National Parks Traveler on that battery-powered Miox gadget:
The beauty of this pen-shaped unit is that it’s so lightweight you won’t know your carrying its 3.5 ounces. The downfalls? Well, for starters it doesn’t filter your water, so if you’re not careful while filling a bottle prior to purifying it you could wind up with all kinds of interesting things floating around in your drinking water. Oh, they’ll be dead and purified, but do you really want a meal in your water?
The second problem I noticed might simply have been operator failure in over-doing the purification. Whatever the cause, the water had a strong, chlorinated taste. Kinda reminded me of a two-tablet system I was introduced to when I first started backpacking way back in the last century — you had one tablet to purify the water, and another to give it a palatable taste.
The rest of the post gives the impression that there’s not much of an advantage over carrying tablets or small bottles of chemical purifiers.
I’ve used the MIOX on a couple multi-day hikes. On one trip, I used it to supply water for two of us for 21 days on the trail. We processed about 400 liters on a 1.4 oz. set of $6.00 batteries and a couple of cents worth of salt. But on a longer trip you’ll want to carry a spare set of batteries, so you have to figure that into the weight calculations.
I do taste some chlorine flavor to the water, but it dissipates the longer you wait before drinking the water. After 6 hours or so that taste was less noticeable than San Jose tap water.
Filtering the “floaties” is not a big problem. A bandana works over a wide-mouth bottle, and a scrap of no-see-um netting works on bottles with smaller openings.
The only advantages I see of the MIOX over other chlorine-based chemical treatments are: 1) The anti-oxidants created by the MIOX are more active, more volatile, and break down into inert compounds quicker than other treatments I have experience with. 2) Is easier deal with than two part chemical treatments, and has a much longer shelf-life than single-part chemical treatments. 3) It’s faster than two-part chemical treatments. 4) It’s just plain kewl from the gadget geek’s point of view.