Intelligencer - A Shower-Filter Face-Off

If you’re like me and on a certain beauty-centric side of the internet, you’ve probably gotten Instagram ads or sponsored TikToks for the Jolie shower filter. The sleek-looking showerhead claims to filter chlorine and heavy metals from your water, leaving you with hydrated skin and silky-smooth hair. And though Jolie has certainly been a leader in this space since the company was founded in 2021, it has never been without competitors. Hello Klean launched its shower filter in the U.K. in 2019. Canopy, maker of our favorite humidifier, released a “dermatologist-approved” shower water filter last August. So it caught my attention when Jolie’s CEO called out hair-care brand Act+Acre for making a copycat showerhead filter. He accused the brand of lazily etching its name onto an already existing showerhead instead of “building the best filtering shower in the world.”

I love a messy feud as much as the next person, but the beauty writer in me questioned whether the copycat claim was legit. I started digging.

Both showerhead filters (and the options from Hello Klean and Canopy, for what it’s worth) claim to do the same thing: soften shower water by removing chlorine, heavy metals, and other contaminants. The beauty benefits of showering with softer water range from silkier hair and less scalp buildup to clearer skin and less irritation for skin conditions like eczema. Act+Acre, being a hair-care brand, talks more about the hair-and-scalp front rather than the skin benefits, but both filters use KDF 55 and calcium sulfite. This is pretty standard for fancy DTC shower filters and the less sexy Amazon options out there. Jolie does claim it has a “proprietary blend” of those ingredients that beats out the rest, and Act+Acre uses a coconut-activated carbon to filter out odors.

I’ve dealt with an itchy scalp and eczema-prone skin most of my life, so I was hoping one of these filters could help. Neither brand says exactly how long it should take to reap hair and skin benefits, but I thought a week of daily showering for each option would be sufficient. I kept my shower routine pared down (shampoo, conditioner, and bodywash) for the two weeks so as to not influence the results.

I started with Jolie, in part because it came with a cute, yet substantial, little wrench and plumber’s tape to help with installation — though I did employ my boyfriend to actually install it. It was really as easy as unscrewing our old showerhead, applying a little bit of tape, twisting on the Jolie, and securing it with the wrench so water wouldn’t seep out of the sides (five minutes total).

After a week of showering underneath Jolie’s filtered water, I didn’t notice any big shifts in my hair or skin. My hair did seem a touch softer and shinier, as if I had used a bit of hair oil post-shower. And while I have no way to measure this, there seemed to be a little less hair wadded up at my drain.

I then had my boyfriend swap in the Act+Acre showerhead, which is smaller and significantly lighter than the Jolie. It’s worth noting too that Act+Acre’s showerhead only comes in black, whereas Jolie’s is available in five colors. Again, installation took no more than five minutes.

My week with the Act+Acre was pretty on par with my week with the Jolie, though I did notice a little more water pressure under the Act+Acre. It seemed as though that’s because there were more jets on the Act+Acre. (I did notice that there were holes on the Jolie that were made to look like jets but didn’t actually spout out water.) Other than the extra water pressure, everything was pretty much the same. I still had an itchy scalp and dry skin, but my hair did feel silky like the week before. While soft locks were a plus, this still wasn’t the all-in-one solution for my skin and hair problems I’d hoped for.

Unsatisfied with the mediocre results of both showerheads, I had to take this testing a step further. I wanted to understand what exactly each of these showerheads was filtering out of my New York City tap (especially given that the city’s notoriously tasty tap water is known for having low levels of calcium). I ordered a water-testing kit off Amazon that tests water hardness and chlorine levels. I collected water samples without a water filter, with the Jolie, and with the Act+Acre. I took the tiny test strips and dipped them into each glass of water, then shook them dry before reading the results.

The unfiltered-water test strip showed that my unfiltered water landed in the “slightly hard” range with around 100 ppm of magnesium, calcium, and carbonate. The test strips using the water filters looked nearly identical to that of the unfiltered water’s. The only slight differences I could spot between the unfiltered and filtered water were in the concentration of sulfates. The unfiltered-water strip showed chlorine levels around one to three ppm and sulfate levels around 200 to 400 ppm. The filtered-water strips seemed to have chlorine levels at about half that of the unfiltered water’s, coming in at 0.5 to one ppm, and sulfates dropped to around zero to 200 ppm. But they were both still “slightly hard.”

Of course, my at-home test strips aren’t third-party testing in a lab facility, but between that and my anecdotal experience, I’m not completely sold on either of these showerheads. I could have gotten the same results with a good hair mask — and those are far less expensive than either of these filters. (The initial cost doesn’t factor in the quarterly cost of replacement filters, which comes to over $30 for both brands.)

I’d waded into the showerhead mire hoping I’d unearth a magic bullet for my scalp and skin issues — and maybe pick a side in the drama. Turns out the Jolie might not be so different from the Act+Acre. And neither of them are much different than run-of-the-mill showerheads. They may just have a better marketing team. If I absolutely had to pick between the two, I would go with the Jolie. I’m not quite sure if it lives up to being the “best filtering shower in the world,” but it seems to be made out of more substantial materials and is a sleeker showerhead overall, which is pretty much what you’re paying for.

Are there other products that you want our intrepid team of beauty writers to test, or trends that you want them to fact-check? Send us an email at strategistbeautybrief@nymag.com with your thoughts and questions.