I bought this Katadyn Hiker portable filter early in 2020, for general/emergency use mainly at home. I bought it after a year of looking for the better filter, the General Ecology First Need filter, that I had from decades ago for backpacking, but couldn’t now find again for sale because I’d forgot its exact name, and it is no longer widely carried; and even Amazon won’t show it to you on a search for whatever reason, even though it has about the highest Amazon user review ratings, unless you enter its exact name. So, having failed for a year to find the First Need, I eventually resigned myself and bought this Katadyn Hiker filter. In its favor, and the reason I bought it, is that I think this Katadyn Hiker, going for between $50-$75, is probably the best available portable filter for under $100 - maybe even the best for under $200 if you exclude the First Need (which goes for around $120). One of the first things I did upon receiving this Katadyn filter was to subject it to the same easy self-test that I learned from my First Need 30+ years ago: I tried filtering some clean water with a few drops of food color dye added. I was surprised and disappointed that the Katadyn filter fails to remove the color, confirmed by Katadyn, a test that the First Need passed 30+ years ago. This means that the Katadyn doesn’t filter as well as the First Need did even 30 years ago, in particular the Katadyn Filter does not reliably remove viruses. It also means that, unlike the First Need filter, and again confirmed by Katadyn, the Katadyn filter has no good way to test and verify that it is intact and working effectively. To be fair, those faults with the Katadyn filter are shared by essentially every other filter out there except only the First Need. The Katadyn has another significant weakness, peculiar to it, noted by a number of reviewers here, namely that the barb/nipple onto which the water input hose connects, is obviously, and quite needlessly, quite fragile, at high risk of breaking off, and deeply recessed into the filter housing, leaving no good, easy way to gently disconnect the hose after use. I spent a long time trying and failing to gently pull and wiggle the hose off, very concerned that I was gonna’ snap off the barb and destroy the filter almost immediately upon receiving it. I eventually hit upon the idea of using a small crochet hook that I happened to have around the house to prise the hose from the barb, which worked fairly well - but I don’t usually carry crochet hooks while backpacking. Numerous other reviewers here describe their actually having the barb snap off while out in the woods, as would obviously often occur, leaving them stranded totally without clear water. A literally very possibly fatal design defect. Other than that - and that is a heckuva’ lot - this Katadyn Hiker is a pretty good filter, better in almost all respects than almost all the many competitors. It’s reasonably compact, reasonably lightweight, easy to use, pumps easily and well; and - except for the needlessly fragile input barb, as noted above - seems strong and robust. Their customer service seems very good. So how to rate this Katadyn Hiker filter? On an absolute scale, I would have to say that this water filter that fails to remove all pathogens - namely viruses - when a readily available competitor (General Ecology’s First Need) does - and has a critical weakness like the input connector barb described above, I would have to say that this filter isn’t really even in the running. On that basis, I would have to give it 1 star (effectively 0), or maybe as a courtesy 2 stars for some good effort even if ultimately a fail. However, virtually all the competitor filters, almost all of which are inferior to this Katadyn, have ratings in the 4+ range; so, trying to be fair, grading somewhat on a curve, I reckon I’ll rate this Katadyn Hiker 4 stars. But, regardless of the rating number here, better to skip this filter and buy a First Need. (Only after buying this Katadyn filter and being disappointed by it, I went back to searching even more intensely for the General Ecology First Need, which was still difficult because I’d forgot its name. But eventually I stumbled onto it and bought one and found it slightly better than ever. Just to be clear, I have absolutely no connection to General Ecology/First Need, in fact I don’t even like the company all that much; it’s just that I’m a well satisfied customer/user of their obviously still superior filter for 30+ years.)
