Ad disclosure: This product was sent to us free of charge for the purpose of this review, and represents our honest opinion of the product.
Product: Aqua Optima lumi Filtered Water Chiller
Price: £129.99 RRP (£89.99 on Amazon at time of publishing)
Manufacturer’s Description: This compact and stylish filtered water chiller, sits on your worktop giving you chilled, filtered water at the touch of the button. Free up space in your fridge with this compact and stylish worktop appliance for any home, office, kitchen, utility room or workspace.
Rating: (4/5 stars) Review: With four of us at home all day every day at the moment, there are a lot of drinks being consumed each day – and all of us enjoy drinking cold water, especially when it has been filtered. We were offered the lumi Chiller to review to help keep us all hydrated, which is especially important right now. We do all usually have at least a couple of glasses of water a day, with the girls just mixing it up with the odd glass of squash, and James and I also enjoying the occasional fizzy drink or coffee. We usually stick to tap water, and during the warmer months we do have a compartment in our fridge door that chills water to dispense in the front of the door. But, neither of these options include filtration and we never have room in our fridge for a jug. Before we had the girls we used to have a filter jug in the fridge but these days it is full of milk bottles! It is nicer to drink filtered water, especially when it is nice and cold. The lumi Chiller from Aqua Optima comes well packaged and is really easy to set up. We washed & dried the upper tank, and then ran a few litres of water through the machine a couple of times to flush it out, before fitting the filter and turning it on. There are two indicator lights on the chiller; one for power and one to let you know that the filtered water has been chilled. The power cable is a little short but if you are keeping it on your kitchen worktop you don’t want too long of a cable, so it does depend on where you plan on keeping your chiller on whether this is an issue for you. Right now we have it in my office which is perfect for keeping me hydrated during the day when I’m at my desk and for filling up bedtime water, but I think when we get back into the homeschooling swing of things after the Easter break it will move downstairs to be quickly accessible by most of the family. Standing at just shy of 43cm tall, and with a width of 26.4cm and 34.6cm depth, this chiller does take up a fair bit of space, but it looks really smart and is easy for any member of the family to use. You simply place your glass on the (optional) drip tray, and press the large button on the front to pour nice fresh cold water into your glass. The girls love it and it’s definitely got them drinking more water than normal. The chiller makes a slight whirring noise while it cools the internal tank, but once it reaches the correct temperature this shuts off, and only comes on periodically to keep the water chilled. It takes around 35 minutes for the water to be chilled in the 0.8l internal tank. The water is chilled to around 12 degrees, which is certainly enough to make it nice & refreshing. The total capacity of the chilled is 8.2 litres so you don’t have to top it up constantly whenever you’ve had a couple of glasses. It also doesn’t take absolutely ages to filter through the 5 step evolve filter which is something that used to drive me totally bonkers with our old filter jug. Aqua Optima say their filters reduce “impurities such as limescale, chlorine, heavy metals, pesticides and herbicides” to improve the taste of your water. If you aren’t bothered about your filter water being chilled, it does dispense filtered water without power, and likewise if you just want chilled water you could use it without a filter installed. The included filter lasts around 30 days of use, and you can purchase replacement filters on Amazon for very reasonable prices, so it has a pretty low running cost. It’s ideal if you drink a lot of bottled water – why not switch to a reusable bottle and a chiller instead of buying bottled water from the shops and filling your fridge? It’s certainly going to work out a lot cheaper for the same amount of money. I’ve taken a look at other products available that are along the same lines and the lumi Chiller seems to be in the right sort of price range especially as many of the other similar products seem to either chill the water or filter, there aren’t many that do both. I am certainly enjoying having the lumi Chiller and though we probably wouldn’t have purchased this at this time we are definitely going to keep it and make use of it. We give the lumi Chiller 4 stars.
