Got my eye on one of these

Katadyn Mini Ceramic Filter

Interested in feedback before making the final decision for myself. It got good reviews at Amazon.com

Stoney,

I haven't used the mini, but I have carried the Pocket for about the last 30 years. A top notch way to clean water. Like anything it has pluses and minuses, but all in all it is still my primary. Biggest down is extreme cold. Icing in the filter will crack it. It is possible to break the filter, but I have never broken one, even with a pack filled with rocks I still carry and use MicroPur tabs as well as the MIOX and SteriPen plus, of course, boiling. All have their uses and times they are less effective.

Good Luck,

Jerry

If you'd like to,Start with the Rolls-Royce(berkeyfilter.com)&Make your way down the line to the Yugo(Frontierstraw.com),By doing so,It will Broaden the Spectrum,Quite a Bit,& Will give you a Ton of Info,Along the way,Your knowledge base will be Quadrupled to the Power of 10 or more!When you go to shop for your filter,You will find the one you want,or at least be on the trail,of the one you are after! Sweetwater(Ford),Katadyhn(Chevy), etc.I think it's an easier way to look at it,Especially since your Base is Michigan!Good Luck with the Search! I an NOT affiliated with any of the above Manufacturers!

I used one that belonged to a friend about 15 years ago, or whatever the equivalent model was back then. It looked slightly different. I thought it was very easy to pack - perfect for hiking or a BOB. You can find smaller or lighter ones, but they tend to have disposable filter elements as opposed to cleanable ceramic ones. A filter that's cleanable in the field was important to me, especially for long hiking trips where you didn't know what to expect for water sources.

Compared to the MSR Miniworks filter I use now, the Katadyn Mini had very slow flow, but the smaller size made up for this downside. I also remember that the door to the Mini's storage compartment broke off. They might have remedied the issue by now, but if they haven't, the door wasn't really needed anyway.

I have the katydyn hiker pro. it's excellent.

Also take a look at the First Need XL from General Ecology. A bit larger and heavier than the Katadyn Mini, it is also faster (1L/m) and more effective (0.1u). Several of the people I backpack with have this unit and it's very versatile and reliable. You can maintain it in the field by backflushing with clean water, and you can set it up as a gravity-feed filter for hands-free filtering.

I have an 18 year old Katadyn (was PUR back then) Hiker Pro that still works fine. All I've done is replace the cartridge a few times and perform the required maintenance after each trip. It came with an Iodine cartridge to kill viruses (which are too small for any filter), but I never used the Iodine cartridge in the field (tried it at home and didn't like the taste).

The MSR Sweetwater is another unit to look at. Smaller than the First Need, more effective than the Hiker Pro or Mini. This would be my second choice if buying a new filter.

Finally, I also have what I call my Frankenstein Filter for day trips:

• Sawyer Point Two water bottle filter cartridge
• Camelback Bite-Flip top from their .75L Better Bottle
• Standard 1-Liter Nalgene Wide Mouth Bottle

The Sawyer filter cartridge is rated at 0.2u, which is good enough for Crypto, Giardia, Salmonella and most forms of E.Coli. It does get a bit tough to suck water through the filter by the end of the day if I'm using dirtier sources, but I just backflush it well when I get home and it's good as new for the next trip.

Platy pus makes a nice 2 bag gravity filter - anyone tried it?

No, I haven't used that setup. I prefer something that's effective on particles down to 0.1 micros to catch the different E.Coli (and other bacteria) better.

But I have made and used the gravity filtration setup based on the Aquamira Frontier Pro water straw and two Platypus hydration bladders. That setup is still in one of my bug-out bags but I don't rely on it as my primary filter anymore after discovering the filter is only effective to about 0.3 microns, which isn't tight enough to remove Salmonella and some of the more dangerous forms of E.Coli from the water.

I do like the ease-of-fill capability for the Platypus Big Zip bladders: You can unzip the entire top end of the bladder and scoop up 2 or 3 liters of water (depending on the size of the bladder you've got) at one sweep. They are also thin and roll-up tight into a small package. If you carry one Big Zip and one standard bladder, it's easy to identify which one is for dirty water and which for clean. My only concern is the thin material, while tough, is probably more susceptible to punctures or blow-out than the thicker material from Camelbak and others. Since I only used the Aquamira-based gravity filter a few times before back-burnering it, I can't tell you if this is a real-world concern or not.

I have a Berky Sport. Best water filter I've ever owned. It holds 1.75gallons and packs down small for its size. We use it at home constantly. It fits perfeclty on top of our cold/hot water cooler, so we use that intead of buying water jugs. Its well on its way to paying for itself. Its priced on the higher side, but in my opinion it was worth it.

By far the smallest, lightest and most convenient is a Steripen which will kill everything but wont remove heavy metals or floating contaminants. The large particles can easily be filtered with a coffee filter. If you're worried about metals or other contaminants get the cheapest, smallest, lightest ceramic filter you can and couple it with a steripen for bacteria and viruses.

http://www.steripen.com/

Whatever you decide - get a filter with a good backflush system. Field cleaning is a recipe for lost/broken/contaminated parts.