Try holding a canteen and filter, lined up so the water goes in, while pumping the filter and keeping the hose in the water. Close your eyes if you have too, its not a graded exam. Also it threads to my favorite Nalgene Canteen The thing drawing us all to this, over any other method of carrying water, is the MSR MiniWorks threads directly to the bottle to fill it. Colors are obvious and you decide what you like. This has become the Nalgene line of bottles. We don’t have the military supporting us any longer with water jugs or blivets dropped to us, so we need bottles that fill fast, last well to hard use and are fairly economical. We all stopped using military canteens many years ago. This is where this filter has become a favorite with the group I run with. What I have learned among other things is gear has to be compatible with the rest of the equipment you carry or its just added weight. I have a military background, and have over the years collected a significant amount of gear which I use to one degree or another. Why does that matter? It’s just a filter, right? It has everything to do with my other gear and how this filter works with it. I settled on, or decided with research the MSR MiniWorks was the right filter for me in my part of Az. Why do I use a specific filter in my field bags? This is an answer to a long asked question. The Quiet Survivalist Review of the MSR Miniworks EX water filter