As someone who has designed their life around hiking, I drink a lot of water. But I don’t particularly like carrying it.Water is heavy, over 2 pounds per liter, and its weight adds up quickly. I used to carry a day’s worth on my hikes — sometimes in a bladder, sometimes in bottles, but it was heavy all the same. I consider myself frugal, but as Wirecutter’s outdoor writer, I’m also always in search of a better way, and I know that sometimes that means buying something. If a purchase would allow me to be a little more efficient or redirect my attention from faffing over my gear to smelling the roses or covering trail miles, I am likely to pay up.Thankfully, the water-management problem has a solution that’s not just for outdoor enthusiasts. For any hike longer than an hour, I bring the Sawyer Squeeze to collect and filter water as I go. I found the filter, which Sawyer sells with a 1-liter bottle, when reading about people who were walking thousands of miles in a year across the country. Most of them were using this filter. They were on to something: Turns out, this filter — which weighs 3.5 ounces once wet — is the slightly larger and faster-filtering version of our pick for personal water filters in our guide to the best gear for your go bag.