Countertop Water Distiller Stainless, Glass Collection

Almost exactly 3 years ago in February 2023, we bought this and it is still working strong and well. It does what we wanted from it. Produce our daily supply of pure drinking water. It is a basic simple not fancy no special feature water distiller, so, in our estimate, it would not go bad too quickly. It is working just fine 3 years later. We highly recommend it for anyone looking for a reliable water distiller. It is not cheap price-wise, but it is worth more than the price.

**update** 14 months and I cannot get it to stop popping loud. It's clean and dry and on a level surface. EXTREMELY FRUSTRATED WILL NOT BUT ANOTHER ONE. DANGEROUS. Read a lot of reviews and did a lot of research before deciding which water distiller to purchase. Upon using my MegaHome countertop for the first time, I was satisfied with my decision. Hopefully it will last years like others who have reviewed it. Sturdy, fan has noise as expected, average speed, great water quality (see below), feels/looks like good quality, great packaging, easy to clean. *IMPORTANT* Like some other reviews say-stop the distiller before the water level gets low. This not only makes cleaning VERY EASY, but prevents (or helps) the stainless from becoming pitted which will mean you'll get rust. In fact, to all those who reviewed this and complained about rust and pitting, please know that this warning IS IN THE OWNERS MANUAL. I started by using others recommended times. For me, 3.5-3.75 hours leaves approximately two inches of water remaining. IMPORTANT - for your safety let the machine cool down before touching and removing the cover. The manual says 20 minutes minimum. My sensitive fingers need at least 25 minutes. Water quality-my first test was 0.01 TDS/PPM. The start T.D.S. of my bad & hard water varies from the 290's upwards of nearly 500. Yes, nearly 500 at times! I did decide to use the carbon filters since they were provided. The water has NO taste - PERFERCT TASTING WATER. Moving forward, I'll do a cost/value analysis to find whether the filters are worth my time and cost as compared to passing the water through my existing Brita carbon filter, or experiment with no filter. Packaging - IMHO the packaging was designed by an American Engineer. The styrofoam is perfectly cut to fit each item. The only exception is the glass cantor. I can see why some might get damaged if the package is handled roughly or dropped. It is packaged inside the base with plastic and one polyurethane sheet. Due to the fact that the base is tapered with the top side smaller, you cannot completely secure it to prevent all damage. Mine arrived in PERFECT CONDITION. Speed - I would like it to be faster and wish it would shut off before drying out; however, these are conditions that cannot be improved at this time with any brand or model that I'm aware of - at least not in my price range.

***Update 10/5/2024*** I purchased this the end of October 2011. I run it at least every other day, sometimes daily, and occasionally twice a day. It is still going strong. Well worth the money! It's been a workhorse for almost 13 years. Now the nozzle is having difficulty staying in. When I purchased the white version, from Mega Home, I noticed that they are now selling replacement nozzles. My original nozzle is all plastic, the new one has a porcelain insert. So I quickly added that to my cart! Other that the nozzle tending to fall out after 13 years, there have been zero problems! I only drink, cook, and make coffee with distilled water. I have started keeping a bottle of distilled in the shower to do a final rinse of my hair to get rid of left over tap water chemicals... like rinsing with rainwater. It's made a big difference! ***Update 11/25/2020: I just started a batch of water and it crossed my mind that I have had this machine for quite some time now. Can you believe I purchased this distiller in October of 2011 and it is still going strong! I have used this machine steady since my purchase. When I have time, I clean it with vinegar and water, let it come to boil with the lid off, once it starts boiling, I unplug it and let it sit before rinsing. I have to admit that I probably Don't clean it as often as recommended, yet it still preform like a champ. Usually I just rinse it between batches. The only thing I use tap water for is washing, everything else is distilled (cooking pasta, coffee, tea, any recipe that needs water)....so needless to say, this machine gets a workout. I used to fill bottles with reverse osmosis water from the vending machines, it was pretty good, but a hassle... The taste of of RO water was better than tap, but it was nothing compared to distilled. A friend was raving over the taste of my ice tea, she couldn't get enough of it. The only thing I did different from her was use distilled water. This distiller was well worth the investment and I can honestly say it has more than paid for itself! Original review: I have had this distiller for two months now and it works great. It takes about five to six hours to distill from cool tap water but yesterday I used hot tap and heated about half of the water on the stove to almost a simmer and it only took four hours (I didn't want it completely boiling because I wasn't sure how that might affect the element in the machine). Previously I would fill big three gallon water jugs at reverse osmosis water dispenser and that was a pain lugging those bottles back and forth so this is a bit more convenient because I can just fill it up and go. But the big difference everyone in the house noticed was the taste. I always thought that you couldn't beat the taste of reverse osmosis water but I was wrong. I don't notice the difference in just drinking a glass of water but when I make coffee there is an extreme difference. Coffee made with this distilled water rocks! People ask me what kind of coffee it is because it tastes so much better than before and the only thing that is different is the water. UPDATE January 20, 2023 I purchased this in 2011 and it is still going strong. I use it everyday ... that is an appliance life span that is almost unheard of in this day and age. It removes all the chemicals and leaves only pure water. Everything tastes so much better, coffee, tea, spaghetti, anything you need water to make... you can taste what they are really supposed to taste like. This is a a real value!

We all need water. Water is expensive, and I don't care where you live, faucet water is undrinkable. Everyone should have one of these in their kitchen, parents should be giving them to their kids when they move out...it's that important and makes that much of a life difference. It's pricey, but it works really well and is well constructed. At its core, this is nothing more than an electric kettle with a distilling pipe in the lid. The fan accelerates the process by cooling off the pipes so the condensation runs down the pipe, and voila, pure water! The fan isn't quiet, but it's not unpleasant either. Perfectly acceptable noise level, no buzzing or droning sound. Its simple construction is probably why it will likely last a long time. No snazzy electronics to break or fail, it's basically an analog appliance that is either on or off based on if it's plugged in or not, with a temperature based circuit breaker and a reset switch. As others have said, it's best to not let it turn off on its own since it will bake all the residue on to the bottom. It's better to leave about an inch of water, so that most of that residue is still floating in the water. It means less cleaning down the road, and longer time between cleaning. I clean it about once every 10 gallons of water, but you could probably stretch it more depending on how dirty your water is. It's simple to clean, you just put 2 tablespoons of the acid crystals into the pot, plug it in without the lid on, and let it boil for 20 minutes, then unplug it and let it sit for another 20 minutes. The water should look clear, and all the residue dissolved....it's like magic. If it isn't completely clean, I just plug it back in and let it boil some more, if that doesn't do the trick, then you just need more of those acid crystals (a bottle comes with the distiller). The water that comes out of it is as pure as can be. Previously, I was getting distilled water in plastic jugs from the store, and it always had a taste to it. You will never buy distilled water as clean as this distiller can make, because it will always get tainted by the plastic containers. Now, of course this will take a while to pay for itself. Between the electricity and water cost, you're only paying less than 15 to 25 cents a gallon to produce distilled water with zero chance of contamination from things like plastics, not to mention you don't have to lug around jugs of water anymore. So it might take a year or two to pay for itself, but everything after that means you start saving big. This is especially useful if you use a lot of water for cooking, as you can easily run through a gallon making a single stew. Being an engineer, there are some changes or additions I would make to make it even better, but overall this is a great item and I'm glad I got it. I only wish I had thought to get one sooner.

Color me not impressed. You take the unit out of the box and then you have to assemble the glass pitcher yourself. The whole thing is enormous - it looks from the pictures like it is about as big as coffee maker - wrong. You are going to need a lot of counter-space to house this beastie. For scale, the glass carafe is easily 3x the size of a typical coffee maker carafe. Next weird thing: there is no actual on/off switch anywhere on the unit, just a breaker reset on the front of it. Basically, it boils the water, the steam rises into a condenser where it is cooled back into water by a little fan using the ambient air to cool the coils. The condensed water drips down into the glass pitcher. Rather than run on a timer or somehow sense that there is no water left in the unit, it is supposed to boil dry then the breaker trips off as the base gets too hot. That is how it shuts itself off. This does not seem like a particularly sensible design to me. It is basically designed to deliberately get very hot, when the temp rises too high in the base, it SHOULD stop before it catches itself on fire. Not a design I am particularly comfortable leaving run when I'm not home for example, and this is supposed to run for hours on end. It will take several hours to distill a full pot of water. Unfortunately, the little breaker on mine was defective, shutting off the unit after it ran for 10-15 minutes, instead of the 4 hours plus it was supposed to run. I checked everything over repeatedly, went through all the trouble-shooting steps in the manual - nothing helped. It was tripping off like it was overheated when there was still 95% of the water unprocessed. So now I have to go return it. Next unpleasant surprise. Even for defective units, you get to pay the shipping back to the manufacturer and this thing is big and heavy. My guess is that even slow shipping this monster back is going to cost me $40 or more. Doesn't really seem right that I have to pay anything out of my own pocket for shipping when I got a defective unit. If there was nothing wrong with it and I just didn't want it - ok, but I didn't get a working unit and now I am out of pocket a fair bit of money due to a manufacturing defect. Yes, I could have looked at the fine print on the shipping policies from a third party purchase, but I didn't and now I got burned. I have had occasional, defective products from Amazon, and they seem to always treat you right, sending somebody to come pick up the thing to make the return process painless and easy so you'll come back to them again in the future. Not so much for some of these third party sellers, apparently. If that makes you hesitant to buy this particular item - good. It isn't particularly loud in operation and there is nothing otherwise objectionable about it. The steel cylinder inside looks relatively easy to clean, although it cannot be immersed in water and would probably be a lot easier to clean if it didn't boil dry each time.

(see updates at the bottom) Got this the other day. It works just as promised; I have no issues with it. It arrived packaged very well - so well in fact I am impressed with whoever designed all the specific/unique packages within the main package. It came with 6 little charcoal filters and a cleaning solution for the stainless steel inside of the distiller unit. The water looks so clean and tastes good; it holds one gallon and takes about 5 hours and 15 minutes from start to finish. I've heard that heating the water first will hasten the process, however I just use cold tap. Some have said the pitcher spills water when poured. Either they are pouring it wrong or the company has re-designed the pitcher because I have not spilled a drop and think the pitcher is great. Many have reported yucky stuff left behind that is slimy, stinky and so on. YES!! This happens every time (I just wipe it out with a damp cloth). For an experiment I ran a gallon of newly distilled water through the distiller again and I am so happy to report that nothing was left behind :) Next I plan on trying a gallon of distilled water from WM. I am thankful for this machine and hope it lasts me a while. I will update any changes. Edited on May 24, 2014 The machine is still running strong however there is one quirk that has surfaced ... for some reason once in a while the water will leak out where the spout is connected to the lid. I have not figured out why this happens and it seems to be random. I just keep a towel under the machine 'just in case'. It will go for several weeks without leaking and then all of the sudden it will leak for a few cycles and then stop again. When it does leak it's usually not that much (a few tablespoons to a fourth cup maybe?), however a few times it has leaked 1-2 cups!! But, like I said, it suddenly stops and there are no issues. I'm not sure if this is bad or not but the stainless-steel underside of the top section is no longer nice and shiny but dark orange/brown in color. This could be because of our really bad water here where I live? (SW MO) Has anyone else had this issue? I know that when I used to filter my water it first went through a 'micro sponge' of some sort that was white ... but would turn burnt orange if I did not clean it off regularly. It might be totally unrelated but then maybe not. As I stated in my original post, I have no problem with the container leaking when I pour out the water ... UNLESS I pour too fast. So, my advice to those who have issues with the pitcher leaking: try slowing down. When my cleaning solution that came with it ran out I tried to find the exact brand online to reorder however I could not so I just ordered another brand. The new brand does NOT do as good of a job as whatever brand came with the machine (the bottle had no brand name on it). If you know of a good brand to order, please let me know as I am not happy with the one I got. I am still very thankful for the purchase and will update again when I feel the need. UPDATE 03/14/15 It is still working HOWEVER about half the time it makes and obnoxious, high pitched, squealing sound for a few minutes when you first turn it on. This, I assume, is the fan motor struggling to go properly. I tried using a can of compressed air to force out the dust, and while a lot of dust did come out it had no effect on the squeal. I am way past the year warranty so if anyone has ideas on what to do, let me know! Other than that, it does work and we still run about 2 to 3 gallons through it each 24-hour period. UPDATE 11/08/15 The obnoxious, high pitched, squealing sound: I finally took the top apart and cleaned it off really good, however this did NOT work. My son took the motor apart, cleaned all the inner parts, lubricated them with sewing machine oil, and WOW!! it runs like new again. SO HAPPY. I'm including a photo of the discoloration on the underside of the lid - the side that is stainless steel. It just gets darker and darker, but I assume this does not matter?? TO CLEAN IT: No need to buy the yucky chemicals!!! An elderly friend of mine gave me some advice a few months ago ... just fill the tank up 3 or so inches with white vinegar and run it through like water. Once done, I scrape off the nasty and run it through one more time. This works SO MUCH BETTER than the chemical stuff!! After I am done cleaning it out I fill the tank with an inch or two of water and run that through so vinegar is rinsed out of the pipe. UPDATE January 2017 My son has cleaned it about 4 times since my last update, but it finally broke and I'm not sure why. We have had thoughts of taking it to a small engine repair man and seeing if he can fix it, but so far we haven't because we are just too busy right now. Once things settle down a little I might take it to see if the man can fix it.

****200 GALLONS UPDATE**** Since I love improvements I wanted to share we've made 200 gallons with this unit and I have an update to how I clean and maintain it. I've changed how I fill the reservoir. **I fill it using two 1/2 gallon glass canning jars. **As soon as I've emptied those jars into the distiller reservoir I go straight to the tap and fill those jars up again. **I let the jars sit, full of water with no lid until I'm ready to make the next gallon. **The chlorine in the tap water evaporates while sitting. **There is much less residue in the distiller. Chlorine was accounting for a lot of it! We still have a good amount of limestone and other minerals but w/o the chlorine it is about 1/2 the residue as before! We can now go 2 weeks in between cleaning the reservoir!!! I clean the same way as the last update, but I've reduced the citric acid down to 1/3 - 1/2 cup. ****UPDATE**** We've now made over 150 gallons and this unit is still running strong! We mostly make a gallon a day, there is a day or two per month where we need to make an extra gallon. After all these gallons I have developed a routine: Once the water is distilled I unplug the unit, remove the lid, and pat out all the wet leftover minerals with a single paper towel. After that there is still some residue stuck on the unit and I'm fine with it. I leave it to build up all week. On the weekend I sprinkle 3/4-1 cup of citric acid all over that residue, like I'm flouring a cake pan. Then I fill the unit with hot tap water and let it sit while I do laundry or run to the market. An hour or more later I dump out the water and the unit is mostly clean leaving only a little residue that needs to be gently scrubbed away. This method requires less effort and uses less citric acid than before when I was doing it every other day. ****ORIGINAL REVIEW**** We've made at least 50 gallons with this and are very pleased with its performance. I would say that it'll take a while for it to pay for itself compared to the price of distilled water at a supermarket since the power consumption is pretty high, but the convenience is totally worth it. Convenience meaning I don't have to lug big bottles of water from the store anymore. I don't have to worry about the bottle water limit at the store anymore. And I don't have to deal with all the plastic because we go through 1-2 gallons a day so the recycling impact was pretty high. I did save 10 of those plastic jugs to keep extra distilled water on hand for a power outage but other than that we're done with the plastic which makes us real happy. Cleaning isn't too tough - I bought a 10lb bag of citric acid and I use 1/2 cup with hot tap water and a scrubber brush to clean the reservoir every 2 days to get the sediment off the sides and bottom. It takes me just a couple minutes. Then I rinse it with water and then fill it up and start running a distillation cycle again. Ours did not come with the charcoal filters though it said it did. I guess they forgot those, but it isn't necessary. We test the water every 10 gallons and it is always 0 ppm so I don't see the use in the charcoal filters. Our tap water is 244 PPM with a lot of limestone so its been really great to have distilled water that doesn't clog my iron, my steamer, his CPAP, or our espresso maker. We do sometimes remineralize the water after making tea or coffee just for the taste - we use electrolyte drops (unflavored) and that works great. If you're thinking about it I recommend this. It isn't the cheapest or the most expensive but it is very reliable, very easy to use and manage, and there isn't too much assembly - just the silver bands and handle need to be put on the pitcher and you're pretty much ready to go. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED If this review helped you to make a decision: please consider tapping the helpful button. Thanks!!

I love this distiller and love Megahome (Nutriteam) even more. The hard water in the three Utah neighborhoods where we've lived have given me three kidney stones, but that problem vanished when I started using this distiller. My family and neighbors are shocked to see how much gunk this thing removes from our tap water. Within a year of purchase, though, the distiller developed first an inch long dent, then a crack within the water chamber near the top fill line. This crack rusted and grew to be about as long as my fist (see my pictures in this review). It allowed water to leak through the chamber into the inner parts of the distiller, and onto the counter below. I had to stop using it because I didn't want to risk an electrical short, arc, fire, or electrocution. I emailed Megahome with the pictures in this review. Even though I emailed them after the warranty period had expired, they sent me a new tank, free of charge (including shipping) without me even having to mail them the defective unit. (The photos showed the defect clearly.) To clarify, the company that replied to my email and sent me the replacement was Nutriteam. They explained that they are the exclusive U.S. distributors of the Taiwanese company that manufactures the Megahome distiller. (I originally thought the product was manufactured in the U.S. and that was a selling point for me, but I'm happy to support Taiwanese manufacturers as well since I like to support companies that operate in republics with elected presidents.) Here's the timeline, which is useful in order to understand how much this company stands behind its product. I originally purchased this distiller from Amazon on July 16 2021. I emailed them about the defect on 11 Feb 2023 (almost 19 months later), informing them that the tank had developed an inch long dent within a year of my purchase, but since it started as a small dent, I initially was puzzled as to whether the dent existed when I first bought the item or whether it had emerged several months later. (I knew for a fact that I hadn't caused the dent because I never used anything but citric acid to clean the tank and even used my hand as a scrubber so I wouldn't scour the tank.) I explained in the email that it became clear somewhere between 11 and 18 months after purchase that this issue was indeed a manufacturing defect because in that time it developed from a dent to large dent to a large rusty crack which eventually leaked water from the tank into the inside of the unit's internals. Not only did Megahome/Nutriteam send a replacement for the tank; they also stated in their reply that the replacement tank also would include a new warranty. It means that their replacement of the tank essentially re-booted the warranty period. That was an excellent surprise. Note: To improve longevity of the distiller, I use a timer that prevents it from running out of water and tripping the overheating switch. I chose the "BN-LINK 7 Day Heavy Duty Digital Programmable Timer, FD60 U6, 115V, 60Hz, Dual Outlet, Indoor, for Lamp Light Fan Security UL Listed" because it has an internal battery and a clock, which means it can be programmed for different times on different days (I sleep in on Sunday), and also won't be thrown off schedule if a power outage occurs when the unit isn't supposed to run. I set it for about 4.5 hours and it leaves about a cm of water in the bottom of the tank which should improve the unit's lifespan. I also clean my tank once a week using a couple tablespoons of citric acid granules in a slightly overfilled tank with no heat. If I just leave it to soak for an hour, the citric acid dissolves the lime scale enough where I can literally wipe the remainder off with my fingertips and it just whisks away in a cloud underwater. Then I rinse it (I don't want the metal to rust from constant exposure to citric acid), refill, and get back to distilling. My tank still looks like new 6 months after it was replaced. Update: Today, 9/5/2023, the replacement tank is working flawlessly, and my wife asked me to order an identical distiller for her. She did the math and found that after paying the initial $300 price tag of the unit, the distiller will save her $1,000 per year in bottled water (she only drinks Arrowhead brand because she likes the taste, but has found she also likes the taste of the water this distiller produces.) If her distiller lasts as long as mine has so far (25 months), it will save us $1,700 in the first 2 years alone.