Are you thinking about trying a Brita water filter? Or are you curious to know how effective your existing Brita water filter is when it comes to purifying tap water?
Brita are one of the market leading brands when it comes to home filtration systems. Millions of people filter their tap water every day using a Brita filter and cartridge.
But have you ever wondered just how effective a Brita filter is, and how it compares to regular tap water?
This article is going to bring you everything you need to know about Brita filters and their effectiveness when compared to tap water.
We’re going to split this article up into the following sections:
• Brita Filters – The Basics
• Regular Tap Water – The Basics
• Brita vs Tap Water
• Anything Else To Consider?
• Wrapping Things Up – Final Thoughts
So, with the introductions out of the way, let’s start taking a closer look at both Brita filtered and tap water to see the difference.
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Brita Filters – The Basics
As we mentioned above, Brita is one of the leading brands in the world when it comes to consumer water filters.
They are available in most western countries and replacement cartridges and jugs can be bought both online and in stores.
Standard Brita filters use a two-stage carbon filtration system to help remove impurities from the water.
Taking a look at the official Brita website here in the UK, we focused on the Maxtra+, which is the latest model of cartridge that fits most new Brita filters.
Brita promises to deliver great tasting water from your regular tap water. It also says that it can help to prolong the life of certain kitchen appliances such as kettles by preventing limescale build-up.
So, how does the Brita Maxtra+ system work exactly? As mentioned, it uses a two-stage filter featuring MicroFlow technology.
This is designed to reduce the presence of metals such as lead and copper, as well as chlorine and other substances that can affect the water’s taste.
It also promises to reduce limescale build-up by filtering out other impurities from your water.
It’s important to note that Brita is really marketed as a product to help improve the taste of tap water, rather than make it healthier.
If you’re looking for a filter to actually remove all impurities, then you may want to consider a product such as the Zero Water filter system.
Regular Tap Water – The Basics
Tap Water is considered to be safe to drink in some countries (Photo: Adobe Stock)
So, what about regular tap water?
Of course, the first thing to bear in mind is that the quality of the tap water available to you depends solely on where you are in the world.
In some countries, the tap water is considered to be perfectly safe to drink, while in others it is not advised to do so.
This is mainly due to the processing of the water and how many impurities are left in it.
In the UK, for example, the standard of tap water is considered to be high – and it is thought to be safe to drink.
However, you can still find impurities in UK tap water. This is because of the treatment process performed to clean the water.
Some of the impurities you may find in UK tap water include:
• Chlorine
• Fluorine compounds
• Copper
• Lead
• Hormones
• Nitrates
• Pesticides
This is not to say that all tap water has these contaminants in them, but it does vary from place to place.
One way to measure the quality of your tap water is to use a TDS (total dissolved solids) meter to test the quality of the water.
It’s also important to remember that, as already mentioned, the contents of your tap water will vary greatly depending on where you are in the world.
Always do your own research to find out whether the tap water in your area is considered to be safe to drink or not.
Brita vs Tap Water
So, now it’s time to take a close look at Brita Water and Tap Water compared.
We’re going to split this part into two sections, taste and total dissolved solids.
Taste
In our opinion, Brita filtered water tastes much better than regular tap water in the UK.
We find tap water in the UK to have a metallic taste and a slight hint of chlorine to it, which is pretty unpleasant.
In contrast, Brita filtered water tastes much cleaner and does not have the metallic aftertaste that regular tap water comes with.
One thing we did notice with the prolonged use of our Brita filter is that upon changing the Maxtra+ cartridge, the water did have a ‘sour’ taste for a few days. However, this subsided after a few days of normal use.
Total Dissolved Solids
We used a state of the art Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter to provide an indicative assessment of what is in both tap water and Brita filtered water.
In case you didn’t know, TDS simply refers to a measure of the combined total of organic and inorganic substances contained in the water.
The reading is provided in a PPM (parts per million). The TDS can contain several different types of compounds, including calcium, magnesium, iron, sodium chloride and sulfides.
Here are the TDS reading results when we compared Brita to Tap Water…
As you can see for yourself, our glass of regular London tap water produced a reading of 348 on our TDS meter. This is actually pretty high and more substantial than what we were expecting.
The Brita filter did succeed in reducing this number, but only by 75 down to 273 on our TDS meter.
We must say that we were a tad disappointed by this, as we were expecting the Brita filter to remove more dissolved solids than that.
It’s important to remember that the TDS reading is only one way of measuring the purity of water. We did not test specifically for things such as heavy metals or chlorine.
Verdict
Clearly, we would favor Brita filtered water ahead of tap water, because it did reduce the TDS count by about a quarter.
However, we must say that we were surprised at the high TDS count in our tap water to begin with, along with the small amount the Brita filter actually reduced.
That said, the Brita water does taste way better than regular tap water.
Anything Else To Consider?
Just remember that if you want to be sure of removing all impurities from your tap water, then it’s probably better to go for a more advanced filter than the Brita system.
Yes, the Brita is good at removing some impurities and improving taste. However, it does not remove all impurities and this is something to bear in mind.
Wrapping Things Up – Final Thoughts
That brings us to the end of our look at Brita vs Tap Water.
Overall, we found Brita filtered water to taste much better than regular tap water. We were, though, a bit surprised to see that the Brita filter only reduced the TDS count in the water bit a small amount.
