7 Best Shower Water Filters Tested and Reviewed
If you spend Enough time on Instagram, you can start getting the idea that the worst problem with America is water. And that the best shower water filters are the only answer. In the last few years, a new generation of stylish filtered showers has arrived to abduct our collective issue on social media – and probably our subconscious – with a horrific question.
Can you really trust the water coming out of your shower?
The answer, According to Wired reportingIt is not always encouraging. Manufacturers of filtered showers often make bold pronouncements for what your deteriorating pipes and chemically filled with shower water on your body, during what can otherwise be the only peaceful five minutes of your day. If you can get rid of chlorine or pollutants in your water, the argument goes, it can be the treatment for your most vigorous problems: everything from friezed hair to rubbing hair to dandruff, hair loss, eczema, dry skin, separated edges, black spots, and the heart of psoriasisS
The best shower filters on this list are really pretty good for removing abrasive chlorine compounds that cities add to your tap water to kill the bacteria. And so that was our focus. Maybe half the country’s water systems, including New York and Seattle, use chlorine to disinfect the city’s water supply. But most major metropolitan areas use a more stable substance called chloramine, which is thought to be less carcinogenic. Chloramine is more difficult to filter – and not all shower filters succeed.
In fact, the performance differences were shockingly big in some cases. So, let’s say you don’t like chlorine in your water? And you live in a city? These are the showers we recommend.
For more cleanliness and test filters, check out our guides for The best filters for a backpack of water., The best air purifiersand The best monitors for indoor air qualityS For more ways to level your bathroom, check out our guides on The best bidets., The best electric toothbrushesand The best environmental cleaning products for your homeS
Updated April 2025: We have added Weddell Duo, Hydroviv and Curo filters and showers and updated our descriptions in previous elections after endurance testing. We have also updated prices and relationships everywhere.
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How we tested and what we tested
Photo: Matthew Corfhaj
The market for filtered showers remains young and largely unregulated, and performance claims are rarely supported publicly by independent data. We made a lot of requests, but few shower filter companies convey the results of their laboratory. (S)Thank you, Aquasana., Weddelland Beat because of exceptions.)
Some manufacturers have told us that independent laboratories and certification authorities are supported and these data are upcoming. Many have suggested that customer satisfaction studies. All this means that some skepticism is justified.
So instead I took the test kits at home. First, I tested the total levels of chlorine in the water without any filtration, a measure that includes either chloramine or free chlorine, which has interacted with everything it has in your pipes. I then tested the water filtered from the shower. I performed each test several times to take into account inaccuracy or fluctuations in testing and in municipal chlorine levels. In most cases, I did this for several days.
For testing, I avoided painfully unreliable home test strips and instead came out somewhat nasty chemical indicators and used digital and chemical tests intended for pools and aquariums.
We also tested total solids with the help of a Tds meterand separately tested effects of filters on pH to evaluate the effects, but also to check the reliability of the results of chemical tests.
The efficiency of the filters is lowered over time, of course, depending on how much pollution is filtered from the water – which is why the filters should always change. As we update this guide, we will continue to test the most effective shower filters to see how their efficiency changes over time – and add all the new shower filters we can recommend.
What shower filters probably don’t make
The result is that you probably should not expect these shower filters to soften the mineral hardness of your water or to remove most substances.
After all, the filter must be relatively small to fit in the shower -head. Nevertheless, it is required to filter water gallons every minute, pushed at both high temperature and high pressure. The shower filter is a frightening engineering challenge, compared to the water filters on the hob that process only a small amount of water at a time-or a volumetric volumetric device for reverse osmosis, which can be included in your waters of water.
So, what do these showers actually do in a way that we can measure? They filter chlorine and chlorine compounds, mostly through chemical reactions. Almost every American city adds low concentrations of chlorine or chlorine compounds to drinking water to kill the potentially harmful bacteria. All this is good and good when the water is still in the pipes. But chlorine is not exactly great for your hair or skin and few people like to drink it. Some are also particularly sensitive to taste or odor or predisposed to skin reactions.
The most famous home shower filters rely in part on a mixture of zinc-soft called KDF-55, known as quite effective in neutralizing “free” chlorine in chlorine-treated systems. Other common substances used to treat chlorine and chlorine compounds include calcium sulfite and active or catalytic carbon. The most effective filters use them in some combination. The main thing I was able to check and test was the ability of shower filters to remove the total chlorine content in the water coming out of your shower.
We have seen a little evidence that the most common types of showers have great effect on the softness or hardness of water or on the accumulation of calcium. Actually, Some early academic studies present evidence that they do notS The shower filters tested also had a very little effect on the total amount of dissolved particles in our water, according to measurements with TDS meter – E, the filters do not remove a large amount of materials or minerals from the water.
I was unable to test the claims from some companies that these filters removed heavy metals such as lead and arsenic, which, fortunately, are not in my pipes. We found only one company, Weddell, whose filter is certified to remove lead. So far, so good! Nevertheless, if you think you have dangerous lead or arsenic in your water, you may not have to try to fix the problem of a shower from mail. Talk to a water treatment professional or your public health organ.
If you live in a big American city, chlorine is probably not what your city uses to treat water in its pipes. New York, Chicago, Seattle and Phoenix use chlorine, surely. But Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston and most major cities in Texas do not.
More than half of the US major cities use a substance called chloramine, a more stable and durable chemical that is more difficult to filter and test. It was also in my water supply. To test, I came out of my satisfaction Digital water color And somewhat nasty chemical indicator and then tested the ability of each shower filter to treat one of a number of chlorine compounds in the water.
I first tested the common chlorine in the water without any filtration, then tested the water filtered from the shower. I did each test repeatedly to take into account inaccuracy or fluctuations in testing and in municipal chlorine levels. In most cases, I did this for several days. As we update this guide, we will continue to test the most effective shower filters to see how their efficiency changes over time – and add all the new shower filters we can recommend.
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