>>660035That article makes me a little more confident in buying a Sawyer. They claim the sawyer loses effectiveness after about 100,000 gallons, which is what Sawyer claims now. I guess it just goes to show there is no "forever" what filter, at least when you're talking about these micropore style filters. I find it unlikely that the Honduran test subject backwashed their water perfectly, but maybe that's just me.
The Sawyer combines many more useful features than the Lifestraw and only has the drawback of still working past its useful life. In reality though, it still filters quit a bit of shit out of the water past its 100,000 gallon lifespan. As long as you date your filter or keep an accurate log of approximately how much water you filter, I'd say you're pretty safe up until the end. Just throw a little notebook in with your camping stuff and write down "X liters of water filtered on Day X of year X".
The Lifestraw is ideal for what it was made for, giving poor, uneducated people who live in the backwoods clean water. It will stop working when it's no longer safe to use meaning no one has to keep a record of how often it's used, and it's cheap as fuck so many can be air dropped or brought into villages.
