For $159.99 a year, you never think about your water again.

That's the whole product: the end of thinking about your water. The rest of this letter just proves it. Read on.

This is the EcoPro Compact

Let's face it: tap filters are not the most beautiful thing in your kitchen. They never have been. Huge, chunky boxes that don't just look bad, they dominate your whole sink. Try washing a stockpot with one of those hogging the space under the spout. So we designed ours to disappear: minimalist, chrome, compact, at home on any tap, with lab-proven filtration that gives up nothing.

The filter is a chrome unit about the size of a hockey puck, 128 grams with the cartridge in, lighter than the phone in your pocket. It screws onto the end of your kitchen tap where the little aerator cap was. A lever on the side switches between unfiltered water for dishes and filtered water for drinking. And here's the spec I'd lead with if I were allowed only one: filtered water pours at 4 litres a minute, roughly twice what most filters manage. A full glass in under four seconds. If you've lived with a filter jug, or one of those tap units that turns your kitchen tap into a dribble, you know exactly why I'm telling you this. No jug in the fridge, no waiting, no bench space.

Five stages, one small cartridge

Nano filtration, built around a coconut-shell activated carbon core.

Everything in your water is either a particle or dissolved. Particles you strain out. Dissolved things you can't strain, so you make them stick to carbon instead. Five stages, two ideas.

Inside the cartridge, your water passes through five stages. A polypropylene mesh catches large particles and some microorganisms first. Then a carbon block physically strains out everything larger than one to two microns, which is how microplastics, rust and bacteria get stopped. Then the clever part: activated carbon made from coconut shells chemically grabs the dissolved contaminants you could never strain, the chlorine, the pesticides, the PFAS, the pharmaceuticals, at nanoparticle level. A limescale-inhibition stage stops scale forming and adhering to your kettle and appliances. And a final metallic mesh is the last barrier on the way out. That's the machine. It just happens to be small enough to live on the end of your tap.

Does it actually work? Here's the report.

Four independent labs. Over 100 contaminants. Published in full.

We sent this filter to four independent laboratories and published everything they found: over 99% of microplastics removed, 98% of chlorine, over 95% of lead, 93% of PFAS (the forever chemicals), 70% of fluoride. Not 100% on that last one, and we won't pretend otherwise; most carbon filters remove none. SimpleLab scored the result 98 out of 100. The full before-and-after report is one click away, every contaminant, every number. If a filter brand won't show you theirs, ask why. That's all the chemistry in this letter. The rest is about the deal.

So $159.99? What's the catch? What do I get?

It's a subscription. A totally flexible one. Here's exactly how it behaves.

Look: if I know anything about subscriptions, it's that people don't like subscriptions. Gym memberships that need a stamped letter to escape. Free trials that quietly become $14.99 a month. I get it. So let me tell you exactly how this one behaves, and you can judge it on its actual mechanics.

So we've made it as un-subscription-y as possible. Here's how it's different:

• It's an annual charge, not a monthly one. Once a year, a new box of six cartridges arrives and $159.99 is charged. That's the entire mechanism.
• We email you before we ever charge you. The renewal is never a surprise on a bank statement.
• Everything ships upfront. Your whole year arrives in one box. There's nothing held back to keep you hooked.
• It's completely self-service. Running low? Bring the date forward. Still have filters? Push it out or pause it, to whenever you want. We make this as simple as possible.
• Cancel anytime, in your account. No phone call, no retention script, no "let me transfer you to someone."

Truthfully? You could even cancel straight after ordering, keep the filter and your year of cartridges, and never hear from us again. Please don't :)

The part I'm proudest of: the lifetime warranty

Because everything you use every day eventually wears out.

Let me tell you something true about every filter on the market, ours included: it will eventually wear out. A tap filter lives a hard life. It gets flicked, knocked, unscrewed and rescrewed, twenty times a day, every day, for years. Like anything you use that often, seals tire, threads wear, levers loosen. This isn't a flaw in one brand or one material. It's what daily use does to things. The only honest question is what happens when it does.

Our answer is called our Forever Fresh Guarantee: as long as you're on your yearly refills, the hardware is covered for life.

• Issue with your housing? Year 6 or day 6, we replace it free.
• Valve playing up? We send you a new one right away.
• Moved house and need a whole new set of adapters? No worries, they're free too.
• Seals, O-rings, any part at all? Posted free, from Sydney, usually in your letterbox within days.

The only thing we ask in return: keep your yearly refills going, and keep up to date with swapping them. That's the entire condition. In exchange you get a promise that you're never out of pocket and never without clean water, which is the promise you actually wanted from "built to last".

What our customers actually say

Here are some we're proud of. You can read the full list here.

And here's the review I think about most. A customer's tap thread leaked, one of those annoying threads that's just slightly out of standard. It would have been a one-star review, and honestly, fair enough. Instead they got emails from me until the right adapter was in their letterbox, and the review that ended up published is five stars. I'm not telling you we never have problems. Threads leak, housings crack under weird water pressure, couriers lose boxes. I'm telling you what happens next, because that's the part you're actually buying.

The questions you're probably sitting on

Answered here so you don't need to email us. Though you can, and a person answers.

Will it fit my tap? Five adapters come in the box and between them they fit 95% of Australian taps. The exceptions: pull-out spray taps and sensor taps won't work, full stop, and I'd rather lose the sale here than in a returns email. Anything else with an odd thread, email a photo of your tap and the right adapter comes free.

What about hot water? The lever switches to unfiltered for hot. The filter itself is cold water only, which is also why the plastic never sees the conditions that make plastics misbehave.

How do I know when to swap the cartridge? Every two months. We email you a reminder, and because the whole year is already in your cupboard, acting on it takes ten seconds.

Does it slow the water down? Filtered flow is 4 litres a minute, around twice what most competing filters manage.

Do I need a plumber? No. If you can change a light bulb, you're overqualified.

Who this is not for

Two minutes here could save us both a return label.

If you want fluoride gone entirely, not reduced 70%, you want our reverse osmosis benchtop, and it costs a lot more. If your tap is a pull-out spray or sensor type, it won't fit, as I said above; that one's a hard no. If you're on rainwater or a bore, this isn't designed for you. Everyone else (renters especially, since nothing gets installed and it moves house with you): this was built for your kitchen.

Do the maths against bottled water

$1,560 a year versus $159.99. It's not close.

A family that drinks bottled water at Australian prices spends about $1,560 a year and gets through roughly 550 plastic bottles. Every one of those bottles was filled, capped, trucked, refrigerated, sold, sipped and binned, and the water inside it, according to the peer-reviewed studies, carries more microplastics than Australian tap water does. You're paying a tenfold premium to drink the problem.

This filter is $159.99 a year and six small cartridges. A dollar forty a litre becomes eleven cents. The maths isn't the clever part of this letter. It's just the part your bank account notices first.

The no-risk part

60 days at your tap. Full refund if you can't taste the difference.

Try it for 60 days. Don't taste the difference? Send it back. Full refund, we pay the return postage, no questions. You risk two minutes at your tap.

$159.99 a year. Your water is filtered. That's all you have to worry about.

James
Tappwater Australia, Sydney

P.S. Boxes ship free from Caringbah, same day if you order before noon Sydney time. If you're reading this, the current batch is in stock. When it isn't, this page will say so instead of taking your money.

P.P.S. I'll be straight about the deadline, because I know how "limited time" reads on the internet. The free-filter offer really does end 30 September; it's on every page of our site, not just this one. If you're reading this in October and the deal above looks different, that's why, and I'd rather you saw an honest date than a countdown timer that resets at midnight.