Camco EVO Premium Water Filter Cartridge 40620, 5 Micron

This is the replacement cartridge for Camco's EVO Premium water filter, so it drops into the EVO housing you already have on the rig. It's the working part of the system. The housing bolts to the bay wall and stays put, and this cartridge is what you swap when the flow slows down or the season turns over. One cartridge per box, sized for the standard EVO Premium canister that Camco sells as system 40631.

Filtration happens in two stages. Water first passes through a spun polypropylene shell with openings no greater than 5 microns, which catches sediment, silt, and rust flakes before they reach your tank or your glass. From there it runs through a packed bed of KDF and GAC, granulated activated carbon. That's the stage that goes after the stuff you can taste and smell. The carbon is a premium grade with a high microporosity, which is a fancy way of saying it has a lot of surface area for grabbing chlorine, VOCs, and the chemical off-notes that make campground water taste like a garden hose.

What does it actually knock down? Chlorine, bad taste, odors, sediment, and a meaningful chunk of heavy metals like lead. The KDF media also helps control bacteria growth inside the cartridge itself. Here's the honest version, though. A 5-micron sediment-and-carbon cartridge isn't a disinfection system. If you're filling from a questionable source, or you're worried about pathogens specifically, run a finer point-of-use filter or a UV unit downstream. For municipal and most campground spigots, this cartridge does exactly what most boaters and RVers want, which is cleaner, better-tasting water without the chlorine bite.

Camco rates the cartridge at roughly 8,000 gallons of life, and it flows at the maximum rate the fresh-water plumbing on a typical RV or boat can handle, so you're not standing at the tap waiting. In real terms, most weekend and seasonal users get a full season out of one. Heavy full-timers or anyone filling in silty, sediment-heavy water will change it sooner. When the flow noticeably drops or the taste creeps back, that's your cue.

Install is straightforward. Kill the water pressure, unthread the old cartridge from the EVO housing, drop this one in, and snug the housing back down. The packaging is printed in both English and French, and the labels mark inlet and outlet, so take a second to confirm flow direction before you pressurize. Once it's in, run a few gallons through and dump them before you drink. Fresh carbon can leave a faint taste on the first pull, and a quick flush clears it. Come winter, pull the cartridge or bypass the housing when you winterize. Water left sitting in the canister can freeze and crack the housing, and that's an easy thing to forget.

One more tip from experience. If you regularly fill in murky or sediment-heavy water, put a coarse inline sediment filter ahead of this cartridge. The pre-filter takes the big stuff so the EVO carbon lasts longer and keeps flowing. It's the cheapest way to stretch the life of the cartridge you actually care about.

This is a fresh-water part, so it works the same on a boat's dockside fill or an RV's city-water inlet. Anywhere you've got the EVO Premium housing and you want the water coming out of the tap to be cleaner than what went in. It's proudly made in the USA, which we like to see on a part that touches your drinking water. Keep a spare in the storage bay and you'll never get caught mid-trip with a filter that's given up. A cartridge on the shelf costs a few dollars, and it beats a weekend of cloudy, chlorinated water with no backup on hand.