Steripen Classic 3: Spotlite Review

"The Classic 3 weighs 141 g with four lithium AA batteries inside it, and the batteries are good for about 150 L treatment."

Wow I had no idea it could treat that much water with lithium batteries. That's impressive!

Thanks for the review. It really seems like a good option. My old classic was so inconsistent, though, that its hard for me to return to Steripen.

> it could treat that much water with lithium batteries. That's impressive!
I thought so too. And no chemicals and no pumping and …

Cheers

I've had a steripen classic for about 5 years now. It has served me well on a year spent in New Zealand as well as many trips long and short in the UK and US. I have never had any issues with reliability, durability or purification. Even drinking from rivers on farmland in the UK i have not once had the slightest hint of a stomach bug. I like the fact that i have can have a 3 min break whilst i purify some water on the trail and although I sometimes worry that it will break it never has done- and a few Micropur tablets act as a backup with (essentially) no weight penalty. Love it and will only upgrade when it breaks or they devise an LED uv light which would presumably be the holy grail in terms of battery life and durability!

Thanks, Roger. Maybe after the current Opti burns out I'll give it a try. I really like the idea of using the more common batteries.

One of my largest concerns with my recently purchased Ultra is that it's likely the lamp will outlive the rechargeable battery. An issue I don't have to worry about with my Adventurer or this Classic.

"Skipping over the details, there's a complex AC waveform across the electrodes which should make sensing the water far more reliable."

Maybe it should, but DOES it?

Re: "…while getting rid of some of the bugs…"
Hmmm, does it kill big bugs? And how can they be deemed gotten rid of if their little bug bodies are still there? Yuck.
There you go, trying to make me do things differently again.

"they don't actually get killed, just genetically modified, unable to reproduce."

AHA! It all makes sense now. My mother encouraged me to sleep with my Steripen, she told me it would keep me warm. Now I know the real reason…..

> how can they be deemed gotten rid of if their little bug bodies are still there?
Well, the original idea was that they could no longer breed and make steadily increasing amounts of toxins to affect you, or drink increasing amounts of your blood …

But what's the matter with protein-enriched water? More food!

Cheers

Thank you Sam. When is the funeral?

Cheers

Hi Doug

> the insert to the Steripen recommends rechargeable NiMH instead of lithium for cold weather
Um – can you help me here? I can't find that recommendation, but perhaps I didn't look in the right place. All I could find was the following, in the User's Guide:
"Rechargeable, NiMH batteries may give a premature low
battery signal. See specifications for the number of liters
you should expect to treat with high quality, fully charged
NiMH batteries."

The big advantage of NiMH batteries is that they are rechargeable, and will last for hundreds of cycles. For a heavy user, that could be significant.

The disadvantages are that they are significantly heavier (adding 50 g to the Steripen over lithiums), have a shorter life of 5 years (Li: 15 yrs), and they have an output voltage of only 1.25 V (Li: 1.5 V). In some cases NiMH batteries won't work in something because the battery voltage sensing circuit thinks they are already discharged. Their cold weather performance is better than for alkalines, but not as good as for lithiums.

As to whether 'batteries are not included' – all I can say is that my unit turned up with batteries.

EDIT: reviewers get lithium AA batteries, but they are not normally included.

Cheers