I live in an area where the water is usually very good direct from the tap, but I found that during some longterm renovations to the water system in my area, the water seemed to taste more chemically and sometimes even had a murky tinge to it. If I have water in a glass, and it's not completely clear then I'm not drinking it and neither are my kids!

I went out and bought this Aqua Optima Water Filter jug in order to solve my water quality problem. I didn't want to have to keep lugging in bottles of bought bottled water (I have enough to do without carrying litres around with me!) so thought the jug would be an easy way to have clean cool water on hand.

The jug looks like a normal water jug really aside from the fact it has a holder into which fits a filtration cartridge. The catridge is designed to clean the water added to the jug by removing any dirt particles, chlorine and metal traces, and anything else that shouldn't be there!

Each cartridge lasts 60 days of constant use but incase you forget when you last put one in, there is an indicator on the jug which lets you know when you need to replace the cartridge with a new one.

The jug holds 2.5 litres of water, easily fits into my fridge door, and is very easy to use. After a while it became second nature to only drink water coming from the jug rather than the tap, plus there was the added bonus of the water always being cool from the fridge.

The water tasted very clean once filtered in the jug, much like normal bottled mineral water, and I could taste no chemicals in the water, just cool, clean crispness.

I paid £18.99 for my water filter jug and it's single filter, and used it for a few months until my water got back to normal - the actual colour of the tap water returned to normal within a few weeks, but I continued to use the water filter jug until my cartridge ran out, just in case.

If I ever have water problems again I will be sure to get this helpful and handy jug back out of my cupboard and back into regular use.