UV water purifier.

For the average traveler the best method by far is to use the SteriPEN:

SteriPEN Traveler mini Handheld UV Water Purifier

So far it has been incredible. You just fill up your water bottle, turn on the SteriPEN, and swirl it around in the water until the indicator light starts flashing. Done. Even a drunk retard like me can do it.

We never worry about getting good water: as long as the locals drink the tap water, so de we (after using the SteriPEN) The first set of batteries lasted for 6 months with pretty heavy use by two people. It also means that we save a lot of money. This thing paid for itself in one week of hiking in Peru: 6L per day x $2 per Liter x 5 days = $60. It’s also nice to know that the water you’re drinking won’t make you sick, and we’ve put it to the test lots of places where we were told tourists should not to drink the water, and so far we haven’t had a single problem.

One last note: There are several models of SteriPEN, but I bought the one linked to above because it could sterilize the most water on one set of batteries, and it uses the commonly available AA batteries. I really didn’t want rely on something that needed special batteries when trekking into BFE. If you’re going on a shorter trip, you might consider the more compact model:

SteriPEN Traveler mini Handheld UV Water Purifier

Have an even better method? Hit me up in the comments.