User Review: MSR Miox

MSR Miox
Above: The current Miox, which may differ slightly from the version reviewed.

Reviewed August 15, 2006 by e_l_green

Rating:
Price Paid: $99

Upsides: It works and is lightweight, and kills some nasties that iodine tablets don't kill. When I'm hiking anywhere that there's good-tasting water available (e.g. the Sierra Nevada), this is what I take to handle purification duties. The chlorine taste is similar to many cities' water and is far less annoying than iodine taste. Consumables are cheap. There's no moving parts to break or wear out.

Downsides: It's not a filter, so doesn't improve the taste of the water (aside from removing tannins, that icky "dead leaf" taste, which however does use a lot of chlorine so overchlorinate) and doesn't remove floaties from the water. If you're hiking somewhere that the majority of water is scummy cow tank water, carry the extra pound of scrubbable ceramic-based filter with you (with a coffee filter prefilter), your taste buds will thank you.

A bit fussy with the residual chlorine strips (though you'll mostly use them for less-than-prestine water where you want to know how much to overchlorinate). Too expensive if you only go hiking a few times a year, you can get chlorine dioxide tablets that do the same thing. Does use batteries, and the batteries do need to be kept warm in cold weather for this thing to work right.