10 Best RV Water Filters 2024 in the US

If you have a recreational vehicle, you’ll need access to water for cooking, food preparation, showering, and using a toilet. Whether you collect water in a freshwater tank or hook up to a campground’s water supply, you’ll surely want to make sure that your drinking water doesn’t have any bacteria or chemical impurities. That’s where a good inline RV water filter comes in handy.

We’ll see that RV water filters can use one of several technologies to remove impurities from your water. They’ll also use special fixtures that attach securely to faucets and hoses but won’t corrode or contaminate the water in any way. And the best RV water filters will be made from sturdy materials so that they’ll last a long time. Besides regularly replacing the filter, they shouldn’t require any maintenance at all!

Let’s go through some of the items on the Best Reviews Guide list of the best RV water filters. After the initial expense of buying the complete system, you’ll see that you can replace the filters yourself easily and quickly!

We can distinguish between RV water filters based on their filtering technology:

• Two-stage filter: There are water filters that use activated carbon derived from coconut shells to remove impurities. The Clearsource Premium RV Water Filter System has a first stage that removes impurities larger than 5 microns, and a second stage that removes impurities larger than 0.2 microns. That’s enough to even block bacteria and microbial cysts from the water.

Clearsource Premium RV Water Filter System

• Three-stage filter: There are filters that use three layers of filtration. The Camco 40631 TastePure Evo Water Filter first uses a polypropylene fiber filter to block sediments that are 5 microns or more. It then has a granular activated carbon (= GAC) layer to trap particles and a KDF (= Kinetic degradation fluxion) copper-zinc layer that removes lime deposits, heavy metals, chlorine, and chloramines. The KDF layer will protect against bacterial growth in the filter if it goes unused for an extended period of time.

Camco 40631 TastePure Evo Water Filter

• Under-sink water filters: There are also water filters that you install under your sink. They’ll work in your permanent home, as well as in an RV. One example is the Frizzlife Under-Sink Water Filter System. It uses three separate filters to remove sediment, as well as chlorine, lead, heavy metals, VOCs, and more. But this will primarily be for drinking water and water for cooking.

Frizzlife Under-Sink Water Filter System

• Filtration versus water purification: Manufacturers warn that these are water filters, not water purifiers. They shouldn’t be used for water from rivers or lakes if the water quality is unknown. (There are personal survival water filters that are suitable for situations such as these, like the LifeStraw Personal Water Filter.)

• Good idea for car washing: You don’t have to own a recreational vehicle to benefit from an inline water filter. People who live in an area with hard water notice that there will be sediment deposits on their car after washing it. You can hook up the filter to a faucet and your garden hose, and you then use the water for washing your car. Filtering hard water will also prevent sediment buildup in appliances in your home, such as your washing machine or electric kettle.

Camco RV water filter attached to a garden hose

• May need other filters as well: Sometimes these RV water filters may not be adequate and will need another filter to work in tandem. For example, customers who live in areas where there is a lot of rust in the water had to also install a rust-inhibiting filter to work together with the Clearsource Premium RV Water Filter System.

• Installation directly onto the RV: One customer who bought the Beech Lane External RV Dual Water Filter System used the mountable bracket to attach the unit directly to the side of his RV. If this is a good option for you, this is a more sturdy construction than the inline filters of the competitors.

Beech Lane External RV Dual Water Filter System

Here are some features and pointers to consider when purchasing an RV water filter:

• How often to change the filter: Most of the offerings in the Best Reviews Guide list of the best RV water filters usually recommend changing the filter after the summer season, which is typically three months. Typically, an RV water filter will come with two filters, so you’ll have up to six months of use before having to reorder filters.

• Fixtures: The best RV water filters will have brass or nickel fixtures to attach to a faucet and a garden hose. These materials are superior to a plastic fixture, because metal fixtures has less of a chance of leaking.

• Hose protector: Many manufacturers of RV water filters also provide a hose protector, which will ensure that the hose doesn’t get a kink in it, reducing the force of the flow of water. The hose protector will also reduce strain on the connections between the filter and the hose. It will consist of a piece of tubing reinforced with metal fixtures on the ends and a rigid spring surrounding the tubing.

Camco TastePure RV Water Filter, with the Flexible Hose Protector (top) hooked up to the RV

Final Verdict

Overall, we see that an RV water filter is an inexpensive way to ensure that the water that you use when camping or boating is free of chemical residues and bacteria. By removing sediments, these filters can also extend the life of appliances in your RV that use water. Get an RV water filter, and enjoy safer and better-tasting water!