You spend a lot of time and money on your garden, and you want it to look its best. Depending on your water quality, that might mean you need a water filter for your garden hose. Your tap water may contain chemicals that could harm your plants and hinder their growth.
So, if you want to enjoy beautiful flowers and healthy homegrown food, it’s high time you get an in-line garden hose water filter.
To help you find the best one for your needs, I researched the most popular garden hose water filters and ranked them according to performance and quality.
Here’s what I found.
1. AquaOx DF 7 Garden Hose Water Filter (9.70/10)
- Well made, with multiple certifications
- $349
The AquaOx DF 7 effectively removes chlorine, chloramine, pesticides, herbicides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), bacteria, and viruses from water. This water filter offers a flow rate of 7 GPM and a huge water-filtering capacity of 100,000 gallons (about 10 years), with numerous certifications to prove its claims.
Pros
The AquaOx DF 7, a US-manufactured product, is an ideal water filter for your home garden or backyard because it can remove many contaminants, including microbes, sediment, chlorine, VOCs, and other inorganic and organic chemicals.
The best thing about the AquaOx is that it also takes out harmful bacteria such as E. coli, staphylococcus, and cryptosporidium, making your water drinkable and safe. So, if your kids and pets like to play in the water sprinkler on hot summer days, AquaOx is the safest choice for you and your family. You can also bathe your pets in this water and fill your aquariums.
AquaOx removes contaminants using QD (quantum disinfection) technology that creates a highly catalytic surface capable of destroying any pollutant that comes in contact with it. This seemed too sciencey for me at first, but after looking it up, I discovered that it’s actually quite simple. This technology creates a positive catalytic surface of alumina, cationic silver, and titanium dioxide that attracts electrons and negative ions from the contaminating matter so they stick to the water-filter media instead of flowing through the garden hose with your water.
As if QD wasn’t enough, AquaOx goes the extra mile and adds granular activated carbon (GAC) filter media, which will remove chlorine, chloramine, and sediment.
This water filter is super easy to use and maintain. You can install the AquaOx DF 7 in the water line coming to your RV or truck, and it installs quickly in a standard garden hose.
What really caught my eye was the certifications that come with this garden hose filter. The AquaOx is NSF/ANSI 42 certified for removing chlorine and leaving behind quality water.
It is further certified by the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO) for NSF/ANSI 61, which proves that the components used in this filter are safe for your water. Not many brands have more than one certification to back their claims.
On top of it all, AquaOx offers a whopping 10-year warranty and a 1-year money-back guarantee.
Cons
The only downside to this garden hose filter is its slightly expensive price tag compared to the rest of the filters on my list. It’s more than 10 times more expensive than the next garden hose filter on my list.
But considering it features QD technology, GAC filter media, a long life-span, 10 years of warranty, and a 12-month money-back guarantee, if you’re serious about your garden it’s worth the price.
Overall
The AquaOx garden hose filter is best for your garden, including fruits, vegetables, and ponds, as well as for filling fish tanks and washing cars because it removes chlorine, chloramine, VOCs, bacteria, viruses, and other chemicals from tap water. It will give you filtered water so clean you can drink it, though your neighbors might talk if they see you drinking from the garden hose.
AquaOx has several certifications to prove its cleaning efficiency and equipment quality. It offers 100,000 gallons of water capacity and a pressure rating of 7 GPM.
Although a little expensive, this unit offers an enormous warranty and money-back guarantee that no other brand provides on the market right now. So, if you need a hose filter that makes your garden greener, fresher, and healthier, get yourself an AquaOx DF 7 today.
2. Poolpure Garden Hose (8.50/10)
- Affordable
- $28.99
The Poolpure garden hose filter produces squeaky clean water, but, unfortunately, has a low flow rate and comes with no warranty. But if you need a garden filter on a budget, this is the best to go with.
Pros
Poolpure uses NSF-certified activated carbon filter to banish chlorine, chloramine, pesticides, herbicides, calcium and magnesium, VOCs, trihalomethanes, and heavy metals from water. If you have hard water that leaves white spots on every washed surface, the Poolpure filter can help reduce the deposition of white film on washed surfaces, even your car.
Installation is a breeze, but if you face any hurdles Poolpure has an accommodating customer service to clear up any confusion.
Here’s a small tip: right after installing, make sure you run the water for 30–40 seconds to wash any carbon residue off the inside of the filter. I didn’t read the manual correctly and ended up with black water all over my hydrangeas. (Don’t worry, it rinsed right off. Now if only I could banish the pesky aphids.)
Poolpure offers 8,000 gallons of clean and clear water, which is a good deal considering it costs only $28.99. Plus, I was happy to find out that it comes with a six-month money-back guarantee.
Cons
This filter has one major design flaw.
The water flowed perfectly the first time, but for some reason I kept losing the initial flow rate the rest of the times I used it. You may also face a lot of trouble with its flow rate and may be tempted to whack it several times during your watering session to regain normal pressure.
In addition to that, this filter will not make your water free of bacteria and viruses.
And it comes with no warranty.
Overall
Poolpure is an affordable unit, and although it doesn’t make the water drinkable by removing bacteria and viruses, it still delivers clean water for gardening and washing cars.
Overall, it’s a good option if you can’t dish out a couple hundred dollars right now and need a cost-effective filter that does the work.
3. EcoOne Garden Hose Filter (7.20/10)
- No warranty or money-back guarantee
- $42.28
The EcoOne garden hose filter produces great-tasting water free of contaminants that could harm your plants and offers a decent water capacity of 40,000 gallons. It doesn’t have any certifications to back its claims though.
Pros
The EcoOne garden filter removes chlorine, chloramine, VOCs, heavy metals, hydrogen sulfide, lime, and scale using a dual filter made of natural carbon charcoal and Kinetic Degradation Fluxion (KDF). It doesn’t matter if you’re on city water or a private well, this filter is a beast in dechlorinating your water.
One impressive feature is its durability and longevity. EcoOne has a water capacity of 40,000 gallons. This means it can easily filter your water for almost five years before needing a replacement.
It took me only a few seconds to install this filter and only a few minutes to fill a 30-gallon bathtub due to its high flow rate of four gallons per minute.
Cons
The EcoOne filter lags behind the first two in a few areas.
First, if you’ve high levels of manganese in your water, this filter is not for you. It can’t remove manganese.
Second, although the manufacturers claim to remove 90% of chlorine, there are no certifications to prove it, which is suspicious.
The third (and the biggest) turn off is that this filter doesn’t come with a warranty. At $42, I expected some warranty and a money-back guarantee.
Overall
The EcoOne grabs the third position because of its ability to make tap water squeaky clean and fresh. It made my plants greener and fresher just after a few weeks. I faced no leakage issues or flow rate fluctuations, which is more than I can say for the Poolpure. Despite having no certifications or warranty, EcoOne’s garden hose provides a decent flow rate and effectively removes pollutants.
You can learn more about it here.
4. Woder WD-10K-Port Garden Hose Water Filter
The WQA-certified Woder water filter can filter about 10,000 gallons of water. This filter can remove heavy metals, chlorine, chloramine, VOCs, and other pollutants that give water a foul smell. It’s lightweight and can be easily carried and used on any outdoor faucet.
I particularly liked this filter’s stainless steel hose and faucet adapter. Most standard garden hose filters are made of flimsy plastic that cracks due to water pressure, but this filter will stand the test of time.
Although it can’t filter out microbial contamination like the AquaOx, it can produce water that you can use to wash your pets, fill up the aquarium, and water your veggies. The selective filtration in this filter doesn’t remove essential minerals like calcium, magnesium, and potassium, so unless you’re sure that your water is free of bacteria and heavy metals, you shouldn’t drink the filtered water.
Woder is only suited for municipal cold water. This water filter is not the right choice if you’re on well water or want to filter hot water.
Woder costs $98, which may make you balk considering its limitations, but it comes with a one-year warranty on all of its components and a 60-day money-back guarantee. Not at all bad.
5. Waterdrop Garden Hose Filter with Flexible Hose Protector
Waterdrop is well priced and makes your hose water clean, but it may lose its cleaning efficiency after a few weeks.
Waterdrop’s garden hose filter, priced at $24.99, features a GAC filter, KDF, and ion-exchange technology and claims to remove pollutants like phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, and heavy metals, in addition to chlorine and sediment. It is NSF/ANSI 42 and 372 certified for removing chlorine and improving the taste and smell of water.
A good thing about this water hose filter is that it comes with a flexible hose protector that prevents straining and kinking where the hose meets the faucet.
I couldn’t find any warranty on this product, but Waterdrop does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
According to its website, the Waterdrop garden hose filter is easy to attach and lasts for over four months, which doesn’t seem like a lot compared to the near 10 years you can get from the AquaOx. And despite all their claims, this filter couldn’t last longer than one and a half months during my testing anyway. The customers I interviewed shared the same complaints.
I can’t say much for its durability, but the Waterdrop garden hose filter can clear your water of many pollutants.
If you only need a water hose filter for a short time, you can learn more about this filter here.
6. Camco GardenPURE Carbon Water Hose Filter
If you’re looking for a filter specifically for your organic garden, fruits, and vegetables, the Camco garden hose filter may be what you need. This filter uses KDF, granular activated carbon filter, and a 100-micron fiber barrier to remove dirt and other sediment, chlorine, chloramine, heavy metals, hydrogen sulfide, and organic matter from water that could harm the growth of your plants or increase the risk of infestation.
This filter is especially good if you have hydro and aeroponic gardening systems in which the plant roots are directly submerged in water.
I had to place it at the sixth spot because this filter is only NSF/ANSI 372 certified, which means this filter components are made with less than 0.25% lead. This doesn’t prove anything about its cleaning efficiency.
The Camco filter works efficiently only if you keep the flow rate below 1 GPM. That can take you hours to water your garden. If you have the patience or time for that, then go for it. You may need to use a water pressure regulator with this one to keep the pressure below 60 PSI.
This filter costs $23 and lasts about four months.
7. Clean Water Fun Garden Hose Filter
The Clean Water Fun filter, priced at $39, uses an activated carbon filter to take out chlorine, chloramine, pesticides, herbicides, and ammonia from your water. It claims to be tested by an unknown third party for its efficiency against chlorine, but I couldn’t find the name of the certifications, which is a little suspicious. However, the filtered water was clean and fresh.
This filter has a water capacity of about 10,000 gallons. Its body is made of durable polypropylene and it’s pretty easy to install and detach.
It’s at the last spot because when I was testing this water hose filter, it stopped working after filtering only 600 gallons, which is nowhere near the advertised 10,000-gallon capacity. I asked other customers if they faced similar issues and yes, most of the customers weren’t happy with its durability.
With no warranty and money-back guarantee, I think you can find a better filter in my list for this price.
Bottom Line
After four months of meticulous research, I can safely say that the AquaOx DF 7 takes the lead on all the factors that make a water hose filter the best on the market.
AquaOx uses quantum disinfection and granulated carbon filters to knock out all types of bacteria, viruses, and organic and inorganic compounds from water, making it so healthy that you can even drink it. For this reason, you can use it safely in your ponds, aquariums, backyards, RVs, trucks, and swimming pools, as well as your trees, vegetables, and flowers.
What makes this system stand out is its certifications. AquaOx is certified NSF/ANSI 42 and NSF/ANSI 61, proving all of its claims.
AquaOx will water your garden with a water pressure of 7 GPM. Also, it can filter about 100,000 gallons of water for 10 years. For $359, I’d say this is a pretty good option.
Also you’ll love this part: AquaOx provides a 10-year warranty and a 1-year money-back guarantee. Buying this unit means you’ll not have to buy another filter again, as you can always get it fixed for free for 10 years.
So, if you want your fruits and vegetables to grow big and juicy and safe, AquaOx DF 7 is the best option.
Methodology
I live in an area with old city pipes and I was sick of my garden looking drab and sad. I needed a hose filter and I was certain I wanted to have the best one.
You must be wondering how I performed my three-months-long research and ended up with this list of the best garden hose filters. So, I’ll walk you through the steps I took to analyze and review the most popular garden hose filters on the market.
Step 1: A big list of the most popular garden hose filters available on the market
The first step was fairly simple but took the good part of an hour. I needed a list of the most popular filters for garden hoses on the market, and for that, I scoured the internet and looked up websites such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and Costco. I selected only the most popular filters with the highest number of sales.
To further enhance my list, I contacted family members and friends who loved gardening and had plants, aquariums, and ponds on their properties.
By the end of this step, I had a meaty list of 20 garden hose water filters. I then decided to watch Modern Family and call it a day.
Step 2: Online reviews of water filtration systems
To get a better insight into the garden hose filters I compiled the day before, I read online reviews and feedback left by users. I had to skim through hundreds of comments and carefully jot down the good and bad things about all the filters. Also, some reviews were clearly made up. So, I also had to weed out brands using fake reviews and shady tactics to lure customers.
My hard work didn’t go to waste. I was able to strike off five filters for garden hoses from my list. Those that had less than a three-star rating, fake reviews, unreliable systems, weak flow rates, and poor performance were gone. This left me with 15 filters.
Step 3: Product/service analysis
Many aspects, besides flow rate and filtration efficiency, make filters for garden hoses the best.
Here are the questions that an average gardener asks before buying a garden hose filter:
- How efficiently does the water filter reduce chlorine and chloramine levels from city water?
- Does it remove chemicals like bisphenol A, phthalates, antimony, and lead that can leach out of plastic garden hoses?
- What is the quality of the filter casing? Will it snap in two pieces if I drop the hose?
- Is it safe if my kids decide to drink water directly from the garden hose one day?
- Which of these water filters has the longest life?
- How many gallons of water can this filter clean?
- Can my pet turtles survive in the water filtered by this unit?
- Is it suitable for my Koi pond?
- Does it easily fit into standard garden hose thread and other garden hose fittings?
Step 4: Interviews with real customers
I needed something more by which to judge the filters on my list before I tested them myself. And the best way to go about this was to talk to actual customers and discuss their experience with the filters.
For this job, I called my friend, Ken, to bring his car so we could meet the customers, who were kind enough to agree to talk to us. We conducted interviews, asked them questions, and listened to their experiences. This step helped me knock off five more filters. On the way back, we stopped at Ken’s favorite pizza place. A good Saturday, I must say!
Step 5: Interviews with the companies
At this point, I knew a lot about the filters on my list. So, I decided to contact the companies and directly ask about what was lacking in their products.
After emailing the 10 brands on my list, I ran some errands, brought my kids back from school, and had a nice lunch. During this time, five of them had responded, and some even asked if I wanted to jump on a call with their representatives. I cut out the brands that didn’t respond to me within 72 hours.
And this left me with the top seven brands.
Step 6: Test drives
Now that I had the list of the seven best garden hose filters, I decided to give them the final ranking by buying them and testing them at home. This process set me back $650. I tested the smell, taste, and color of the water the filters produced and analyzed how my houseplants, garden, and my pet turtles responded to the filtered water. I also judged the water pressure and the quality of the equipment.
This testing phase took almost two months, and by the end, I already knew which filter would take the first spot.
Step 7: Final ranking
It was finally time to give my filters the final ranking. And for this, I took out my whiteboard and an old marker and gave each filter the final score based on the following factors:
- Quality of the filtered water
- Flow rate
- Filtering capacity and life
- Certifications
- Durability of the filter casing
- Ease of installation
- Warranties
Not to mention, I was very proud of myself at the end of my three-month research.
The Best Garden Hose Water Filter
The AquaOx filter produces the cleanest and safest water out of the 20 water filters I tested.
The combination of quantum disinfection and activated carbon works perfectly against dirt, chlorine, chloramine, organic matter, chemicals, and harmful microorganisms. This garden hose filter is perfect for homesteaders or anyone who wants clean water coming from their hose. Your kids and pets can even drink it and play in it safely.
If you’re looking for a garden hose filter that makes your water safe and clean for your garden soil, plants, ponds, and pets, get yourself an AquaOx DF 7 today.
