One gallon's a LOT of water, it weighs over 8 lbs. So the fact this thing is really light makes a big difference to me. It's light but tough, I hiked a real dry stretch with next water over 11 miles, I had2 one liter water bottles on me and this thing half full in my pack (with unfiltered spring water, I have the Mini, and when I ran out of water I filled the one liter bottles via the Mini) I was a little concerned about it sitting on the very top of my pack with everything else under and it sloshing around all day while I hiked, I was afraid if it leaked and got my sleeping bag wet (my bag was in a trash bag, which was with my clothes in a pack liner bag so it would've been okay anyway) But the Sawyer bag didn't leak at all. You do have to keep track of bottle caps though when you get water, the cap on the little end that goes on the Mini (or Squeeze) is the exact size of a bottle cap for a Smart one liter bottle (but the Smart caps are sort of clearn the Sawyer cap is white) Anyway, it's also perfect for when you reach a shelter, and go to the spring, one person will have plenty of water for the night and for breakfast and if you fill your other bottles while you're down at the spring, next morning you won't have to worry about going after water before you set off. You could do all this too if you had the Platypus gravity thing, but you know that connection on the Platy that sort of looks "up"? I mean where the hose hooks onto the Platy bag....I'd worry about that sitting inside my pack, with this Sawyer bladder you don't have that so it's not a concern. To fill my bottles, I put the gallon bag on it's big cap side take of the little cap, screw on my Mini, put the little black hose that comes with the Mini onto the Mini, put my Smart bottle between my feet turn over the bag and put the black hose inside the Smart bottle and gently squeeze until my bottle's full, do the other one, and you've still got over a liter left for a Mountain House and a cup of coffee

Saved me from making a trip to the river everytime someone was thirsty. Just brought 2 gallons back at a time. Used it as a dirty water bag to make clean water for drinking and showers in the middle of nowhere. Held up great. My only gripe was that it doesn't hang properly. So if you hang it from the handle then water doesn't get to the outlet. I tied a rope around the larger opening rim and hung it that way for a gravity feed filter. It would be "nicer" if the handle was where the big lid is and if the opening was more like some other bags i've seen that clamp shut or whatever. The river was shallow so with a solid round lid it's a bit more difficult to "fill". But still great item.

6 month update: I was using the gallon bag for a bit when I decided I wanted to try the 2 gallon bag since it would be less fill ups per use and more convenient for me. I use it daily as a cheap and portable home gravity system coupled with the Katydyn carbon filter. My biggest recommendation is to just use the handle. You may not be able to fill the bag all the way up but it will more than likely extend the service life of the bag. The 2 gallon bag specifically sadly could not handle the weight of the bag filled with water and after about 6 months developed a very small hole near the plastic collar that is attached to the wide mouth area. I tried another reviewer's suggestion of using rope around the wide mouth to help keep it vertical and get the most of the bag filled with water. It still developed the small hole sadly. I tried using outdoor glue as a basic fix but it sadly did not hold. To conclude: use the handle to keep weight/wear off the hard plastic areas and probably stick to the 1 gallon bag as that is still going strong for me. The thickness of the bags seems about the same between the two so the 1 gallon should suffer less stress. You will probably have to fill up multiple times though if you have a larger family or like to fill up 1 gallon jugs as I do.

Yaaaaaaassss. They finally put out a giant gallon bag for a decent price. Probably not going to use it to store water since the design is kind of bad for it but you can process a lot of water in one go. The platypus replacement tube fits perfect on the smaller end to turn my sawyer mini into a gravity filter. Works great! Huge mouth at the other end lets me fill it up really quickly and dump hotel ice into it to make filtered cold water for my vacuum bottle. Doesn't hang straight up and down or at an angle that forces the water to the small opening due to the design but I saw a picture of someone just tying some rope to the handle that lets you kind of hang it proper with a little finagling. I've mostly used it on flat surfaces and it works great.

I cannot express how excited I was when I found this product on Amazon! I had previously bought the Sawyer Products PointOne Squeeze Water Filter System for a trip to the Boundary Waters, and this product is the perfect compliment to that system. On our previous trip to the BWCA, before I bought this item, filling our water bottles was quite tedious. We had to take the canoe out on the lake, carefully fill up the small-mouthed quart bag that came with that system, and manually squeeze the water through the filter into our water bottles. It doesn't sound too bad until you realize we had to do this 3-4 times per day, for four people. It got really old, really fast. However, on a recent two-man trip with this 1-Gallon Reservoir, we filled it up once a day while out canoeing or fishing, then brought it into camp to set up a gravity filter system. It was great! The wide-mouth on the reservoir makes it really easy to fill. When hanging it, I recommend tying your rope around the mouth instead of the handle because it holds the bag at a better angle. If you have a BWCA trip upcoming, I completely recommend this reservoir with any Sawyer Water Filter System, you won't be disappointed!

I bought a replacement for my filter system before Sawyer recommended an alternative. These are super easy to use though a d I really like the larger size when I'm filtering for a couple days at a time