UpNorthica Reviews: SteriPEN Journey water purifier

Dream with me: A portable water purifier that’s compact, lightweight, easy to clean, and does all the work for you – and it floats. When SteriPEN released their next-gen Journey early this year, the claims sounded too good to be true. But if you’ve known the joys of coping with nasty iodine tablets and high-maintenance pumps, you will keep believing that someday Science will produce that magic bullet against giardia. So we extensively tested the SteriPEN Journey this season, to see if its ambitious claims really could hold water.

At first glance, the Journey’s small size leaves one big first impression. Gone are the dangly hoses, squeaky pumps and gunky filters. Instead, the thing resembles a thermometer in appearance and is almost pocket-sized. It uses ultraviolet light, versus traditional filtration, to destroy harmful microbes (yes, it does all sound very Star Trekky).

Anyone who’s ever paddled to the middle of a lake on a windy day to pump several bottles’ worth, will appreciate the Journey’s ease of use: You turn it on. Insert it into your water bottle and it lights up. In 90 seconds, the light goes out and the pen shuts off. A one-liter container is now drinkable, your only effort being to gently stir while watching the timer count down. For treating especially turbid water [read: "lots of chunks and floaties"], SteriPEN does have a separate Pre-Filter cap that fits most Nalgene-type bottles. But together, the pen and the Pre-Filter still occupy less space than most pumps on the market. And the pen even fits snugly inside a 1-liter bottle.

Any need for on-trail disassembly and mainentance is all but eliminated. You just wipe the pen off. This benefit alone is beyond a matter of convenience; if you’re uber-cautious about drinking water, it’s nice to not worry about setting pump parts down on dirty surfaces while you clean the thing.

The Journey’s interface is fantastic as well. There’s the on/off button and the LCD display – that’s it. When your water has been successfully purified, the display shows a smiley face for a few seconds before shutting off. If the pen is removed before the countdown has completed, a blinking frowny face alerts you. A similar battery emoticon below the face, indicates the remaining level of charge.

Is it perfect? No. The product is said to be water-resistant, owing in part to a gasket on the access panel for the batteries. Late in the testing though, ours was killed when about 1/8 cup of water crept into the dry-bag it was kept in. Moisture was found This is a problem, for a tool that’s designed to be halfway submerged.

Customer reviews we’ve culled have also pointed out that the lack of salt in some backcountry water sources, may ‘confuse’ the sensors. In these cases, the Journey displays the frown [water unsafe] and shuts off. SteriPEN tech support confirmed this over the phone to me, adding that adding a pinch of salt will correct this. [They were also kind enough to replace my pen]

Should you throw away your old traditional purifier for it? No. Keep that as a backup if you buy the pen. But compared to the ol’ pump, the time and trouble spent using the SteriPEN Journey is a mere drop in the bucket.

SteriPEN.com