Bluewater Cleone, Spirit or PRO: which do you choose

Reading time: about 13 minutes

Anyone who sees three purifiers side by side on Bluewater's site misses exactly the information that should decide the choice. There are percentages, there are prices, but nowhere does it say what the practical difference is between a device costing 1,495 euro and one costing 5,995 euro. And because the Kitchen Station 1 comes with the same equipment for all three, that choice is immediately the only thing that determines the final price.

This article puts the Cleone, the Spirit and the PRO side by side on the figures that matter: purification percentage, water recovery, flow rate, capacity, membrane lifespan, dimensions and price. PureAqua is an official Bluewater dealer, so we can supply and install all three. That's exactly why we're honest about which jump is worth the money and which isn't. A nice detail: Bluewater Netherlands is based in Leeuwarden and PureAqua in Hallum, both in Friesland.

What are the Cleone, Spirit and PRO?

Bluewater sells three purifiers for under the counter. All three use reverse osmosis, all three are developed in Sweden, and all three fit the same Kitchen Station 1. What sets them apart is the membrane and the size of the machine around it.

The technology underneath is the same one we use at PureAqua, which we explain step by step on our page about how reverse osmosis works: water is pushed under pressure through a membrane that blocks almost all dissolved substances. The finer that membrane and the smarter the flushing, the more stays behind and the less runs off. What Bluewater adds to that lies in the degree of refinement: the SuperiorOsmosis membrane filters, according to Bluewater, down to 0.0001 micrometre, which the brand describes as 5,000 times finer than a standard carbon filter.

That's immediately the first thing that stands out when you place the three datasheets side by side. The biggest numbers aren't for purification, but for capacity. The Cleone serves up to 40 people a day according to Bluewater, the Spirit up to 660 people a day and the PRO up to 1,400 people a day. That's a factor of 35 between entry level and top. For a family of four, that number says exactly how much headroom is left.

The three purifiers side by side

All figures below come from Bluewater's Dutch product pages, retrieved on 24 September 2026. Prices can change, so have them confirmed with us before you submit a request.

Two things stand out. First: the Spirit and the PRO are identical on purification. Anyone who chooses the PRO thinking the water will be cleaner is paying 2,300 euro for something they already had. Second: the Cleone is the only device with a storage tank. That makes it slower to produce but immediately available, and it's precisely why it lags so far behind on capacity.

Cleone: classic osmosis with a tank

The Cleone is the entry-level model and, at the same time, the model that's the right size for most kitchens. It produces up to 610 litres a day, stores that in a 12-litre tank and dispenses at 2.75 litres per minute. That tank is functional: you don't have to wait for the membrane to make a glass, because there's always stock ready.

Set that 610 litres a day against real consumption. A family of four that together drinks and cooks with 8 litres a day uses about 1.3 percent of the daily capacity. Even a household drawing 40 litres a day through the pure-water tap stays under 7 percent. For home use, the Cleone isn't tightly sized, then, it's generous.

The downside of the tank is space. At 215 by 380 by 416 millimetres plus the connections, there really needs to be room under your sink, and for a compact kitchen that's the first question you should ask. The second is pressure: an osmosis membrane needs enough line pressure to work, and we've laid out what happens if that falls short in the article about what water pressure a water filter needs.

The Cleone's membrane lasts 3 to 5 years, according to Bluewater. That's well above what's common for simple systems, where 2 years is typical, but shorter than the 4 to 6 years Bluewater states for the SuperiorOsmosis models. With an annual filter pack costing 135.95 euro, or 122.35 euro via subscription, that difference amounts to a few tens of euros a year in practice.

Spirit: SuperiorOsmosis in a compact format

The Spirit is the first model with SuperiorOsmosis, and that changes two things at once. Purification goes from up to 99 to up to 99.7 percent, and water recovery goes from 50 to up to 80 percent. Bluewater cites a self-cleaning membrane for this, which explains the longer 4-to-6-year lifespan.

The most striking thing about the Spirit isn't that 99.7 percent but the size. At 170 millimetres wide, it's the narrowest of the three, while handling up to 660 people a day. There's no storage tank, so the water is made the moment you dispense it. That saves space under the counter and it saves standing water, but it also means flow rate becomes decisive as soon as multiple taps demand water at the same time.

For anyone comparing this at home with what else is on the market, it helps to know where those percentages come from and why a membrane doesn't do everything on its own. Which filter stages sit before and after the membrane, and why that order matters, is covered in our article about which osmosis filter suits your kitchen.

Practically speaking, the Spirit is a device for a large household, an office kitchen or a small hospitality location. For a family of four using 8 litres a day, 660 people a day is roughly 165 times the need. That's not an argument against it, but it is one against buying it on capacity alone.

PRO: built for volume

The PRO is the heaviest of the three and serves up to 1,400 people a day. Bluewater positions it explicitly for commercial and intensive use, and that shows in the dimensions: 225 by 475 by 467 millimetres, well over a third more volume than the Spirit. On purification it adds nothing, since here too the claim is up to 99.7 percent.

What the PRO does add is flow rate. Where the Spirit copes fine in a household or a small office, the PRO is built for a kitchen where the tap opens and closes all day: a restaurant, a catering kitchen, a staff canteen. Bluewater cites 82 percent less waste for the PRO than with conventional reverse osmosis, and at that kind of volume, that figure really starts to count.

For home use, the PRO therefore remains an exception. At PureAqua we see that customers considering it almost always have a second reason that has nothing to do with drinking water: an ice machine, a dishwasher running on pure water, or a second kitchen. Without such a reason, the money is better spent on installation and finishing.

What does the jump from Cleone to Spirit cost?

Bought separately, the Spirit is 2,200 euro more expensive than the Cleone: 3,695 versus 1,495 euro. In the Kitchen Station 1 the difference is 2,050 euro, because there the station equipment is counted at roughly the same weight across all configurations: 2,154 euro on top for the Cleone and 2,004 euro for the Spirit and the PRO.

That flat markup is the most important insight in the whole price list. The tap, the dosing pump, the control box and the app are the same across all three. So whoever pays more is paying that entirely for the membrane and the machine around it, and nothing else. How that station is put together and what exactly is in the box, we've laid out in our review of the Kitchen Station 1.

Factor in the recurring costs too, since those are the same for all three. The Liquid Rock minerals cost 90.95 euro one-off or 81.86 euro via subscription, and the annual filter pack 135.95 euro one-off or 122.35 euro via subscription. How that dosed mineralisation compares to an ordinary mineral cartridge, with 6 milligrams of magnesium per litre constantly versus 0.46 milligrams that fades away, is covered in our piece about a water filter that adds minerals.

Water recovery: what does it actually deliver?

This is the figure where the difference between the Cleone and the SuperiorOsmosis models is clearest, and at the same time the figure that's most often explained wrongly. Water recovery is the portion of the feed water that comes out of the tap as pure water. The rest goes down the drain as reject water.

With conventional reverse osmosis, that recovery rate is around 25 percent, according to Bluewater. The Cleone is at 50 percent, the Spirit and the PRO at up to 80 percent. Work that out for a household dispensing 8 litres of pure water a day. With the Cleone, about 8 litres run off; with SuperiorOsmosis, only 2 litres. Over a year, that's a difference of more than 2,000 litres.

But what is 2,000 litres worth? The drinking water rate that Vewin cites for 2026 is 2.71 euro per cubic metre including taxes. That 2,000 litres therefore costs about 5.50 euro a year. Over ten years that's 55 euro, against a 2,050 euro premium for the station.

There is one situation where the figure does start to count financially: high usage. A kitchen dispensing 200 litres of pure water a day flushes away 200 litres at 50 percent recovery and just 50 litres at 80 percent. That's a difference of 54,750 litres a year, roughly 148 euro. That's still not a payback model, but it does make the choice different for professional use than for home use. If you want to see that sum worked out fully for your own situation, our explanation of which price level suits your reason can help.

What the certifications do and don't say

For all three purifiers, Bluewater cites the NSF/ANSI/CAN 372 certification. That standard concerns the lead content of the components a drinking water system is built from, and whether they can be sold as lead-free. It's a materials standard, not a performance standard.

That's something different from NSF/ANSI 58, the standard that describes how a reverse-osmosis system for drinking water is tested for removal. If you read somewhere that a device is NSF-certified, it's worth asking exactly which standard, because those two say something entirely different about what comes out of your tap.

The same sobriety applies to the percentages themselves. Up to 99 percent and up to 99.7 percent are manufacturer claims, measured under test conditions. They say something about the upper limit, not about what your device achieves every day at your line pressure and your water composition. What reverse osmosis does and doesn't solve in practice, and which drawbacks come with it, is covered in our overview of the drawbacks of reverse osmosis.

Which purifier suits your household?

If you reduce the three models to a single question, it's this: how much pure water flows through per day, and how much space do you have. The rest follows from that.

• 1 to 5 people at home: the Cleone. At normal use, 610 litres a day is more than 70 times the need, and the 12-litre tank means you never stand waiting.
• Large household, office kitchen or practice: the Spirit. Up to 660 people a day, 170 millimetres wide and no tank, so it fits where the Cleone no longer does.
• Hospitality or intensive commercial use: the PRO. Up to 1,400 people a day and built to run all day long.
• Little space under the counter: compare the widths. The Spirit, at 170 millimetres, is narrower than the Cleone at 215 millimetres, even though it's the heavier-duty device.
• Sustainability weighs heavily: SuperiorOsmosis, for those 2,000 litres less reject water a year. Not because of the cost.

What's never a good reason in any of these cases is the feeling that more expensive means cleaner. Between the Spirit and the PRO there's zero difference in purification percentage, and between the Cleone and the Spirit there's 0.7 percentage points. At PureAqua we see that customers who understand this clearly end up with the entry-level model in well over nine out of ten cases, and put the difference into the kitchen itself instead.

Or does a PureAqua tap suit you better?

This is the question a dealer usually skips, so we put it in deliberately. The cheapest route to reverse osmosis at Bluewater is 1,495 euro for the standalone Cleone, or 3,649 euro for the complete station. At PureAqua, a pure water tap with the filter system included starts at 465 euro, and the Zorgeloos Zuiver Water subscription costs 29 euro a month with 299 euro in start-up costs, including tap, system, filters for 12 months and installation by a specialist.

That's not a minor nuance but a factor of seven to eight in purchase price. For the vast majority of households, a PureAqua tap or the subscription is therefore the wiser choice: you get reverse osmosis, a design tap and a 45-euro mineral filter that brings back the taste, without the premium cabinet around it.

Bluewater makes sense if you want something we don't offer: dosed mineralisation with a pump instead of a cartridge, three taste profiles in an app, and a capacity that also holds up under professional use. That's a different tier for a different customer, not a better version of the same thing. We're an official Bluewater dealer, so we supply both and tell you honestly which way we'd lean.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

The choice between the Cleone, the Spirit and the PRO isn't about purity but about capacity and space. On purification, the Spirit and the PRO sit exactly level, and the Cleone differs by 0.7 percentage points. On capacity there's a factor of 35 between entry level and top, and that's where the 1,495, 3,695 and 5,995 euro go.

For home use, the Cleone is therefore, in almost every case, the right Bluewater. It produces up to 610 litres a day against an average family need of 8 litres, and the 12-litre tank even makes it more pleasant in daily use than a tankless device. The Spirit is the choice once space is tight or usage is genuinely high, the PRO once it's tapped professionally.

And the most honest message stands apart from the brand: for most households, a PureAqua pure water tap from 465 euro or the 29-euro-a-month subscription is the wiser route to reverse osmosis. If you still want the premium tier, we supply, advise on and install all three purifiers as an official Bluewater dealer. Drink different, but with your eyes open.