Portable Water Purifier Review - AquaSure

If you are a student, and staying out of the luxurious confines of your home, then at some point or the other one might have been caught up in the dilemma about getting a clean source of drinking water. Of course, if one is staying at college hostel then they will be provided with a clean drinking water source (usually a water cooler fitted along with a Aquaguard water purifier).

But in case the water purifier is not working(this does happen in many colleges in India) or if one is staying in rented flat or as a paying guest somewhere else, then one will have to look for a source themselves. I was caught up in the same problem a few months back. It was fine till I was staying up at the hostel, but when I came out and started living with other room mates in a rented out bungalow, I felt the need for a water purifier and started look for a good and affordable one.

Being students, the main criteria for us was clean drinking water and cost effectiveness. Cost effectiveness includes one time buying cost and subsequent maintenance costs too. Thus I researched for a good one, meeting the above mentioned criteria and short listed two of them -

#-Link-Snipped-#:
Cost: 1850 RS
Comes in 18/25 litres option.
Pros : easy to use and easily available in market due to Eureka Forbes being a popular brand.
Cons : discussed later.

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Cost: 2000 RS
Pros: this product requires less direct maintenance.
Cons: not available easily. Also it's cartridge may not be easily available.


Both of these were selected from about 10 local and branded water purifiers. Both of these work well to remove dirt, harmful chemicals, parasites, germs and kill harmful bacteria and viruses too.

I eventually ended up with Aquasure as it was easily available and the replaceable cartridge was also available at many of the local shops.

The thing is , these purifiers will provide about 1600-2000 litres of purified water or about 6 months shelf life, whichever is earlier. After that, the cartridge/battery needs to be changed and it costs around RS 400 (+ the upper dirt filter costing another RS 125 for Aquasure).

For people like me who wanted a temporary solution, both of the above mentioned purifiers is fine, in fact I would suggest PureIt if it is easily available in one's area.

Here's the actual product review of Aquasure (18 litres).

I must say, that one should try to keep away from these portable water purifiers as much as possible. The main problem with them is maintenance. The Aquasure comes with three removable attachments- the upper dirt filter, the middle carbon cartridge and the lower resin cartridge. All 3 of these needs to be removed and washed up every week at least and if not done so, they will get clogged and water will take a long time to get filtered through. And cleaning up work has got a particular procedure and I must say that it is a bit tedious and not for lazy folks like me.

Also the water tap/nozzle leaks a little and water keeps dropping continuously. I had to keep a vessel underneath(the main assembly is mounted on a sitting stool).

The main assembly contains of the upper and lower containers. Upper container holds water while it gets filtered and the lower one stores filtered water(9+9 litres). If the lower gets full and one fills more water on the top one, thinking that it will get filtered through when the lower one gets empty, then beware, as it will start leaking. The lower section starts overflowing and water starts leaking from the middle partition. Thus one can actually store only 9 litres at a time.

I thought there must be a problem with the unit or that I might not be knowing how to use properly so I ignored in the beginning. After sales service for this is horrible. The customer care does not respond properly. The shop from where I bought also did not seem to know much to help me. Checked online and saw that 99% of the users had the same complaints. Now , after 2-3 months of cartridge change, it needs to be cleaned almost every other day for it to function normally. A few days delay in cleaning makes the condition worse. Its more of a liability now and after around 10 months of using it am fed up with it.

In short, avoid portable water purifiers and specifically Aquasure unless its an absolute necessity. Aquasure is easy to use but high on maintenance and it becomes very irritating after a few weeks. Try out PureIt which has better reviews than Aquasure. But remember that after sales service for both is very poor though the PureIt is a better product in terms of usage and maintenance. Rather prefer the wall mounted/electrical ones.

P.S.: a few months back, Tata announced that they would make cheap (Rs 700 ones) and reliable water purifier similar to the ones mentioned above. Those were announced a couple of months after I purchased Aquasure and hence were not included in my research.