Our Taap Review

Design and features

• Plumbed in
• Filters and machine on a subscription
• Hot and chilled water

If the Our Taap looks familiar, it’s because it used to be known as Virgin Pure. The system stands out, as the main options are to buy it on subscription, which includes the machine (with a full warranty, guaranteeing a fix or replacement if it goes wrong) and new filters every six months, posted directly to you.

There are a few options to choose from, all of which inclue the Home Water System II, the machine that I have on review: the Taap 12 costs £74.99 for installation and then £37.99 a month for a minimum of 12 months; Taap 24 has free installation and a month’s free subscription, and then it’s £35.99 a month for the remaining 23 months; and Taap Flex costs £99.99 for installation and then £39.99 a month on a flexible contract.

This all means that you need to by tied into paying monthly, so there is a commitment here. Breaking the figures down, if I take Taap 24 as the example, over two years it would cost £827.77.

There is an option to buy the Our Taap Home Water System II for £499.98 (£399.99 for the machine plus £99.99 for the installation). On top of this, you’d need to buy your own filters every six months. Over a two-year period, you’d need two standard filter replacements (£69.99 each, so £139.98) and a UV light and filter replacement (£119.99). Overall, that would set you back £759.99. That’s a bit cheaper, but you only get the year warranty, so if the machine breaks, you’d need to buy a new one.

If you bought the Milky Plant The Watery and ran it for two years, you’d need to pay for the machine (£499), plus replace the ACF filter a minimum of every six months (£29.99 three times) and replace the Ultra PR filter every 12 months, so you need an extra one (£69.99). That’s £658.96. 

However, the ACF filter may need replacing after three months, depending on the quality of your tap water. If that was the case, you’d need to buy seven new filters over the 12 month period, so the total cost would be £779.91. And, at this point, you’d be at the point where you’d need another Ultra PR filter, so overall cost isn’t as different as you’d think.

Given that the Our Taap also gives you all the support and servicing that you need, overall it’s not bad value at all. If I were to buy it, I’d go with the subscription to get the extra cover, automatic filter spares, plus free reinstallation if I were to move.

Price isn’t the only comparison, and there are differences in the way that the Our Taap and The Watery work. The Watery is a countertop machine, but it’s fed by a water tank that needs refilling, and then only a 1.4-litre jug of filtered water is ready at any one time. While that’s good enough for most of the time, and the jug is topped up every time some water is used, there are times when all of the water is used up, and I’ve had to wait for the jug to refill.

With the Our Taap, it’s plumbed in to your mains water, professionally installed. Provided you’ve got a water supply within 12m, and a power socket within 1.5m of where you want it, then the Our Taap can be installed, and the water hose can be drilled through the counter and hidden out of site.

Of course, this means that the Our Taap’s not ideal for renters, or if you’re not 100% sure that you definitely want it.

If the Our Taap sounds right, then the neat installation is brilliant, and the plumbed-in nature means there’s as much filtered water as you need, with no waiting times. 

It’s a nice-looking device, too. Mine’s the slightly boring black version, which at least blends into the background, but there are nine colour choices, including some nice pastel colours and a white option.

Fully installed, there’s a isolation tap near the main unit, so you can turn the water supply off should a fault develop.

This machine has two filters, accessed via the top. There’s the main water filter, which needs replacing every six months, and there’s a UV lamp that needs replacing every 12 months. As noted, replacements are posted to you automatically on a subscription.

Using the Our Taap is easy. The two blue buttons on the right dispense chilled water. The one on the top dispenses a cupful of water (200ml by default) with a single press, or you can press and hold to continuously dispense; the bottom button gives out a jug’s worth of cold water (1-litre by default). 

On the left, the bottom red button heats the system up to deliver boiling water if the Our Taap has gone into energy saving mode, which takes a minute or two. Once it’s lit, boiling water is ready.

Press and hold the top button to deliver boiling water at 1.3-litres a minute. After 60 cups’ worth have been delivered, the system needs to reheat. However, that’s enough to fill up a saucepan’s worth of boiling water, and the design of the Our Taap means even larger pans can fit under the spout.

A single-tap of this button, to dispense the cup-full of hot water, is disabled for safety reasons, but it can be turned on in the menus.

For safety, there’s a child lock button that turns off the one-button boiling water feature; instead, you need to hit hot and cold at the same time.

Finally, there’s a button in the middle that uses a combination of hot and cold water. One tap does the default 200ml and you can press and hold to keep going.

There’s a very basic menu system to adjust settings. The menu options aren’t obvious, but luckily, the underside of the top filter flap has a guide to them that shows what the choices are.

Even so, the options for water temperature are basic. For chilled water there’s a setting between -9 (coldest) and -1 (warmest), and for hot water the setting is between 9 (hottest) and 1 (coldest). These settings don’t align to specific temperatures, and they’re not designed to be adjusted on the fly.

Similary, the dispensing volume options are a bit limited. There’s one volume setting for cup-sized amounts, which is for cold, hot and mixed water. The default is 200ml and the maximum is 300ml.

With the jug setting, the maximum is the default of 1-litre, but you can reduce this, say to fill a specific bottle of water.

Again, volume sizes aren’t really designed to be adjusted based on the size of cup, jug or bottle in front of you.

With The Watery, I can select the desired temperature (in 5°C increments), and the desired level of water in 50ml steps between 50ml and 950ml. That’s a lot more flexible: I can add 150ml of 85°C water as the base for an Americano, or 250ml of boiling water for tea, or 300ml of room temperature water for a bottle. If flexibility is what you’re after, then the Our Taap is quite limited; if you’re not so worried about having variable temperatures, then the Our Taap is quicker and easier to use.

Performance

• Energy efficient
• Water is cool, not cold
• Near-boiling water

I measured the Our Taap over a typical day in the office, with two heat-ups required (one in the morning and one just around lunch). Dispensing two full mugs of boiling water in the morning, two in the afternoon, and enough hot water to fill a small pan, I measured power usage at 0.217kWh. That’s around 6p based on the current electricity cost per kWh (around 26p per kWh). That’s efficient, and cheaper than boiling a kttle, where you’d probably end up boiling more water than you need.

With hot water set to maximum, hot water in the mug ended up at 95°C. That’s a touch cooler than from a freshly-boiled kettle, but only slightly and this temperature is more than enough for anything you’d want to do.

I measured chilled water at 14°C, which isn’t super cold, but it does beat the tap water, which was 22°C on the day I tested. A problem with The Watery is that on a hot day its filtered water can be quite warm.

Our Taap’s filter is designed to remove up to 97% of chlorine, and up to 99% of microplastics and industrial waste, while up to 95% of bacteria and parasites are killed by the UV light. Calcium, magnesium and potassium are all retained, as they’re good for you.

Testing with a Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter, I got a reading of 234ppm, compared to the tap water, which was 258ppm. TDS readings aren’t a measure of quality, but how many solids of any type are in there.

With The Water, reverse osmosis removes a lot more, and then there’s a second filter that adds some minerals back, giving a TDS reading of around 50ppm. With the ZeroWater filter, I get a TDS reading of 0, which means everything has been removed from the water, good or bad.

A lot of how good a filter is comes down to taste. With the ZeroWater, the water is a little bland and empty, but very clean tasting; from The Watery, the water has a bit more flavour to it, with the metallic and chlorinated taste that my tap water normally has; the water from Our Taap tastes great, too, although I rate is slightly behind The Watery: the chlorinated and metallic elements are gone, but there’s plenty of goodness and the water is more like quality mineral water.

View Our Tapp offer here

Should you buy it?