Pure Clear have introduced a small but welcome improvement to their squeeze type water filters.

In February this year I reviewed a water filter from UK manufacturer Pure Clear (link to my review below) that I had been using on various trails the previous year and it continued to be my filter of choice for multi-day backpacking in England, Wales, Scotland,  Corfu and Greenland this year. It has proved to be excellent and mostly reliable, but that damned pull-out mouthpiece continued to frustrate me, sometimes requiring me to clamp it between my molars to pull it out, while I have often dropped the silly little plastic cover to the silicone mouthpiece as it is only held on by an easily dislodged loop.

Not only are these a lightweight screw-on filter, but it also has a 42mm screw fitting, the larger neck size that I prefer for easier filling of a bottle. When I first reviewed the filter I had been mostly intrigued by their claims that their filters remove viruses. I won’t go over most of the stats and other salient points here, have a look at my original post for those. The OG filter from Pure Clear is amongst the smallest and lightest filters available and the improvements made to the mouthpiece still retain this position. And remember, this filters viruses too.

• Gear talk: Pure Clear- a lightweight water filter that removes viruses

In my initial review I mentioned what I felt to be a couple of design faults. Pure Clear’s CEO Mike Rushton contacted me following my review, thanking me for my “constructive criticism” and “I found it painfully honest and accurate. The lid itself needs to be thought out better“. I was obviously not the only one complaining and it is good to see that Pure Clear have acted on feedback and bought about the required improvement. Their latest offering is the Pure Explore Water Filter Bottle. This uses the same replaceable filter cartridge, but now fitted to a redesigned mouthpiece. This is sold with their own 1000ml capacity collapsible squeeze bottle. It is now a straight forward sports cap, with flip over protective cap on the mouthpiece. This clips on firmly, has a decent hinge and I expect it to wear well with continued use. If it does fail, a standard sports cap from most other drinks bottles will also screw on.

The change in mouthpiece and cap design obviously affected the weight. This is a common occurrence with new entrants to the lightweight gear market as manufacturers tweak design in response to early feedback, or at least should do, rather than listening to constant calls from their marketing team to add more bells and whistles. The original screw-on filter cap weighed just 34.16g, lets call it 34 grams, part of which is the 16g replaceable filter cartridge (dry weight). The new filter cap weighs 41.39, including the same replaceable 16g filter cartridge (dry weight). But as with any sports cap, there is a little plastic that can be removed on first use. This reduces dry weight to 40.7g. In my mind it can be reduced just a tad more.

The resigned mouthpiece now has a soft strap loop that allows the bottle to be clipped to vests and backpacks on the outside, though an extra carabiner would be required for this. I have no need of this. The metal pin that holds this is not easily driven out, so I left it in place, but the soft loop is easily cut off. With the plastic already removed, this shaves off another 4.5g. Daft savings perhaps, but simply reinforcing a mindset of knocking off needless weight from a pack. This drops the weight to 37.46g, lets say 37.5g. So barely more than the original mouthpiece. Removing the superfluous loop also makes it a simpler piece of kit. If the loop had been large enough to perhaps hold a rolled up empty bottle, I might have kept it, but it can’t, or barely so. I could take a hacksaw to the mouthpiece and remove the hard plastic lug on the side if I wished, but even I am not that anal.

The larger one litre capacity bottle means that less refilling has to be made from lakes, streams, drips and puddles before filtering. The need to keep refilling the original 500ml collapsible squeeze bottle is always a bit frustrating, hence my having been using it with a larger soft squeeze bottle from HydraPak. While Pure Clear’s larger capacity squeeze bottle is a little lighter than the HydraPak offerings, I hope the filter mouthpiece eventually appear on their products list as a standalone product, just as the exchangeable cartridges already are.

Another issue I had with the Pure Clear filter was the odd and frustrating width dimension of the filter cartridge itself. It is narrow enough to fit within the neck of many 42mm screw neck bottles and bladders beside Pure Clear’s own products, but not all. While it will fit my one-litre HydraPak bladder, it is a smidgen too wide to fit the more useful two-litre HydraPak Seeker bladder. There is no change in design here. The exchangeable filter cartridge remains the same width and still won’t enter the neck of my preferred larger ‘dirty water’ container. It probably requires no more than 0.25mm shaved from the diameter of the filter to fit and I hope that Pure Clear looks at this specification in the future to widen it’s compatibility.

So. In summary. Well done Pure Clear. Good and welcome changes in design to an already excellent piece of kit, but not quite there yet…

A 20% discount is available for Armed Forces, but as it stands, the Pure Explore Water Filter Bottle, comprised of one litre squeeze bottle, new mouthpiece and one filter cartridge, retails at £39.99. A penny under the £40 threshold for free delivery, so if ordering one, pop a spare filter in as well, these cost £14.99 each. Something I forgot to do, whoops!