by Peter Lombardi
Quality Specialist, Consultant
> 3 min read
If you live in an area with a hard water supply, it’s a great idea to invest in a high-quality water softener. These products remove or neutralize hardness-causing minerals, improving the taste of your tap water and limiting scale build-up on your household appliances.
Genesis water softeners are among the best on the market when it comes to efficacy and durability. These models use innovative upflow technology to ensure hard water is thoroughly treated and to save you money on salt.
Genesis products are designed to provide you with healthy, clean, and de-mineralized water.
Top Choices on the Market
- LED display shows the current flow rate
- Control head comes with 10-year guarantee
- The monitor never resets your initial programming
- Automatic System Refresh stops potential bacterial growth
- Tanks come with a lifetime warranty
- You can customize settings depending on water usage
- High flow rate of 17 GPM
- Takes strong and durable 10% crosslink resin
- Control head comes with a 10-year warranty
- 5 GPM backwash rate for proper cleaning
- Selective backwashing function saves on salt and water
- Has a sealable and robust main piston
- Filtration tank contains 1 ft3 of catalytic carbon
- 4 GPM backwash rate for thorough cleaning
- Comes with durable neoprene Tank Tux Jackets
Best Genesis Water Softener Reviews
1. Genesis 2 Premier 48,000 Grain Water Softener: Best Genesis Water Softener
This water softener has upflow technology, ensuring your hard water flows through every available media layer in the brine tank before reaching your household appliances and faucets.
The unit also has an Automatic System Refresh function that flushes away any water that’s been lying stagnant in the resin tank for more than a week. This process prevents the growth of harmful bacteria and viruses, keeping your tap water safe and drinkable. This ergonomic, well-built, and affordable design comes with a generous warranty and an auto-regeneration capacity. It's the best Genesis model on the market.
FEATURES
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The Genesis 2 Premier model is the best product on our list for various reasons. We LOVE the easy-to-read LED screen that lets you know when the last regeneration happened. This monitor also tells you exactly how many gallons of water it can treat before needing to regenerate again.
This auto-regeneration capacity allows you to save up to 75% on salt and 64% on water. That’s because the digital control head measures your household’s water usage and flow, only triggering a regeneration sequence when necessary.
We also appreciate the upflow function that forces hard water up through all the different levels of the brine tank’s resin before sending it through your pipes to your household fixtures. This process is far more effective than the standard downflow brining method, where the hard water doesn’t pass through the lower layers of the resin bed.
This model comes with several exceptional warranties, including a 10-year company guarantee on the control head and a market-leading lifetime pledge on both the resin and brine tanks.
This salt-based system is easy to install, and the package comes with the connectors and adaptors needed for standard, 1”-sized pipes.
The brine tank has a sizable capacity, meaning it can go through 200 lbs. of salt in one regeneration cycle. This Genesis 2 Premier model is excellent value for money, with a 48,000-grain capacity and a durable, robust design.
2. Genesis 2 Premier 24,000 Grain Water Softener: Best Genesis Water Softener for the Money
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This Genesis 2 24,000 grain product has all the benefits of the 48,000-grain water softener, but with half the grain capacity. The resin tank measures 8” x 44” and comes with a market-leading lifetime warranty.
We LOVE the addition of the neoprene rubber coating on the outside of the tanks. This material is chemically inert, meaning it’s highly resistant to various greases, oils, and solvents that you might find in a typical household. Neoprene also tends to endure salt-based solutions really well and can cope with temperatures of up to 360°F. You won’t need to worry about repairing or replacing these resin and brine containers any time soon.
We also appreciate the built-in memory in the control valve that ensures your programmed settings won’t be lost during a power failure or any other electrical interference. The Genesis team has designed the control valve to remember the time for up to 2 DAYS if you experience a significant, long-term power failure.
If there’s a power cut during a system regeneration cycle, the control valve also keeps track of what point it was at in the regeneration and starts up from that same point once the power comes back on.
This model has compact dimensions, measuring 23” x 52” x 18” in total. Although it doesn’t have our first-choice model’s capacity, this softener is excellent if you want a high-quality, ergonomic design for a reasonable price.
3. Genesis 2 Premier 64,000 Grain Water Softener: Best for Brine Tank Capacity
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This 64,000-grain water softener is ideal for large families or households. This product can treat a vast amount of water every day, with a high flow rate of 17 GPM, meaning you won’t have to worry about a drop in household water pressure at any point.
Our FAVORITE feature of this product is the brine tank’s sizable capacity. This 18” x 33” container holds up to 300 lbs. of softener salt. This salt regenerates the resin beads in your media tank, so the more significant your brine tank’s capacity, the more regeneration cycles your softener system can go through before you have to refill the salt.
We also love that this model is designed to use 10% crosslink resin. This type of bead has more Polystyrene strands holding it together, making it more durable and robust than the 8% crosslink resin. The 10% bead also lasts longer in chlorinated and hard water than less strong resins. These properties mean that it’ll be a LONG time before you have to worry about replacing the resin bed in the media tank.
4. Genesis 2 High Efficiency 96,000 Grain Water Softener: Best for Large Households
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This Genesis 2 model has a large grain capacity of 96,000, making this an ideal water treatment unit for larger households with higher water usage levels. At 21 GPM, this product’s flow rate is as impressive as its capacity. You won’t ever have to worry about a drop in household pressure when 2 or more of you are using the facilities simultaneously.
We LOVE the auto-regeneration function, which recharges the resin in the media tank whenever the filtering capacity drops below 3%. These short, constant recharge periods keep topping up the depleted resin until the full regeneration cycle at 2 AM, meaning you’ll never have to use untreated, hard water during the day.
We also appreciate the integrated Upflow Brining technology that measures the amount of softener needed for effective regeneration, helping you to save on up to 30% of salt.
The digital control monitor can adjust the number of salt brining refills, depending on your water source’s hardness. This process allows you to save on up to 45% of salt.
The control valve comes with a 7-year guarantee, while both the brine and resin tanks carry a generous lifetime warranty. The main piston comes with a built-in stabilizer, making it strong, impact-resistant, and durable.
5. Genesis 2 Duo 32,000 Grain Water Softener and Whole House Chlorine Filter: Best for Hard City Water
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This Genesis 2 Duo model serves as both a softener and filter for your hard water supply. While the resin tank uses upflow technology to treat the hardness-causing minerals in your water thoroughly, the separate filtration tank removes chlorine, chloramine, and hydrogen sulfide from the supply.
City municipalities often add either chlorine or chloramine to the local water supply. They do this because these chemicals act as disinfectants, preventing carcinogenic particles and substances from forming in the water.
Although chlorine and chloramine help destroy disease-causing bacteria, they can lend a chemical, clinical taste to your drinking or washing water. The Genesis 2 Duo uses activated carbon to filter these disinfectants. The built-in catalytic carbon can both absorb and remove hydrogen sulfide and chloramines, improving the overall taste of your tap water.
The 14” x 14” brine tank has a neoprene rubber lining that helps to deal with the so-called “tank sweat.” This moisture can run down the containers and collect in a puddle on your floor, but the neoprene material insulates your tanks and prevents condensation. This type of rubber is also heat and ozone-resistant.
One potential issue with this model is the 7.2 GPM flow rate. If you’re in a household of 3 or more people, you may experience drops in water pressure when you’re all using the facilities. However, if you live in a small city apartment, you will love this Genesis 2 Duo model, with its multifunctionality and durability.
Final Verdict
SMART GXSHC40N
The Genesis team makes high-quality, robust water softeners that utilize upflow technology to treat hard water thoroughly. However, the Genesis 2 Premier 48,000 Grain Water Softener is hard to beat when it comes to the best of the best.
This product’s metered control function means that the system tracks your water usage and triggers a regeneration cycle whenever it’s necessary, saving you water and salt brine.
The innovative Automatic System Refresh replaces water sitting in the resin tank for over a week. This stagnant water acts as an incubator for disease-causing microbes and dirt, so the auto-flush function helps to ensure your drinking water remains safe.
The Premier 48,000-grain softener has a large flow rate of 15 GPM, helping to supply large and small households with substantial amounts of water each day. We also LOVE how easy it is to install this unit. You shouldn’t need to spend money on a professional plumber.
Make the Genesis 2 Premier 48,000 Grain Water Softener your go-to choice for your next water treatment unit.
Peter Lombardi
About the Author
Peter is a Los Angeles based water quality specialist, and works as a surveyor for businesses and communities looking to be informed and active about the quality of their water. He shares his expertise with 64 oz. to ensure everything is accurate, and to prevent the spread of misinformation about water contaminants.