Field Test: LifeStraw Go (2-Stage)

It's not the easiest to drink from, but it looks great, is well made and if you can afford the eye-watering £40-50 average price then it can be an essential piece of kit to reduce weight, save filtering, boiling and cooling water (to get a cold drink on the go) no matter what the water quality is you're facing.

It's important to know that we have no affiliation to LifeStraw, nor are we paid for any review or recommendation we provide on the LifeStraw Go 2-Stage Water Bottle. This is important to us, as we like to give a no-nonsense, honest review, that you can trust.

We'll pick out the important stuff, so we won't copy and paste the detail you can read on the product description on Amazon and we'll share our real-life story after testing in a number of field scenarios.

The Good Stuff

• Less weight to carry than a full bottle of water all day, so you can fill up near camp.

• Looks the business and is well made. We like the carabiner clip that comes included too. It's 222g and 9" by 3", so pretty much your standard bottle.

• It works. We've tried it with questionable still and mucky water and it still tastes clean and cold (with no nasty after effects!)

• It saves a heap of time filtering or heating/cooling, which is great on hot days.

• While water can look clean, animal content in the water can carry the unseen bacteria with it, which would otherwise cause you stomach troubles at the very least. This gets rid of all that bad stuff (e coli bacteria, giardia and cryptosporidium parasites and microplastics).

• We like that with every purchase there's a matching to provide safe and clean drinking water for a school child.

• The 2-Stage option is a definite step up, with the charcoal filter reducing chlorine and chemicals like pesticides and herbicides, known to frequent land need crops or farms. This improves the taste dramatically.

• It comes in our favourite BushCraft WildCamp colours of black/grey and green.

The Bad Stuff

• It's expensive. £40+ for a water bottle seems excessive, although we actually think when you weight up the benefits of reduced weight, saved time and gut-saving upsides then it soon becomes worth it's difficult to drink from. The biggest downside. There's a small plastic piece to remove from the lip, which would otherwise make it near impossible to drink from (not listed in the instructions to spot and remove and hard to see as so small and transparent), but even after removing, it takes some 'pull' to get the water through the filter.

• You will need to replace the carbon filters over time, so it's not a one-off purchase (although you do get some spare bits in some offers and they're not incredibly expensive to replace, which is good as we lost them). They also last ale, expected to filter 4,000 litres.

Our Verdict

Consider the straw without the bottle, as a cheaper backup and alternative, or look around for some non-branded options if price is a factor, but if you have the money to spare and you get a good deal under £40, then buy it. It's likely to last forever and carbon filter replacements will be infrequent, so as well as being a safer survival tool, it's also very practical (it's worth it just to see people's faces when you drink water you've just taken from a muddy puddle!).