***Scroll down to the end of this report to download the .pdf version that you can print out***All water ionizer review websites are fake. So, if you’re looking to compare water ionizers, keep in mind that any water ionizer review website is owned and operated by an existing US water ionizer distributor, like Life Ionizers or Tyent USA. The information you receive from these sites is heavily biased toward selling you their products. Water for Life USA does not participate in such dishonest marketing practices. Instead, we offer you this guide to help you make an informed decision about purchasing a water ionizer.
To compare water ionizers, there are several important factors to keep in mind that make the difference between a quality water ionizer and one that is potentially dangerous.
1) Do they assemble parts or do they manufacture their own parts?
If a product becomes popular, like water ionizers did back in 2007-08, you’ll see many “pop-up” manufacturers looking to make a quick profit. What they do is they buy an outdated design from the research and development department of an existing water ionizer manufacturer. Then they shop around for parts manufacturers and usually choose the cheapest bid for making the run of parts that they need. Once they get the parts, they assemble those parts and slap their name on it as the manufacturer. Finally, they market and sell their water ionizers.
As you can imagine, the assembling method for manufacturing water ionizers is very problematic. First, they’re using an outdated design so their product won’t be the latest technology. Second, they are buying cheap parts, usually from China, that won’t last as long. Third, they are only buying enough parts to cover assembling their water ionizers and selling them, usually not for covering warranty. So, if you have a problem a few years down the road, they will be unlikely to help you or will charge you a small fortune to fix your water ionizer!
We’ve watched a couple dozen of these assemblers die during the recent economic recession. Those who bought water ionizers from those assemblers are out of luck, which means they wasted their money.
A real water ionizer manufacturer, like EOS, has their own research and product development division that creates the designs for their water ionizers. This ensures the lastest technology. Additionally, EOS manufactures the parts for their own designs on site, which is cheaper for them because there isn’t any third party mark-up or shipping costs involved. The end result is you get a water ionizer with the lastest technology and the highest possible quality.
2) Are they certified? Even assemblers have to be certified.
If they’re not, you could be purchasing a dangerous water ionizer. First, their manufacturing plant, or the plants that they are purchasing from, have to be ISO 9001 certified. This ensures safety and quality. Also, countries like South Korea, where EOS is based, require that any manufactured medical device receive approval from their Food and Drug Department before it is exported.
Most assemblers ignore this requirement because it is stringent. For example, a KFDA approval from South Korea requires that all parts are medical grade and all tubing is food-grade. These are expensive requirements to meet. EOS has KFDA approval, so EOS water ionizers are certified medical devices. Because of this, EOS Water Ionizers are also listed with the US FDA as medical devices, meaning your insurance may cover their purchase. As you “compare water ionizers”, keep in mind that it is ILLEGAL for a water ionizer that is approved as a medical device in one country to be sold here in the US without getting listed with the FDA!
Other certifications that are very important are NRTL or UL certification. Both of these ensure that the electrical power systems in the water ionizer are safe and compatible with existing power systems. Another certification that a manufacturer has to have to sell in Canada is CSA.
You’d be surprised how many water ionizers distributors in the US are selling water ionizers illegally! The most common problem is not getting their water ionizers listed with the FDA. Second, they’re getting UL or NRTL certification. So, do your homework before you buy anything!
EOS water ionizers are CSA approved, have NRTL certification, are manufactured in a ISO 9001 factory, are KFDA approved, and they are listed with the US FDA. So, EOS water ionizers are proven safe and effective.
Hopefully now you’ve decided to go with a manufacturer that makes their own parts and has all the proper certifications. But that still doesn’t mean that they use the best plates.The first water ionizers used plates that were thin and flat. The problem that these first plates had were hot spots. The plates would literally wear down and disintegrate right where the electrode connected to it. Also, the electrical current would hang around the edges of the plate, so you often saw wearing along the edges. This was a big problem because metal was getting into people’s drinking water!
To solve that problem, newer generation water ionizer plates became thicker and started to include mesh. You can find mesh in many of the water ionizers on the market today like Life Ionizers and Tyent USA. Mesh is like a fish net of wires that covers the platinum and titanium plate. Mesh distributes the electrical current evenly across the plate to avoid hot spots. This is a good solution for hot spots, but the mesh creates ridges on the plates that trap minerals. So, if you have source water that is hard, meaning full of magnesium and calcium scale, that scale will deposit along the ridges of the mesh and severely reduce the ionization over time.
Customers that have purchased water ionizers with mesh plates have to also purchase cleaning filters every few months to remove the build up of minerals in the mesh. Of course, the customer has to pay for these cleaning cartridges, usually $50 or more! Some warranties even require that their customers purchase these cleaning filters or the warranty will be voided! So, read the fine print before you purchase.
EOS water ionizers use the highest quality plates made by the Hee Sung metal company of Japan, the top rated company for making platinum and titanium plates. EOS also uses patented slotted-plate technology that no other company can use.
The patented EOS slotted plate does not use mesh. Instead, it uses strategically placed slots to distribute the electrical current evenly. This ensures that the entire plate is being utilized during ionization. That means no hotspots. The slots also don’t create ridges on the plates that trap minerals. This ensures strong ionization throughout the lifespan of your water ionizer with no need to purchase extra cleaning filters.
EOS water ionizers are incredibly precise at ionizing the water. You’ll get more antioxidants, too!
Water filtration is another area you’ll want to pay close attention to when you compare water ionizers. Some water ionizers, even the expensive ones, use really basic carbon filters that don’t filter out very many contaminants. The most expensive water ionizer made by Enagic uses a tiny, single stage activated carbon filter. Other filters being used only offer a couple stages, usually felt and activated carbon.The best filtration systems use multistage filters. In these systems, each stage of the filter exists to target an existing contaminant in the water supply. For example, dirt and other large contaminants are cleaned up by the sediment filter. Chlorine and other basic contaminants are removed with activated carbon. More difficult contaminants, like fluoride and heavy metals, are removed targeted with ceramic filters and ion exchange resin. Really good filtration systems repeat these stages to ensure your water is absolutely clean before it is ionized!
EOS water ionizers use a 16 stage dual filter system that includes sediment, activated carbon, anti-bacterial felt, ceramic, and ion exchange resin. The end result is 99.99% purification of your source water!
You should also pay close attention to replacement filter price. Any water ionizer distributor, like Enagic, that uses multi-level marketing, will sell their filters for way more than they should. Enagic sells their tiny filter for $100! Other distributors, like Life Ionizers and Tyent USA, sell their replacement filter set for about $140. EOS water ionizers replacement filters are only $119 for a set!
There are only two types of electrical systems being used in water ionizers today, but if you pick the wrong one, it could really cost you! The very first generation water ionizers used transformers to convert the electrical current and send it to the plates. Transformers had major draw backs. One of them being that the size of a transformer is large and there isn’t much space inside a water ionizer, so it made it difficult from a design perspective.The second major draw back to a transformer is that is wastes electricity in the form of heat. The sticker on a water ionizer with a transformer might declare a high wattage making you think that it’s a powerful water ionizer. But if you consider that as much as 60% of that wattage is wasted as heat and never reaches the plates, that large number doesn’t seem so impressive!
Heat inside a water ionizer, or any other appliance, isn’t good, either. Too much heat leads to overheating and overheating will damage components over time, reducing the lifespan of that appliance. Practically speaking, overheating severely reduces the amount of time you can use your water ionizer. A water ionizer with a transformer may only be able to run a few minutes before it needs to shut off and cool down. Some cheaper and older water ionizers don’t have any mechanism to automatically shut down, either. So, if you’re not careful, you just might burn out your water ionizer filling up that five gallon water bottle.
The best water ionizers on the market today use SMPS electrical systems, which stands for switched mode power supply. Switched mode power supply systems are energy efficient, so the energy that they draw in wattage is converted and sent to the plates without much waste. Because of this, water ionizers using SMPS can be run for long periods of time. EOS water ionizers can fill up a five gallon water bottle without needing to cool down!
The other major benefit to SMPS is that it runs cool and won’t damage the other components inside your water ionizer. This will greatly increase its lifespan!
The last important benefit of SMPS is that the electrical current produced is much cleaner than that of a transformer. Dirty electrical currents have lots of breaks in the flow that takes a toll on the components using that current. Water ionization is a very precise process and dirty electrical currents don’t produce great results. Conversely, a clean electrical current from a SMPS electrical system yields a very precise ionization, enabling you to get the pH and ORP levels that you want with a wide variety of water types.
When water ionizers first hit the market, they came with a one year parts and labor warranty standard and, in most Asian countries, that’s still what you get! But, American consumers are much more demanding and that has forced water ionizer manufacturers to step up their coverage.What we’ve found is most water ionizer manufacturers will cover parts for a period of three years. That’s it! But when you click around all of the water ionizer distributors websites in the US, nobody is offering a three year warranty. Most are offering a “lifetime” warranty. Why such the discrepancy?
US water ionizer distributors felt compelled to provide more warranty than their manufacturer would offer. The only way they can make this happen is by agreeing to pay for the parts THEMSELVES. So, when you see a “lifetime” warranty, you’re seeing a water ionizer distributor that has agreed to pay for parts for every year beyond the third year. This is very problematic.
The first problem with this “lifetime” warranty is the assumption that parts will even be available after the third year. Manufacturers are constantly upgrading their product line and older models don’t receive as much attention. If you bought a water ionizer from an assembler, we can virtually guarantee that they didn’t purchase enough parts to cover warranty beyond the third year. Yet, US water ionizer distributors still offer an extended warranty. So, what’s going to happen is that US water ionizer distributors won’t be able to honor the warranty they sold their customer on. They will have to change the customer’s water ionizer to a different model.
If the assembler manufacturer does have parts beyond the third year, those parts will be very expensive because of the simple economic principle of supply and demand. That assembler will have to purchase smaller runs of parts at higher costs and pass that cost on to the US water ionizer distributor, who has agreed to eat that cost due to their extended warranty. This is a bad formula for running a successful business. Companies like Tyent USA and Life Ionizers have only been distributing water ionizers for a few years, so they haven’t been hit with this huge financial burden yet. But we guarantee that the water ionizers they sold at the beginning of their business are starting to break and the phone is ringing and their costs are mounting…
Truth is, a lifetime warranty is insane and what we’ve seen is that some of those distributors that offer it are back pedaling by amending their warranty. They want to reduce warranty claims that they have to fully cover so they’ve added amendments to their warranties. One amendment requires the customer to have their water ionizer cleaned by the company every year at the customer’s expense or their warranty is voided! Another amendment restricts the amount of water a customer can process with their water ionizer. If the customers goes beyond that restriction, their warranty is voided! Other amendments charge high labor costs for repairing items that are not fully covered by the warranty.
The bottom line is you should read every line of a warranty before purchasing and, as a general rule, don’t buy a water ionizer from any company offering a lifetime warranty.
Water for Life USA offers a comprehensive, unrestricted 5 years parts, labor and shipping warranty. This means you can use your EOS water ionizer as much as you want and, if anything happens to it in 5 years, Water for Life USA will send you a shipping label and cover all costs involved in replacing parts and shipping it back to you. Furthermore, since EOS is a manufacturer and not an assembler, getting parts beyond the 5 year warranty coverage is inexpensive.
When you compare water ionizers, price might be the biggest factor in your consideration. The water ionizer market place is full of a huge contradiction in prices points. Most of that has to do with companies that are MLM (network marketing) like Enagic, that have to pay several levels of affiliate commissions on each of their sales. Affiliate marketing bumps up the price of the Enagic SD501 seven plate water ionizer to $3980!In comparison, Life Ionizers sells their seven plate model for $1997. Tyent USA doesn’t have a 7 plate model anymore but sells their 9 plate model for $2397. Water for Life USA, that distributes EOS water ionizers, sells their 7 plate Genesis Platinum for $1895 and their 9 plate Genesis Platinum 9 Turbo for $2195.
When you consider that EOS water ionizers have the highest quality plates, the best filtration system, switched mode power supply, and all the proper certifications, we think they are the best value to the American consumer.
