Epic Nalgene OG Bottle – Test and Review

Updated April 9th, 2024

I recently got a chance to try out a couple of water bottles from Epic Water Filters. These have built in water filters allowing you to have clean filtered water anywhere. They eliminate the need to use bottled water where you are unsure of the quality of the water supply. I tried out the Epic Nalgene OG and Epic Nalgene OG Grande bottles and am quite pleased with them. Keep reading to learn more.

Epic Nalgene OG Bottle Features

We got both an Epic Nalgene OG and Epic Nalgene OG Grande water filtration bottle to try out. The OG is 32 oz and the OG Grande is 48 oz. Both were blue color and otherwise the same. The bottles are part of a modular system with different bottle shapes and sizes and filter types available. The Nalgene OG and OG Grande come with the Everyday Filter. The Nalgene OG UTB and the Nalgene OG Woodsman come with the Outdoor Filter. For those who don’t want plastic bottles, there is the Escape Glass Bottle and Vostok Insulated Stainless Steel Bottles.

Both bottles showed up in a plain brown box and were in a plastic back clearly marked compostable. So many times products marketed as friendly to the environment come in an excessive amount of single use plastic packaging. Epic Water Bottles is has paid attention to packaging as well as the final product.

Price

The 32 oz Nalgene OG Bottle retails for $40. The 48 oz Nalgene OG Grande Bottle retails for $42. They are available both directly from Epic Water Filters and also from Amazon.

Nalgene Water Bottle

These water filter bottles use Nalgene water bottles. They are Nalgene outdoor products bottles made to stand up to outdoor use. They are made in the USA, BPA free and are dishwasher safe water bottles. They feel very rugged and heavier than the average plastic water bottle. The quality looks and feels great. They have markings on the side in both oz and ml showing you how much water is in the bottle. I have no doubt that a Nalgene bottle will last a long time. You can learn more about Nalgene products here.

The water filter

The water filter element is produced by Epic Water Filters. The bottles use an interchangeable filter system with 2 available filters. My 2 filters were both the Everyday filter. The Everyday Filter removes 99.99% of tap water contaminants including lead, heavy metals, trace pharmaceuticals, household VOC’s and organic compounds. They are tested against NSF/ANSI Standards 42, 53, 401, and P473 for contaminant reduction. They have datasheets and test results available on their website to verify performance.

They also have an available Outdoor Adventure Filter that can clean non-tap water sources. If you need water from a lake or stream while camping, kayaking, etc.. then the outdoor filter is for you. It is a better option than water purification tablets and can filter up to 100 gallons with one filter element. A standard water bottle filter is only good for 20-40 gallons.

Both are American made filters that are completely recyclable.

Since the Outdoor Adventure Filter can clean water from any source, why not just use it for tapwater also? Both filters cost the same. I also had this question and consulted with Epic Water Filters to find out. The Everyday filter is an urban filter system made for everyday use. It is designed to clean out contaminants commonly found in tap water.

The Outdoor Adventure filter is designed for contaminants found in non-municipal water supplies. The Everyday filter only needs a little effort to suck water through. The Outdoor Adventure filter will feel like you are sucking a thick milkshake through a straw. The Outdoor Adventure filter is great when needed. The Everyday filter is much better for its intended purpose of cleaning tap water.

The lid and mouthpiece

The lid has a nice heavy duty feel to it. It’s the most solid feeling water bottle lid I have come across. It has a built in large finger ring for carrying the bottle or tying it down somewhere. It feels solid and doesn’t make me worry at all the carrying ring will break off.

The lid has a flip up straw piece to drink from. It has a small silicone mouthpiece attached to it that you can remove for cleaning. The filter attaches to a plastic tube that inserts into the bottom of the lid. All 3 pieces take about a minute to assemble. The bottle does not leak water when the mouthpiece is flipped shut. I turned the 48 oz bottle upside down, shook it around a bunch with no water leaks. I would be confident throwing one inside my pack for a day.

How well does it work?

I’ve had both filter bottles for a couple weeks now. I’ve refilled it at home many times and also a couple of hotels.

Water taste

The water in our house has a noticeable metallic taste to it from the tap. I normally drink everything from a filter built into the refrigerator. We live in southeast Michigan an hour from Flint Michigan which made the news in 2015 for lead in its water system. More recently there is a lot of PFAS contamination in the surrounding area. Nobody seems to really know what the long term effects are for exposure to PFAS.

The Epic Water Filters bottle takes the bad taste out of our tap water just as good as the refrigerator filter. According to the Epic Water Filters datasheet, the Everyday Filter removes 99.8% of lead and 98% of PFOA. I’m feeling pretty good about the performance of the filter after trying it out.

Drinking from the filtered water bottle

There are a few quirks to this bottle with filter that are different from drinking out of a normal water bottle.

The first and most notable one is that you have to drink with the bottle upright. The water has to pass through the filter to be filtered. You have to drink water by sucking it up through the mouthpiece. You can’t hold the bottle up in the air over your mouth and squeeze water out as you do with most other water bottles. It’s not a huge deal. It doesn’t need that much effort to suck water through the Everyday Filter.

The second thing to note. You can’t drink all the water out of the bottle. The bottom of the water filter inlet is at about the 4 oz mark on the bottle.

It takes more effort to drink water once you get below the top of the filter inlets. At this point until the bottom you are sucking air through the filter along with water. This is around the 14 oz mark on the side of the bottle. This is a much more noticeable irritation on the 32 oz bottle. You hit the filter inlet with about a 1/3rd of the bottle to go. On the 48 oz bottle, it’s less because you feel like you drink most of the water before getting to this point. If you have space for the 48 oz bottle, I highly recommend going with that size.

The Verdict

Overall I am pretty happy with the Epic Nalgene OG water bottles and would recommend them to my friends and family. They are very well constructed and durable. The water filter works very well at cleaning up bad tasting city water of questionable water quality. There are a few small quirks with using these but the benefit of filtered water without single use plastic bottles far outweighs the negatives. If you are looking for a portable water filter or way to reduce your use of bottled water, check out Epic Water Filters.