SteripenAqua UV Water Purifier

Went abroad to Pakistan and used this for 4 weeks. Easy to use and drinking clean water prevent me from being ill. Work very well. I purchased 2. One for my family back home.

Works just as expected. I still might have gotten sick in India, but I'm not entirely sure it was because of the water. Would recommend this product to family and friends.

This is a great idea but it is quite hard to stir (agitate) the water and ensure that the 2 metal rods stay in the water. It also needs 4 batteries which, as a backpacker, does make the unit heavy. Hopefully in future models it will be lighter weight and a more stable system will be made as it is a terrific machine. Maybe longer prongs would be better!

Brilliant piece of kit

It failed to work with Duracell batteries in it so I returned it to the seller

You can see it working but it doesn't stay on for more than 20 seconds at a time

I bought this because I was embarking on a trek to Everest Base Camp and wanted a method of purifying water on the trip. I decided to not go with purifying tablets because I thought I might run out and then be screwed half way up a mountain relying on buying bottled water. The way I used the pen is I bought 2 1 litre water bottles and would fill them with tap water and then use the Steri Pen to purify the water. Now the concept is relatively simple you select the amount of water you are attempting to purify then dip the sensors into the water and then when the light turns on (on the pen) you know it is purifying the water and you swirl it around in the water till the icon on the Steri Pen flashes green. The issue I had was that, first of all you don't dip the whole pen into the water, you dip the pen up until the sensors are submerged and then the light goes on indicating it is purifying the water. If you dip the pen further into the water submerging more than just the sensors, the red light flashes which means you have start again. You have to ensure the sensors, and only the sensors, are submerged throughout the purification process. The second issue is "swirling". You are encouraged to swirl the pen around the container to allow for all the water to be purified. This is logical but not practical. What tended to happen is that as I was swirling the pen around, either more than the sensors would be submerged or the sensors would come out of the water momentarily and so the red light would flash. This means that unless you have a very steady hand to swirl the water in the container it will be very difficult to maintain the sensors in the water. What I ended up doing is resting my hand on the edge of my water bottles and swirling the pen around, in circles so small they could barely be called circles, so as to ensure the sensors were not affected. The next thing is that you need to have 4 batteries for this device which isn’t such a pain but that’s still something you have carry around and if you don’t have the batteries on you and the pen dies then you are just carrying dead weight.So the important question is whether or not the Steri Pen worked and whether using it prevented me from getting ill. This is a difficult question to answer. I used the Steri Pen for 8 of the 13-day trek. During those 8 days I had regular and liquid bowel movements, whether or not this is due to the ineffectiveness of the Steri Pen I cannot deduce that. On the 8th day I became really ill which was down to some food that I ate seriously messing up my stomach. From that day till the last I bought bottled water and ate only plain rice, boiled potatoes and chips; mild food that would not upset my stomach. During that period my bowel movements were a lot more manageable. Again whether that was down to the change in food or the change in water that I drank is difficult to conclude which.The others on the trek all had water purifying tablets. Now I cannot say exactly their toilet experiences whilst using purifying tablets but a lot of them told me that they had used them before on other adventures and they seemed to be happy using them and the whole process looked relatively painless and stress free.My final recommendation therefore is that you don’t buy this device instead you buy a couple of packets of water purifying tablets, which are more economical, weigh less, require less preparation to use and do not depend on a power source.

This item did not work so I bought it for nothing