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Does the Countertop RO Filter Deliver? Full Test! (Waterdrop Filter K19)
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May 21, 2024
Clean water is one of the top 3 most important resources we need for daily life and especially in any emergency. I've tested a few gravity filters including the Berkey with black filters, the Alexapure, and the Purewell gravity water filters. But now I'm going to put this similarly-priced countertop Reverse Osmosis (RO) water filter through the same tests to see how it performs. Waterdrop sent me this filter for the purpose of testing. I told them I would give an honest review and call it like I see it and they agreed. So here's that review! Waterdrop is running a sale on their filters right now for Christmas and asked me to include the following. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Waterdrop Christmas Sales! Up to $240 off sitewide from Dec. 8th till Dec. 26th! Check the link below to snag gifts for your family and friends! Web: https://bit.ly/46Q1IJS Amz: https://amzn.to/3RLvvOr - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - #waterdropfilter #reverseosmosiswaterfilter @Waterdrop Filter 0:00 - Introduction to Waterdrop K19 countertop reverse osmosis filter and its mission. 00:13 - Description of the K19 as a compact countertop water filter and dispenser. 02:34 - Unboxing and initial assembly of the K19 filter, including a pro tip. 04:08 - Filling the water reservoir and completing the setup. 06:48 - Initial thoughts on the K19's design and ease of use. 08:12 - Demonstrating the normal operation of the K19, including TDS indicator. 12:08 - Testing the K19's ability to filter chlorine, colored drink mix, and salt, with discussion on its pros and cons.
View Video Transcript
0:00
This is the K-19 countertop reverse osmosis filter from WaterDrop
0:06
WaterDrop is a company that essentially they're out there to try to help purify water
0:11
make water cleaner for all of us to drink, and make clean water more accessible. So
0:15
I'm good with that. I'm cool with getting behind that sort of a mission. And this particular unit, the K-19, was designed to be the world's most compact countertop reverse
0:25
osmosis water filter and dispenser. It's a lot of things kind of all in one, right? But it fits
0:29
on your countertop and it's pretty compact. So I'm going to give them a thumbs up on that one
0:34
But we've got to see how this thing works. But before that, we need to go back in time just a
0:38
little bit and see how this thing came out of the box and what it took to assemble it
0:43
Let's open up the actual packaging and see what's inside. Now, here's the thing. Most of you who
0:50
have watched other videos on this channel know that when I test out products, I test out products
0:54
that I have purchased with my own money. To me, that seems like the most honest way to go about
1:00
this, rather than seeking out free stuff, right? But Waterdrop approached me and said
1:07
hey, we want you to test this out. And I'm like, okay, but I'm going to give an honest review. And they said, that's great. That's what we want. So that's what I'm doing here. I have no skin in
1:15
the game when it comes to Waterdrop. They did not sponsor this video. The only thing that I received
1:21
is the filter itself. And I received the filter for testing purposes. And I assume I get to keep
1:26
it. Also, if it's a great filter, I may recommend it. And then you could use an affiliate link
1:32
That's how I would make a living off of this type of deal. But in reality, I will never recommend
1:39
for you a product that I don't personally approve of, that doesn't have my stamp of approval
1:43
I'm going to call it as I see it. And if they're like, hey, we hate your review, take it down. I'll say no. And I'll ship them back their dang filter. So that's what we're going to do. We're
1:52
going to test this thing out. So first off, I got, so it's like got some instructions on it
1:58
but this is like a lid, right? For the filter. So that's what the instructions are for
2:02
is replacing the filter. This here, I'm presuming actually has my instructions in it
2:06
Okay. This is operation and settings, but it is not like a setup. So we're going to see if
2:12
it actually requires any real setup. A little pro tip, I've assembled a lot of things. And one
2:18
of the easiest ways to get stuff out, if you can, if it's allowed for the product, is to just tip
2:24
it on the side and kind of slide it right out of the box. That's it. This is the whole thing
2:35
This is the filter. That's a quite a hefty filter there. It has all the instructions for like
2:41
replacing the filter right here in the unit, which is actually pretty handy because when it's
2:46
something that you don't do very often. Please strip the adhesive tape and remove the silicon
2:50
cover before use. So there's this tape right here with this little silicon cover. So we're going to
2:57
remove those before use, like they told us to. I can see on the back, tap water here, waste water
3:02
here. I can open that up, unpack this filter, and I'm going to set it in. It doesn't matter too much
3:10
which way you point it because you're just going to spin it till it falls into place. So watch that
3:15
there. If I spin it here, it eventually falls into place. Once it falls into place, then I can twist
3:24
it a quarter turn. Then I'm going to go ahead and put this filter cover on. It's nice and smooth and
3:30
ready to go. Next thing we want to do is we want to fill this up with water. I'm going to fill up
3:35
this side. This is one container. It just lifts right off and there's two sides. There's kind of a
3:43
wall in the middle here. You can see on the front, it shows this side being tap water and this is
3:48
kind of your concentrated water. Reverse osmosis does work differently than normal gravity filtration
3:54
where essentially you're running it through the filter and everything you don't want
3:58
gets left behind and all of the water goes through. Here, some of the water is actually going to end up
4:03
on this other side and that's kind of your concentrated water that has all the stuff in it
4:07
that you didn't want. We're going to fill it up here to the max. The water reservoir can just
4:12
sit right there. It also has a lid. We'll finish the setup. Check this out. It's got this little
4:19
thing. It's sort of there to catch the water in case a little bit of it spills and kind of sits
4:25
under your cup. But I'm like, there's no attachment here. Where does it go? It just magnetically
4:30
attaches. Anyway, I shouldn't be that impressed by that. I just think magnets are cool. All right
4:37
we're going to plug it in and then we're going to walk through the flush cycle. Plugged in. All right
4:50
The first step is automatic. It says it's going to do this for five minutes and then if the screen
4:55
displays L1, we're supposed to change out the water. Basically, the quality of the water is
5:00
really bad. But essentially, it's going to run through. It's going to do a bit of a flush
5:10
Once that's done, it tells me to use a one and a half liter container. I'll just use a container
5:15
that holds at least a liter and a half and to actually dispense a liter and a half of water
5:20
from the dispenser. And then it just says circular flushing for three liters. So circular
5:26
meaning it goes back. So we're going to pour that one and a half liters back in here in the top
5:31
and we're going to do it again. And we're going to pour another one and a half liters back in the
5:35
top so that there's at least three liters that go through this system and then it'll all be flushed
5:41
out. Okay, it says L1. So we're going to go ahead and I'm going to replace the water in this tank
5:51
All right, that's totally ready to go now. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to get a liter and a half out of here
6:05
All right, now it said circular flushing, but the reality is there's enough water in the reservoir
6:10
to do the full three liters. So I don't really know if it actually wants me to pour it back
6:15
It wasn't that clear about it. I'm just going to let it go because it didn't start
6:20
So if you notice like right now, it immediately went right back to its filtering process. So it's
6:26
going through this whole flushing, filtering, pushing more and more through. So I'm just
6:30
going to let it go until it stops. So far it's working exactly the way it looks like it's
6:35
supposed to work while it's running. Let me go ahead and share some kind of initial impressions
6:40
First of all, you know, frankly, it seems like a pretty good unit from just the handling of it
6:45
right? It's not just ultra cheap. It doesn't feel like it's just going to break on me the
6:48
first time I use it. It seems fairly solid. Not a bad looking unit. They have the same unit in
6:56
black. So overall, I mean, I think it's, you know, it's not going to be ugly. It's not gonna be nice
7:00
or I think it can just kind of be there. Look pretty nice if you like that or it can kind of
7:04
just sort of be understated and out of the way. In terms of ease of use, so far so good. The only
7:10
thing that I would complain about is just, I don't know what it means when it says circular
7:14
Um, what does it say again? Circular flushing. Like, does it want me to put it back or not
7:20
If they would just say that specifically, like just run it or put some of the water back. Let's
7:25
go ahead and see what it's going to do now. Yeah, now it says L1. So now it wants me to replace the
7:30
water that's in the, that's back here in the reservoir. So I'm going to go ahead and dump it
7:35
refill it, and we're going to see what it does next. But honestly, like the unit's kind of just
7:41
doing its stuff on its own. So as long as you kind of just follow the instructions
7:45
it's just going to kind of do what it's supposed to do. All right, so after I think about four
7:50
full flushes through, it's done. It's not doing anything else anymore. Let's go ahead and see
7:56
now what this thing does. Actual normal operation. All right, now to use it, pressing any button at
8:01
the top is going to wake it up. So I'll press a button. I put a cup here and I can press volume
8:08
and it's going to select how many ounces I want. So I just got this cup here. I'll just do four
8:13
ounces and then I press this, the little water button right in the middle and it pours me a
8:19
glass. There we go. I got four ounces of water, about half a cup. That water does taste very pure
8:26
A couple other things with this from the instructions, it says if I get that L1 display
8:30
it's just telling me I need to go ahead and replace the water that's here in the back
8:35
Also, a couple of cool things. They recommend that if it's been over a week since you've used it
8:40
that you empty the purified water container. That's here in the middle. Now to empty that
8:45
we don't just like pick it up and dump it out. That's just not going to work, right? So what you
8:50
do is you actually hold down the volume button and then there's a filter button. There's only
8:54
three buttons here. Hold those down for about three seconds and then when you press the dispenser
9:00
button, it's going to dispense out all the water that's stored in this middle container. It'll just
9:05
dispense it out. So definitely have your pitcher ready to catch it all. Then you can pour that out
9:10
and just refill from the back. These filters say they last for 12 months and when I wake it up
9:16
it gives me this TDS indicator. If the TDS is blue, it says the water is going to be tasty. If it's red
9:23
they say, yeah, you shouldn't drink it. It's got too much stuff in it. TDS stands for total
9:27
dissolved solids. They want you to start with TDS water with the TDS below 500 and it's telling me
9:33
the TDS reading of this water that's left in here is five. And according to this website I'm on
9:39
if you have a TDS between 50 and 150, it's excellent for drinking. Ours is five. Basically
9:47
we're getting pretty clean water. There's not at least a lot of solids that are dissolved in here
9:52
They don't want you to put water through here that you don't know the source of. So this is maybe not ideal for, you know, getting water out of the lake or straight from the ocean
10:01
to drink. But in an emergency, do what you got to do. Maybe the best thing that you could do is
10:07
actually run it through like a gravity filter first. So if you already have your Berkey or
10:11
your Alexa Pure already, go ahead and run it through that. You're going to get a lot of the
10:14
gunk out of there. You're going to get the bacteria and stuff out of there just fine. And then maybe if you do have salts or chlorine or something still in that water
10:22
because those filters don't do it that well, you could try running it through this
10:26
Now what I haven't done yet is actually put this thing through the torture test. So we got to try
10:32
this with salt. We got to try it with chlorine. We got to see what's going to happen when we put
10:35
those kinds of things through this sort of a filter. I know that's not what it was designed
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for, but we as emergency preparedness people, that's the kind of stuff we want to know if
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it can handle. So that's what we're going to test next. Okay. Now, before we get into the more
10:48
exciting testing, I want to point out a few features of this. The filtration does have four
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stages to it. So there's four parts in that process of the water being filtered. A lot of
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filters usually do have multiple stages. This has four. It also uses UV sterilization. It says it
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sterilizes 99.9%. So it uses ultraviolet light to help kill viruses and bacteria, that kind of stuff
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The other kind of cool thing is that since it's not actually hooked up to a water source, like
11:15
there's not a water supply coming in, I can have this anywhere in my house. The downside of that is
11:19
I do have to take this reservoir off and go fill it from somewhere. But the upside of that is I can
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have this anywhere I want to. I could have it in my office at home. I could have it in a conference
11:28
room at my office. I could have it in any number of places. And for all of us on this channel
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another cool thing that you're going to be happy to know with this reverse osmosis filtration
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specifically the water drop, claims to remove radioactive substances up to 99%
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Now when they say up to 99%, that means like they're not guaranteeing more than 99%
11:47
Don't quite know how I feel about that. But basically, if you have water that's coming in
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from a tainted source because of some calamity that has happened, this is supposed to help
11:57
dramatically reduce the radioactive substances. Granted, they're still going to be there. You're
12:03
just not going to drink them, which I guess is better. That four-stage filtration is going to
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help remove those total dissolved solids. It's also supposed to remove chlorine, bacteria
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odors, large particles, fluoride, heavy metals, viruses, all sorts of stuff, right? So basically
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we're going to get pretty close to pure water coming out of this at the end. It also has a
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three to one pure to drain ratio. So for every three cups of pure water that we get, we're only
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going to have one cup of wastewater. So it's a little bit more efficient, I guess, than some
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reverse osmosis units. Basically, the process of reverse osmosis, it's always going to have at
12:39
least some waste. Okay, so there's basically no installation and the flushing process was pretty
12:44
easy, although maybe a little time consuming. It did take like six liters instead of the three
12:49
that it said. But I could probably let that slide since that's mostly just part of the setup
12:54
and when I put in a new filter. But now we got to put it through the real test. We're going to test running some water through there. This water has been bleached. So now we
13:05
have chlorine in the water. In fact, we're going to see about how much chlorine there is in there
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because I got these test strips. If you've watched other videos on this channel, you know
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I like to test the water that goes through the filters. Now this because it's got bleach in it
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the colors are going to lighten. So I'm going to have to get the comparison really fast
13:25
So here we go. One, two, shake it out. Chlorine, of course, is like right up in the middle
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Okay, the chlorine is basically like off the charts. It's supposed to be anywhere from like
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a light cream to like this pink. And this is like dark brown. It's this one kind of right in the
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middle. The one I'm pointing to. It's not light in color. We'll put it that way. There's a lot
13:48
of chlorine in that. Now we're going to pour it in. Hopefully without splashing my shirt
13:54
Cannot bleach the plaid. Okay, cool. So it started right up. It senses that there's water
14:00
in there saying 5 TDS, which makes sense. There's not a lot of dissolved solids in there. Plus
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there's the water that's already in the filter. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead, dispense some water. I'm going to do that a bunch of times until I can see
14:15
this water level really going down. And then we'll do a test. I'm going to change the volume to eight
14:20
and I'm going to fill up that cup every time. Still smells like clean water. All right, cool
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Now it's going to be pulling new water out to filter. That's what that symbol means. I got this new test strip here ready to go. All right, let's see
14:38
I don't smell anything yet. Hopefully I'll never smell anything. I don't think so. The water level in here has definitely dropped quite a bit
14:46
So I'm pretty sure that we've got some chlorine running through there. Okay, it's going to pump again
14:54
That just tastes like water to me. Once this is done pumping, I'm going to go ahead and do a couple more cupfuls and then we'll test one
15:03
Then we got another test to run. I got some drink packets here. Should turn the water purple and I want to see how well it gets that out. Even my gravity filters
15:12
was able to change the coloring from, I mean, I did Kool-Aid and it came out crystal clear from the Berkey and the Alexa Pure
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Not so much from the Purewell, but from the Berkey and the Alexa Pure, it came out totally clear
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I fully expect that this is going to filter out 100% of the coloring and the flavoring, but we're going to see
15:31
All right, it's time for a test. I'm going to do this as a control. This is just tap water
15:44
One, two. Let's set here. This is the formerly chlorinated water. One, two
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The one here next to the yellow, that is chlorine and it's supposed to be that color if there's like
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no chlorine. It's supposed to be a little bit off-white. That's the tap water and that's the
16:05
bleach water. Okay, now you see on this one, that one next to the yellow, that's what I was talking
16:11
about. It's like almost a brown. It's such a weird, weird pink color. That's so dark. There's your
16:17
chlorine scale. It goes everywhere from this kind of off-white is zero and works its way up and that
16:26
color right there is at least five parts per million. And the first time I did it, it was even
16:33
more like dark and brown right there. See that? Compared to the chlorine. Anyway, I'm going to
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give it a pass on the chlorine. All right, next up we got colored drink mix. I went ahead and
16:48
emptied out the reservoir and let's just see if we can turn this purple liquid clear
16:57
While that's running, I'm going to go get some salt water. That's coming out crystal clear still. I'll run a few more just to make sure
17:20
It's still super clear. All right, we've run so much through here and none of it's come out with
17:26
any color at all or any flavor. So I think I'm going to call that a win for that. But now we got
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the hard one. The toughest thing is salt. Salt, like some other things, is a lot harder to filter
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out because the salt particles actually ionize. They actually separate and when it dissolves in
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the water. It's not just like long sugar molecules. It's these little tiny individual atoms that are
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literally splitting apart, like not splitting the atoms, but splitting the molecule into sodium ions
17:59
and chlorine ions that are attached to the water. So it's really tough to filter that out and reverse
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osmosis is supposed to be able to do it. So I'm going to dump this and I'm going to put in some salt water. There's my salt water. It's in a pan. I'm going to go ahead and use a test strip on it
18:15
One, two. Okay, the sodium chloride is literally off the chart. It's the second one from the end
18:21
there that's kind of light colored. If the sodium chloride is low, the color is supposed to be like
18:27
a deep red. Look at that. At 2,000 parts per million, it's supposed to be that light pink
18:33
And look at mine. It's like white. I got a lot of salt in there. So we're going to pour that in and
18:39
see if it's able to get that salt out. I did this exact same thing to the Berkey and the Alexa Pure
18:47
You should go check out that video if you haven't yet. It didn't turn out very good
18:51
Okay, look. Total dissolved solids. It's saying 123. I'm going to run some water through this
18:57
And there's definitely still salt in that water. Let's see if it did anything. Now, if you remember
19:02
from my other video, the Berkey and the Alexa Pure, it couldn't get it from this white coloring
19:07
to anything else. With this one, we've actually managed to reduce the salt concentration. The
19:13
only thing is, it's still way up there, probably above 2,000. So we would probably have to run it
19:19
through multiple times to be able to reduce the salt to a drinkable level. So I'm going to go
19:23
with this is not going to be great for desalinating like ocean water, but it made some headway. I'm
19:30
going to give it that. So I think it's a great option. Here's the downside that I see. It's
19:34
electric, so it does require electricity, although when we were testing and it pulled very, very
19:39
little power. But as with all electronic things, that's just more parts that can fail. And so
19:46
there's the downside, really the only downside in my mind. And frankly, it does a better job. So I'm
19:52
curious what you think. I'd love for you to share in the comments below. What do you think about using like a countertop reverse osmosis, like for example, this water drop filter versus using a
20:02
gravity filter like a lot of emergency preparedness people have been doing for a long time? Honestly
20:06
I think both are fantastic options and I'm glad that I have this one and I'm definitely going to
20:10
put it to good use and maybe to good testing. If there's something else you'd like me to test on
20:15
this water filter, let me know in the comments below and we'll make sure we do that in a future
20:19
video. So if this video has piqued your interest in considering a water drop or any reverse osmosis
20:25
unit, I do want to let you know a little bit about the pricing of this. This one comes in
20:30
at manufacturer suggested retail price of $359. Right now they're actually running a sale. You
20:36
can use coupon code WDK19. WDK19 and you can get $80 off that unit over at waterdrop.com or you can
20:46
pick up this unit from Amazon and the sales should be reflected there too. I'll put links to both of
20:51
those in the description of this video as well as in the pinned comment. I'm curious what you think
20:55
about reverse osmosis, how this compares for you. I've used this now. I've used gravity filters as
21:01
well and I mean having clean water is one of the most important things we can have for survival
21:06
in any sort of emergency scenario. So from a preparedness standpoint, I'm all about having
21:10
good filtration. The downsides here, right, we need electricity to be able to run this
21:15
but the upside is what we get is going to be even cleaner that even most gravity filters are not
21:20
going to be capable of removing. So weigh those and I'm curious to know what you think in the
21:24
comments below. Let me know, do you think something like this is going to be worth having for your
21:29
emergency preparedness supplies? Thanks for joining me today and we'll see you in the next video
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