Review: Mijia Under-Sink Water Purifier

Xiaomi had a sale a while back, so I picked up this water purifier for a little over 1000 yuan, with six months of interest-free installments thrown in.

Xiaomi actually sells a bunch of under-sink purifier versions, and I honestly don’t know which model I got — probably the 400G one, the single-filter version.

Order from the official site and Xiaomi will immediately arrange for a service tech to come install it based on your delivery address. If your delivery address and your installation address are different, good luck — you’ll have to call Xiaomi and ask them to change it. That was me.

The Xiaomi tech’s visit was pretty quick, but it does have a requirement for your sink: you absolutely need an extra hole to mount it. Usually the soap-dispenser hole on the sink can be modified to work.

The first time you turn on the purifier, you have to wait quite a while for it to finish filtering — roughly 15 minutes of running water. When the light on the faucet goes from orange to blue, it’s ready to use. Xiaomi says the treated water is safe to drink straight, and I tried it — seemed fine. I also compared it with unfiltered water (just for rinsing my mouth), and there was a clear weird taste…

Xiaomi says the ratio is one to one: 1L of water in, 1L of wastewater out. You can actually save the wastewater for watering plants and such… or just let it drain.

The purifier supports Wi-Fi and the Mi Home app, so you can see the filter wear level, the purification logs, and the detailed settings, and you can update the firmware too (no idea what that’s for). Still, it’s nice to look at.

All in all, I’d recommend every household buy a water purifier. I drank Japan’s filtered tap water while traveling there and it left a strong impression on me. After getting one, the safety and general happiness of daily life at home went up very noticeably, and this Xiaomi model with its standalone filter costs just over 1000 yuan, with yearly costs of only a few hundred — a real bargain.