Good advice, except for the 6-stage suggestion. The 6th stage in this case is another reverse osmosis membrane. That will decrease water purity, not increase. Please try to give sound advice.
The base 4-stages are a 1 micron sediment filter, a carbon block, an RO membrane, and then the DI resin. The 5-stage adds another carbon block. The 6-stage adds another DI resin chamber to the 5-stage. In both cases when an additional chamber is added, the primary goal is to increase contact time with the medium being added - carbon to remove even more chlorine and some chloramines, DI to remove things like chloramines, phosphates, nitrates, silicates, etc.
In all configurations (4, 5, and 6-stage), BRS also has a "water saver" upgrade option. This option adds an additional RO membrane in series with the other one. This configuration results in less waste water (and, as a result, more output water). Adding this additional membrane will not decrease water purity in any way. I can say this with certainty because I had a 6-stage, single membrane and upgraded it to a double membrane after a few months, and have never experienced any drop in quality.
Here's a link to my water source info, what do you think?
Looks like you will have water with chlorine, but no chloramines. Fairly easy water, then. The specific levels of other contaminates and such in your water will vary from the general city-wide report due to the specific pipes and such, but they should be reasonably close.
If you can swing a few extra bucks on your budget,
the 5-state with TDS meters is currently on sale for $215. I think this would be a totally safe option for you.
Otherwise the
4-state with meters is also likely good enough for your needs. It's also on sale for $171 (normally $190), so that would be a good option to stay under your budget. If you are concerned about wasting water, you could also look at the
4-stage water saver model on sale for $198. In either case, if you get a 4-stage and determine that it's not quite working out, it's totally possible to add in the additional carbon block that's in the 5-stage - and even the additional DI chamber from the 6-stage, if you really need that (there are also alternative configurations of DI resin that allow for a lower-cost operation if you have dual DI canisters, but that's a pretty advanced use-case and not something I'd suggest starting with).
