u/thr33hugeinches

I was looking at a fleck 5600sxt on amazon... and i called fleck and they said they use the fleck housing but not the same resin ect. So i called aquasure and they only use 8% resin. I live in mesa az and the water is really bad here. So here are my super simple questions.

Aquasure is $620 at home depot for 8% 48000grain system with a 3-1 carbon filter (is the carbon filter necessary? $40 every 6 months is something i'm happy to pay if it makes a difference)

REAL fleck is $1010 for 53000 grain and no carbon filter

Which should i go with? I have spent far to much time on this rabbit whole and everything is starting to blend. Any help would be great.

Long story short. I was driving our rav4 hybrid 2020 xle and the dash said pull over and take the car to the dealership. I get the car towed to the dealership who pulled codes- C1391 (brake booster pump internal leak $4,448) and p268115(coolant bypass valve $731).

Our car has 106,000 mile currently because my wife is a nurse and drives to people houses to help them.

Coolant bypass valve had an extended program that we never received notice of in the mail. This program went until Dec 1 2025 or 100k miles until 2030....So we are 6k over the limit currently so they declined to help us. Funny thing is we had it in the dealership Nov 20th 2025 @ 98.9k miles well below the parameters. But they didn't do a internal scan at the time so they did the oil change and sent us on our way. I have explained that to them as well and didn't matter.

The ABS booster pump caused 8000 vehicles to be recalled and is a known issue on the Prius's still. The pump is leaking internally so nothing we could have done would have caused this, Toyota also declined to help us in any way shape or form. Not with parts not with labor. As far as i know this has to be done at the dealership due to calibration ( i could be wrong).

So toyota profitted when we bought the vehicle and now to fix the vehicle that we didn't cause an issue with. I find this super unacceptable that a company isn't willing to stand behind their products better, especially toyota with a known history of reliability. Like many other people these days we don't just have an extra 5200 sitting around. Anything further i can do?

Fleck 5600 sxt on amazon is $765 and come highly recommended

Waterfiltersofamerica- $784 after shipping claim to fame is a single moving part valve but some reviews say cheap foreign parts?

They both use digital screens and on demand systems other than that i can't find a difference. There isn't much information online about water softeners that isn't a sales pitch.

Is there a difference ? I have no idea what makes a good or bad system. Any help from other DIYs would be great.

WFOA- 45k system for $784 Claims to fame are a single moving part

Fleck on amazon is $769 highly recommended

What is the difference?