Sküma Water
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Good Idea, Poor Long-Term Performance
The bottom line is that my unit has completely died after just under 1 year of daily usage. I would send it back for a new unit, but to be honest, I've had so many issues since literally day 1, I have no confidence in the product as-is. There needs to be a new revision to address a number of issues. I know for a fact, this is not an isolated case, based on other first hand feedback and reading other reviews. When it works, I like it. The water tastes great. The unit looks good, and fits into a modern kitchen. I think there could be some improvements made to the general usability, such as a handle for the large tank, but that's it. The customer support was quite responsive, but what I care most about is the product itself. My ownership history: April '24, Day 1: internal leak, due to o-ring installation issue. I had to open the unit myself, disassemble some of the pipe work, correctly seat the o-ring, and reassemble. A few months later I started to have some issues with the electronics. The controls were unresponsive, and I had to leave it turned off over night. I contacted customer support, and they opted to send out a new unit. They did not want my old unit back. My old unit actually started working again, so I gifted the brand new unit to my friend. Not long after that, my friend reported he was having electronics issues on that new unit, where the controls/display were flashing randomly and water was dispensing on its own. I believe eventually it started behaving. For a number of months, I had no issues. I did have some niggles in regards to the firmware, specifically with how it would not reset the counter for how much water you dispensed between cycles. Sometimes it would dispense way too much, and sometimes way too little. I narrowed it down to either when the waste or tap water tanks were empty/full, or if you interrupted dispensing by pressing the button again. Next issue, was an internal leak when I was moving the unit around my kitchen. Long story short, the internal tank which stores filtered water does not contain an o-ring for it's lid, despite it having provisions to accommodate one. This is a BIG issue for me. The chance that water can mix with mains power internally, simply due to a lack of an o-ring is frankly reckless. One of the magnets which is used to trip the Hall-effect sensor (I assume) to tell the unit the waste water tank is present, rusted away and fell off the bottom of the tank. I had to super glue it back on. Final issue, in late March/early April 2025, the unit starting having erratic electronics issues, the lights blinking randomly, and it also dispensing scalding hot water on it's own. It finally gave up the ghost when I could smell burning, and the unit does not power up now. These are more BIG safety concerns for me. In summary: Skuma have potential to make a great product, but they really need to make improvements to the design to drastically improve its robustness and safety.