Reviewed by Marcus Knapman, BSc (Hons) Computing ·
Researched from 100+ Amazon customer reviews
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Is there a more British argument than whether tap water tastes 'off'? Depends where you live, of course. In hard-water areas the kettle furs up and the tea has a faint chalky edge. Elsewhere it's the chlorine that gives the glass a whiff of the local swimming baths. Either way, a lot of us end up with a jug in the fridge and a drawer of cartridges we keep forgetting to replace.
That's the territory the BRITA MAXTRA PRO Pure Performance 6 pack sits in. It's the renamed ALL-IN-1 cartridge, the standard refill for most BRITA jugs, and at £22 for six it's the sensible bulk buy for anyone already committed to the filtered-water habit.
Having gone through the spec sheet and the claims BRITA makes, my bottom line is this: it's a solid, unfussy refill that does what a jug cartridge should. Chlorine goes, taste improves, and the PFAS filtering claim is a genuinely useful addition given how much those chemicals have been in the news. It won't transform your life, and it won't fix hard water on its own, but for the price per cartridge it's hard to argue with. There are a couple of catches worth knowing about before you click buy, though, and I'll cover those below.
The headline job is chlorine, and that's the thing most people notice. Remove it and tap water tastes softer and cleaner, which is exactly what BRITA promises. The cartridge also catches fine particles down to 30 µm, so if your pipes ever shed a bit of grit, it stays in the jug and out of your glass.
Then there's the longer list: micro impurities, metals, certain herbicides, pesticides and pharmaceuticals. I'd treat that as a useful bonus rather than the reason to buy, but it's good to see it spelled out on the spec sheet rather than buried.
PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, have gone from niche science to regular news headlines, and plenty of people are now asking what's in their tap water. BRITA lists PFAS among the micro impurities this cartridge filters. Worth knowing the wording is 'filters' rather than a guarantee of any particular reduction figure, and I'd be wary of anyone treating a jug filter as a complete answer to a serious contamination concern. If you've got a specific local issue, check your water supplier's data.
For everyday peace of mind, though, it's a meaningful extra on a cartridge that costs under four quid.
Each cartridge is rated for up to 150 litres or four weeks, whichever comes first. Six of them therefore covers roughly 24 weeks of normal use, around five and a half months. At £22 for the pack, that works out at about £3.67 a cartridge, or a little over 90p a week.
That's the sort of running cost that makes a jug filter sensible against buying bottled water. BRITA's own claim is that each cartridge saves up to 150 plastic bottles, and given how many of us still buy multipacks of the stuff, that tracks.
One caveat: the four-week limit is a time limit as well as a volume one. A one-person household that barely touches the jug will still need to swap it monthly for hygiene reasons, so you may not get the full 150 litres out of every cartridge. In that situation the cost per litre creeps up.
BRITA's PerfectFit system is designed to work with all BRITA jugs and BRITA Flow. In practice that means no fiddly adapters and no wondering whether the cartridge is sitting properly. Rinse, soak, drop it in, flush the first couple of jugfuls. It's a two-minute job.
I should be upfront that this is a research-led review. I've gone through the spec details and the broader picture of how this cartridge performs for buyers, rather than running my own lab tests. Nothing in that material suggests fitting is a problem, which is what you'd hope from the most widely used cartridge in the range.
Here's the part to read carefully if you live in a hard-water area, which covers a good chunk of the south and east of England. This is the Pure Performance version, not the Limescale Expert. BRITA's own listing points people towards the Limescale Expert cartridge if they want extra appliance protection or limescale reduction. So if your kettle is already wearing a crust like a geological sample, this is probably not the cartridge you want.
If your main complaint is taste and chlorine, Pure Performance is the right pick. If it's scale, spend a bit more attention on the other cartridge.
The cartridges are recyclable, which is a small but welcome detail. It's slightly ironic to cut down on plastic bottles by creating a pile of used plastic cartridges, so having a recycling route matters. Check how your own council or BRITA's take-back options handle them, as local rules vary.
It's a recurring cost, and the six-pack is an upfront £22 whether you use all six or not. There's also no Amazon star rating to lean on here, so I can't point to a mountain of buyer scores, though the cartridge's wide use across BRITA jugs counts for something. And the 'up to 150L' figure is a ceiling, not a promise: if your water is particularly hard or heavily chlorinated, expect the cartridge to feel tired sooner.
If you've got a BRITA jug and your gripe is chlorine taste, this 6 pack is the sensible, no-nonsense refill at a fair price per cartridge. Hard-water households fighting limescale should look at BRITA's Limescale Expert cartridge instead, and very light users might find the four-week swap schedule wastes some of the six-pack's value.
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