By now everyone knows how terrible bottled water is, environmentally speaking, churning out 18 godzillion pounds of trashed plastic bottles and belching 430 quadrazillion tons of greenhouse gas into the air as bottles are shipped around the world.

But what if your tap water tastes like crap? Then what are you supposed to do?

Purifiers are great, but a lot of times they don’t work so well. I have the luxury of having tap water that tastes pretty good as it is, but the built-in purifier in my fridge actually makes the water taste like onions. Yeah, it’s cold, but jeez. Onions!

Enter Zuvo. This filter sits on the countertop and attaches directly to the faucet. Setup takes just minutes, provided you have a wrench handy and a plug, as the Zuvo requires AC power to operate.

Zuvo cleans water in several ways: with ozone (purportedly an oxidant that destroys contaminants without chemical residue), with ultraviolet light (water is exposed to UV twice during the purification process), and with a standard activated carbon filter. It’s actually pretty cool to watch: When powered on (by pulling the spigot on the faucet) the UV lamp lights up the transparent filter, which swirls the water around like a vortex. The kids really dig it.

So, how’s it taste? After setting up Zuvo and clearing it out for five minutes to let the charcoal settle, I can safely say the water that comes out of Zuvo tastes like nothing. Totally clear, totally pleasant — though the water that sits in the filter (about the size of one of those drive-through bank tube cylinders) hits room temperature after a while — you’ll need ice or have to let it run if you want your water chilled. Now my water doesn’t taste like much to begin with, but there is a very slight chlorine character in the standard tap water that Zuvo successfully wiped out. I expect if your water tastes worse, you’ll get even better mileage out of the unit.

Zuvo isn’t cheap — $275 — but over time it’s far more affordable than drinking bottled water. Definitely worth a look — this is a better alternative, in my opinion, than pitcher filters, which are a pain to fill and clean and which take up gobs of fridge space — and which don’t end up with water that tastes as clean as Zuvo’s. Give it a shot!

B+ / $275 / [BUY IT FROM AMAZON]

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