Review on Stainless Steel Megahome Countertop Water Distiller With Glass Collection Tank by Steve Yang

4/20/2022 Here is an explanation of my use of the 5 start rating system:*****=I LOVE it****=I like it***=it's ok**=I didn't like it*=I HATED itSo in my book, either a 4 or 5 star rating is a "purchase with confidence" endorsement. If I knock 1 star off to make it a 4 star rating, that only means that there are small things that I would have liked to have seen, or can imagine being possible, but overall I still like the product. I may adjust this rating down if things change, certainly if it fails, but at this point I would rate this product 4-4 1/2 stars.4/20/22 DeliveredI received the distiller on 4/20/22 and distilled about 2 gallons of tap water, in two different batches. It takes about 4-5 hours to complete, but there is something oddly satisfying in hearing the drone of the fan motor and seeing those tiny drips add up over time, and ultimately pouring nearly a full gallon of crystal clear distilled water into a storage jug.In anticipation of receiving the distiller, I bought a TDS meter (Total Dissolved Solids) and although I don't know much about this kind of thing, nor expected our tap water to be anything near pristine, with the TDS of 237 parts per million, I guess I was surprised that my water, which went through a filter and tastes great, had the exact same TDS of 237ppm as the straight yucky tasting tap water. But in testing the post-distilled water, I was actually not expecting the distiller to remove absolutely EVERYTHING from the water, but it seems to have pretty much done that. The TDS result was a flat ZERO after distilling. See attached pictures.In running the distiller, I followed the directions of many reviewers here, which was to stop short of distilling every drop and as a result, burning the remaining solids into the stainless steel shell over the distiller. Instead, I put a timer on the distiller so that it would stop short of 5 hours, and that left about 3/4" of gunky, cloudy water in the bottom, but leaving that water buffer didn't stop some crust from nonetheless being formed. I went ahead and rinsed the reservoir and brushed it with a dish brush, but some scale remained. It was a tiny amount, so I made another batch of water. After the second batch, I rinsed it out again and added only a small amount of water and then sprinkled probably less than a teaspoon of the included (5oz) of anhydrous citric acid in the reservoir and left it to soak and forgot about it for probably several hours. But when I came back, without even scrubbing I could see that the scale had released. I used the brush again to also clean the sides, as a small amount of scale does end up on the upper parts of the reservoir as well, but after brushing and letting it set a couple of times, which is probably overkill, I rinsed it out and the distiller again looked like new.One little nit on this distiller is to repeat what I saw in a few other reviews, and learned myself to be true: 1) there is no power switch, and letting the unit bake an empty reservoir is probably not the best "automatic shutoff" for this unit. It should have the shutoff as a backup, and instead incorporate a gentler way of shutting off before all water has been evaporated out. A built in timer that can be adjusted would probably be best. It would be nice to see some kind of index marks on the inside of the reservoir to help set the timer. I might even use an engraver to create my own marks, simply numbered 1-10 or in 1" increments, I don't know. Then I can make my own chart of how much time it takes to distill that quantity of water, and set the timer accordingly. As it is, I set my timer using guidelines from other reviews and set it at 4 hours 55 minutes and was left with a small amount of water, which worked great. I don't know that I want to leave less than 1/2-1" of water, but I guess as long as there is even a small amount of water, the temperature should stay about 212 degrees F, no?Probably the most annoying issue that I experienced with this distiller is that the user is expected to line up the output spout of the distiller with the spout of the pitcher, right up against the distiller such that the drips of water that accumulate will fall within about a 1/4" radius area of the pitcher spout. I had the distiller set up on the counter, all lined up, but it takes a while before the first drop of distilled water accumulates and rolls out, so I kept coming back hoping to see that the process had started, and at some point before that first drop came, one of my kids or my wife were curious and came in and nudged the pitcher just the tiniest of bits, so by the time that I came back to see the first fruits of my maiden voyage in distillation, there was a puddle of about 1/4 cup of water all over the counter and dripping down the cabinets. Granted, mind you, this is not a difficult thing to prevent. You just need to eyeball it and make sure that you have the tip of the spout aimed at that tiny spout on the pitcher. But do know that failure to do that, or should a tiny bump to the pitcher occur, it likely will lead to up to a gallon of water dribbling down the outside of the pitcher and all over, if you don't check on it before the end of the process. Again, not a major issue, IF you make sure to set it up correctly. I would have liked to have seen something a little more deterministic in that transition from distiller to pitcher. And to be fair, it looks as if this method is common among the competition as well, although others seem to have a clear channel that the upper spout is received into.Going forward, I am going to attempt to keep scale from accumulating in the main reservoir, thus maintaining the distiller as best as possible and I then plan to update my review over time. I really find that updated reviews over time are of most use to me in trying to find the best quality products, and I hope to help others as well.Please know that I spent hours researching, and I agonized a great deal about which distiller to buy. I didn't want to spend any more than necessary, but ended up with one of the most expensive models. Ultimately, I decided that 1) this distiller had the highest number of 4 and 5 star reviews, at 94% of all reviews given to the Megahome (at the time of my purchase). I don't have enough years left in my life to spend fiddling with things to try to get them to work, or rebuying them because they failed prematurely. I want my stuff to just work, and to do so for many, many years. And 2) the cost will be amortized over time--hopefully the longest possible time--so I decided that the difference between a $100 distiller and a $300 distiller really diminishes over the years, and my experience has been that when we buy quality ($$$) we do end up forgetting the purchase price very quickly, but when you go cheap ($), you are reminded over and over of how "cheap" it was, by the flaws you have to deal with, and usually the early failure you experience before going back to buy the good one. They say you get what you pay for, but that is not always true. Sometimes you overpay and end up feeling ripped off. But what IS true is that you DON'T get what you DON'T pay for. You can always depend on that. Finally, 3) Megahome has each of the parts that might fail on this unit available for purchase so that you can service it yourself. If the fan goes out, it can be replaced. If the pitcher breaks, it can be replaced, etc. All without having to buy a whole new distiller.I will update this after I have a reasonable amount of water distilled through it. If it has not been updated by the time you read this, you can assume that I'm continuing to work toward an appropriate milestone. I'll probably shoot for 150 gallons as the next review update. I figure that, based on what another reviewer had calculated, with distilled water costing about $1/gallon in the store, and this making a gallon for about $0.30, that at about 150 gallons I will have saved about 1/3 of the cost of the distiller, so by the time that I ultimately get to 450-500 gallons I will have paid for this unit by the savings.6/20/22 Update:I’m approaching the end of my consumption of the first two gallons of distilled water, so thought I’d better get another going. So I filled my unit to the full line, then took a cue from a review here and added 1 tsp of the included citric acid powder to the water. As an aside, the reviewer alluded to the idea that by adding the citric acid to the water, you didn’t even have to go through a cleaning process afterwards. I thought that was pretty clever, but was a little worried that the citric acid might impart some negative attribute to the final product. So I texted my best buddy who happens to be a retired chemical engineer, and his reply was to the effect of, "No, that’s not a problem. In fact, it’s a great idea.” So he assured me that there would be no I’ll effects from it, although he did leave a small esparce hatch saying that he isn’t 110% sure that it wouldn’t, over a lot time, lead to corrosion of the distilling tubes. But he is a notoriously over cautious person. Try fact that he even called it a good idea tells me that it probably an awesome trick that will serve me for many years. I assure you that if I find issue with it in the future, I will make an update here. Until then, this is my standard operating procedure from now on!Ok, so water solution ready, I carefully aligned the pitcher spout to the distiller output, plugged the power into a timer set it to run for right about 5 hours, and it finished with almost a full 1 gallon jug of crystal clear life in a bottle. It could have probably run another 15 minutes. Those analog timers aren’t super precise anyway.Personally, we use the water only for my CPAP, our car batteries, and our home Jiffy clothing steamer, and don’t feel like it’s a good idea to drink distilled water regularly because of the effect of pulling minerals from your body due to the mineral imbalance between the water and your body.So, after this batch ran, there was about 3/4”-1” of yellowish water left in the bottom. All I did was pour it out and give it a quick spray rinse inside and dried it with a dish towel. It looks good as new inside, no scrubbing.9/2/2022 Update:I made another two batches of distilled water. I made a little discovery that I’m kind of proud of myself on. I got to thinking that if it worked ok to put the citric acid in with the water that I was distilling, because it just stays in the main vessel as the water vapor rises and is cooled to condense and collect in the pitcher, leaving all, including the citric acid behind, that the citric acid should have remained as well in the bottom of the vessel. So why bother dumping it out when I have a second batch to do? So I just added another gallon of water and distilled a second batch, without having to waste more citric acid! In fact, I found that 1/2 tsp, at least in the case of our water, worked just fine to keep the minerals from sticking to the main vessel. I might even try 1/4 tsp next time.Suffice it to say, that although we’ve not put a lot of water through this unit, it continues to work and look like new. I always make sure to get it turned off at the 5 hour mark so as not to let it run dry and depend on an overheat circuit to flip to shut it off. I continue to believe that is a very poor way to have it shut off. Heat is the killer of anything electrical or mechanical. I’m sure that the failures of units in other reviews, albeit usually after many years, could have been avoided by cutting the power before the main vessel has boiled away all the water, causing overheating and internal damage. Sadly, the wall timer that I was using seemed to have failed, and wouldn’t even turn on this time, so I had to set an alarm and come back and check on it. The timer started OK, but ran only a few minutes and the distiller shut off. I was at least happy to know that it wasn’t anything internal to the distiller. I suspect that there is just too much current going through the timer. It probably was a timer that was engineered more for lamps, rather than high current appliances like a distiller.I will update here later, although I may just save my updates for when I have something new to say. So if you see no updates after the above date, it means either that something terrible has happened to me, or we just have nothing but good things going on with the distiller.Update 12/27/2022: In the last few months I neglected to document in real-time that I distilled another gallon on two more occasions. I am as satisfied with my purchase now as I was after the first gallon. The most recent two gallons were pristine and the cleanup simple. I get a great sense of peace knowing that I don’t have to depend on the store to have my distilled water. I make it when I need it. I always have a gallon jug for my current use, and two gallons in waiting. I will probably not try to keep updating with each gallon distilled—or maybe I will—but I will certainly try to at least get a LB update on here every year. We’ll see how long this unit lasts. At this point, I believe that I have put through 5 gallons of water in 8 months. I don’t imagine that I am the best "torture test” user of this distiller, but I hope to provide a long range log of my experience with it. At this point, if I had to buy another, maybe as a gift, I wouldn’t even look at others, based on my experience. I would just buy this one again.