SurviMate Filtered Water Bottle Review: Top Filtered Water Bottle for Hiking or a Fraud?
If you’re searching for a filtered water bottle, and in particular if you’re looking for a filtered water bottle for travel or camping, then you may have run across the SurviMate 5 stage filtered water bottle. SurviMate markets itself as one of the top filtered water bottles for travel and the outdoors and as an alternative to LifeStraw (see my review here), equally able to filter out bacteria, parasites, and other unwanted chemicals from water. SurviMate’s website shows a man filling his SurviMate bottle from what looks like a lake or river, suggesting its ability to be able to make such water safe for drinking. With SurviMate being a popular water bottle on Amazon and elsewhere online, I wanted to try this out, do a little research, and compare it to some of the other filtered water bottles I’ve been reviewing.
So, what does SurviMate filter out, and what are its design features? SurviMate says that this water bottle uses a multi-stage filtration, which starts with a coarse filter to remove larger sentiment, followed by a 0.01 micron hollow fiber, ultra filtration membrane, which is reported to remove 99.999% of bacteria and 99.99% of protozoa (parasites). Next, there is a polypropylene membrane, designed to further remove suspended solids, as well as an activated carbon filter for removing chlorine, some metals, and other organic compounds.
Ok, so aside from the filter technology, here are some of the other features of SurviMate. The bottle itself is BPA-free and comes in 22 oz (the version I have), 34 oz, or 33.8 oz. It has a built-in compass on the lid, which I found to be one of the coolest features. And it seemed to work, which would be obviously helpful if using this bottle while out hiking or camping. It has a built-in strap, but it also comes with a small carabiner. Also, I must say I appreciate it when water bottles have markers on the outside that show the ounces. On this one, it shows this both in ounces and milliliters, which is helpful.
Now, so far this is all great, but I did have some concerns as well as I did my research. Mostly, my concerns came to me as I investigated SurviMate’s website. For instance, the language right on the main page lacked proper English, so that seemed weird to me and raised some red flags. They say, “The BEST and MOST popular personal water filter equips in the market.” Umm, ok, what? “Equips in the market”??? Then they follow this up with, "Why say so?" Yeah, just seems a little off to me. See the image below:
When I explored the website further, I realized that the company is based out of China, in the Zhejiang Province. Obviously, there are many, many products purchased in the United States that are made in China, as well as ones that have their headquarters there. Yet, for the website to not even show a U.S. office and also to have glaring language issues raised some questions for me. The first question this led me to was how easy it would be to get questions answered or receive customer support. In the “Contact” section of the website it directs you to the Chinese address, as well as a Chinese phone number, and an email address. How easy would it be to receive support were one to need it?
The second question this brought me to was the reliability of the studies that are cited. Nothing against China here, but the reports displayed on the website are partially in Chinese and seem rather vague to me. See below:
I have to contrast this with LifeStraw, which seems to be so much more transparent about its company, who is involved, and how the testing is conducted. See here. Anyway, the point is, if I’m wanting my water to filter out potentially dangerous bacteria and parasites in my drinking water, I want to have confidence it’ll be effective, and I guess SurviMate just doesn’t inspire that confidence in me.
If SurviMate's website wasn't enough to raise some concerns, I then decided to dig a little further into something I noticed on their Amazon page. According to their self-description on Amazon, SurviMate is "NSF/ANSI 42&372 Certified". See the image below.
Hmm, what is this, I wondered? As I looked into it, NSF stands for National Sanitation Foundation, and ANSI stands for the American National Standards Institute. Sounds pretty legit, and definitely the kind of organizations I'd want a filtered water bottle to be approved by. Unfortunately, the NSF released on February 12, 2025 that SurviMate "does not have products in listing with NSF nor tested and certified by NSF." See below.
Yikes, so evidently SurviMate is claiming they have a certification that they do not. SurviMate really appeals to this certification to try to gain credibility, stating again further down on their Amazon page, "the filter has passed authoritative NSA/ANSI 42 certification." See below.
Well, at least based on February 12, 2025 that was not true. I'll try and update this later on if this changes, but at this point it seems SurviMate is claiming certifications it does not have. That, combined with what I already saw on their website, gives me great concern regarding this product.
Here are my Pros and Cons.
PROS:
- Built-in Compass. This was a really cool feature, and especially helpful if you’re taking this bottle with you on an exploration of the great outdoors.
- Sturdy. Both the cap and the bottle are sturdy. It’s made with BPA-free plastic that looks like it could handle getting dropped while hiking among the rocks.
CONS:
- Company generates lack of confidence. As I explained above, the poor English on their website, combined with seeing it’s a Chinese company does not inspire confidence. I’m not at all saying that Chinese companies are all bad, but if they can’t even use proper English grammar on their website it leads me to wonder how easy it would be interact with them regarding customer service issues, etc. Then, to make matters worse, they are claiming certifications they do not actually have. Sketchy, to say the least.
- Vague studies cited. Connected to the last point, the Chinese studies cited are pretty scanty in my estimation. Also, when they state they’re the “best and most popular water filter” on the market, the link they post takes you to a blog. It’s literally just one person’s opinion that leads them to that claim, not based on anything else. However, having said that, the current Amazon review rating is pretty decent, at 4.3 out of 5 at the time I’m writing this.
As always, let me know your experiences with this product!
QUESTIONS for me or have another product you want me to review ??
Leave them in the YouTube COMMENTS and I'll do my best to get back to you.
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