Buying Brita Water Filters? Here Are 2 Important Points You Need to Know.

Brita water filters are quite often the first choice of most people when they think of buying a water filter. Not surprisingly, Brita is the best selling water purification system in the world today. Now, my question is ” Is Brita the best choice available for customers today?

As someone who has spent a lot of time studying water purification techniques and analyzing the different types of water filters available on the market, there are two important points Ive noticed about Brita water filters that the average consumer would fail to notice. So please read this article carefully if you are someone who is either using or considering about using these water filters.

Brita sells two types of water filters ” pitchers and faucet filters. The best feature about these water filters is that they are very affordable. They are cheaper on the front end than most other water filter available in the market today. This, in fact, is the biggest unique selling propositoin of Brita. People from all walks of life are able to afford them as they are fairly cheap on the front end. Now, let me make my first point.

Although, the initial investment as far as Brita water filters are concerned is very low indeed. Their pitcher model costs just under $30 and their faucet model costs just under $40. However, the initial cost of filters is deceiving to the uninformed. You also need to take the ongoing costs, or the maintenance costs, into consideration as well. These costs are known as the backend costs as opposed to the front end costs. Ill give you an example.

A Brita pitcher filter cartridge sells for about $8. The cartridge is capable of producing about 10 gallons of pure water after which the filter should be replaced. Similarly, a filter cartridge for the Brita faucet filter costs about $20. It is capable of producing up to 100 gallons of pure water after which it should be replaced.

Now, depending on your daily water consumption, the cost can get quite dicey. Even if you consume only two gallons of water every day, the cost per gallon, as far as Brita water filters is concerned, is somewhere in the range of $0.20 to $0.25. This is way more than the average cost per gallon of their competitors water filter cartridges, which lies in the range of $0.08 to $0.15. So, my point is ” these water filters are definitely not the cheapest on the market.

Now, let me make my second point.

When it comes to efficiency, Brita water filters falls quite short. Although these filters are certainly effective to some extent, they are not capable of removing contaminants like volatile organic compounds, cysts, certain types of bio organisms, and some harmful byproducts of chlorine (chloramines). Britas competitors such as Aquasana produce water filters that are capable of removing all these contaminants effectively.

So, where does this leave you, the consumer? As far as I am concerned, it is very clear. When it comes to water filters, Brita water filters are not the cheapest and they are certainly not the most effective as well. So, all I want to say is very simple. Do not go by popular perception. Learn about the different types of water filters available on the market, their efficacy, cost, and all other related factors and then make an informed decision.