>>2786078Sawyer or katadyn are pretty safe, anything no name is a bit of medium stakes roulette.
They are decent to use and pretty safe, except for viruses and chemicals, which are not big issues if you just plan a hike around finding a spring around halfway through the day. If you need water from more downstream, you should probably add a UV stage for the viruses and some charcoal filtration to reduce chemicals, but that's above my paygrade.
I use a no name sawyer clone and haven't gotten sick, but my most frequent hiking buddy is raw dogging the spring water without any filtration and hasn't gotten sick either, so realistically the water I drink is spring water and thus safe to begin with most of the time.
Two simple pieces of advice: Add a cotton bandana or something as a prefiltration step if the water has a lot of sediment so the filter doesn't get overwhelmed and when getting water from a stream, point the opening of the bottle downstream, that way less sediment gets into it to begin with.
