Review | LifeStraw Go 2 Stage Bottle. From A Full Time Traveller!

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If you have travelled to countries where you cannot drink water from the taps you know just how many plastic bottles you have to buy – 2 or 3 a day depending on the size, how much money you have to spend – 50p to £1.50 a day depending on the Country and how many times you have to think ‘I need to buy water, I forgot again’- probably a good 3 or so times depending on how much you drink!

Everyone is so focused on reducing plastic right now and rightly so, but what happens when you’re in countries where you can’t re-fill that pretty, re-usable water bottle straight from the tap?? (Aka in most of the world!)

I have been travelling full time for a few months and I knew on this trip I did not want to be buying water every single day as I am trying my best to reduce my plastic use and be more of a responsible traveller so I had 2 choices before I went away, to buy lots of water purification tablets to add into the tap water, or a filtered water bottle to filter the tap water.

Now I won’t lie I spent a lot of time debating what to do!

LifeStraw Go 2 Stage Review

If you are in the US, Shop on Amazon US Here!

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Deciding between a Filtered Bottle and Water Purification Tablets.

Filtered Water Bottles are pretty expensive and come with a cost of needing to buy new filters, plus, what if I lost it after 2 weeks, that would be a waste of money and I’d be back to buying plastic bottles!

Water Purification Tablets are cheap (from as little as £1.80 for 100 tablets!) and easy to pack but to make them that cheap, what’s in them? Do I want to be consuming tablets of cheap unknown ingredients for the next few months/years? And where do I get more once I’ve used up the ones I purchased whilst I was at home?

I eventually decided that I didn’t want to rely on tablets and instead, after a few recommendations I decided to get a filtered water bottle.

Then I had to look into – What is the best-filtered water bottle? What is the cheapest filtered water bottle? What filtered water bottle will last the longest? What is the best-filtered water bottle for long term travel?

After a bit of research and with the pressure of my trip coming up in 4 days time I knew I had to make a decision so I got a LifeStraw Go Bottle from Amazon and it was such a good life decision!

About the LifeStraw Go 2 Stage Bottle, LifeStraw Review

The LifeStraw Bottle comes in an array of different colours and looks like any other re-usable water bottle on the first look, however inside it is a filter and straw.

The LifeStraw Company actually started off as that, a straw – LifeStraw, which you can drink water through from a glass or another bottle and it filters it as you suck and drink the water.

But that’s not really practical for travel because I doubt it will fit in every bottle and we don’t take a glass or cup with us in our backpack do we, so luckily for us, they made the LifeStraw Go 2 Stage Filtered Bottle, a bottle with the straw inside it.

The straw and filter are designed so that you can safely drink water from pretty much every source, from normal places like bathroom and kitchen taps to rivers, lakes and even puddles.

I haven’t tried the latter few options (yet) but I have used it in all of the bathrooms in the hostels and hotels I have been staying in, I’ve filled it up in outside taps and any kitchen taps that I come across.

I have found it to be so useful and I am so happy I decided to buy this filtered water bottle for my long term travels!

Related Post – 10 Useful Items Every Backpacker Needs!

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Side Note – I paid for the bottle myself and purchased it through Amazon so I have linked the LifeStraw Bottle to Amazon in this post so you can pick your colour and purchase it from there too. This is an affiliate link meaning I’ll get a small commission if you purchase a bottle at no extra cost to you and this small amount adds up to help keep me blogging so I’d appreciate you using it.

If you are in the US, Shop on Amazon US Here!

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Positives to the LifeStraw Go 2 Stage Bottle

It Reduces Plastic Use.

Of course, the main reason I purchased the bottle was to reduce my plastic and it really has! I have still bought the odd water bottle I won’t lie, but this is a very rare occasion so it definitely has reduced my plastic water bottle consumption!

It’s a Long Term Money Saver.

I’ve found that not only has it dramatically reduced me buying water and therefore throwing away plastic bottles but I know no longer have to spend money on water every day.

Admittedly water is cheap in a lot of Countries and this bottle initially seems pretty pricey but buying 2-5 bottles of water per day does add up and I worked out that by using this bottle for about 2 months over buying water in a place like India (where it’s really cheap) I would have saved the same amount of money as the bottle cost, and after that 2 month mark I’m saving money!

It’s Convenient.

I no longer need to plan ahead to ensure I buy a bottle of water at night so I have some in the morning or I have enough for a long journey because I can fill this up in the bathroom sink in the morning or from a tap at a stop on the journey. Not having this thought in my mind all the time is so nice and makes life so much more convenient which is great when you’re travelling!

The Filter Lasts a long time.

In regards to how it works, it has 2 stages- there is a filter at the top of the Lifestraw Go straw in the grey section of the bottle and this filters the water along with the filters in the straw too.

One of the things I questioned about this bottle was that as I’m travelling long term I didn’t want to spend money on a bottle where the filter only last a few weeks. 

Luckily,  I read that LifeStraw initially said this filter lasts 3 months of constant drinking (3-4 litres a day) but has since said it will last a lot longer, one review I read said up to 1 year but LifeStraw also say up to 4 years of constant use!

And once the filter in the bottle has gone, you just need to purchase a new filter, not buy a new bottle.

Replacement Carbon Filters can be purchased in a pack of 2, I decided not to buy any extra filters as they are quite pricey and I wanted to make sure I was happy with the bottle first but I know as soon as the filter does go I can order another one and hopefully get it delivered to the country I am in, but then again if one filter lasts 4 years I won’t have to think about that for a long time!

Something I was concerned about is knowing when the filter is finished, I didn’t want to suddenly start drinking unfiltered water, however that’s not the case!

Once the filter is finished and it stops working you’ll no longer be able to suck any water through the straw which is when you’ll know it’s finished and you can purchase another small filter to go in it. There’s no worry about drinking water through the filter once it’s finished.

At the moment I have been using this Bottle for 8 weeks with the same filter. I will keep this post updated with when the first filter goes so you know realistically how long it lasts!

If you are in the US, Shop on Amazon US Here!

Negatives to the LifeStraw Go 2 Stage Bottle

The End of the Straw is open.

There is only one major thing I do not like about this bottle, although overall I really like it and recommend it, and that is that the end of the straw that you drink out of has no cover. It folds down but is still very much open to the elements and seeing as I’m travelling around Asia and it’s pretty dusty here I am conscious that it gets dirty quite a bit and then I put it in my mouth.

However, with that said, I can easily clean it and I haven’t gotten ill from it so I guess it’s not that much of a big deal, and a bit of dirt only strengthens our immune system right?

The Occasional Leak.

The other thing I’ve found is that it can leak a bit when it’s on it’s side but I’ve generally found it only does this when I fill it up past the max 650ml sign so that’s my own fault and they have said ‘max’ for a reason.

Brushing Teeth workaround.

This isn’t something I don’t love as there is a workaround but it’s something to be aware of and think about. Usually, when in a country where you don’t want to use the tap water to brush your teeth you tip the bottled water on your brush and then brush, but in order to get filtered water from this bottle you need to suck it out, you can’t tip it. So all I do is suck water into my mouth and then put my toothbrush with toothpaste into my mouth and then I can brush my teeth like normal!

Overall Lifestraw Go 2 Stage Review

This is my honest review of the LifeStraw Bottle and my review on its use as a Water Bottle for Travel. In my opinion, it is the best-filtered water bottle for travel and long term travel, I am really happy that I purchased it and I really recommend it to you too!

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• Want to see what other products I’ve used every day on my full-time travels –
• 18 Travel Essentials To Pack That Will Save You Space, Time & Money!