Reverse osmosis is the only domestic technology that lowers TDS. Everything else in a purifier — UV, UF, carbon, copper, alkaline — solves a different problem, and none of them touch dissolved salts, hardness, fluoride, nitrate or heavy metals. So if your supply is borewell-fed, tanker-fed, blended, or measures above roughly 300 ppm, an RO is not a preference. It is the only category that will work.
The corollary matters just as much, and almost nobody selling RO will say it: if your water is treated municipal supply below 200 ppm, buying RO is a mistake. You will pay more, waste two to three litres for every litre you drink, strip out calcium and magnesium, and end up with flat-tasting water — to solve a problem you do not have. Test with a ₹300 TDS meter before you spend ₹16,000.
For everyone who genuinely does need RO, four specifications decide the purchase and the rest is marketing. Input TDS rating must exceed your worst seasonal reading with headroom. A TDS controller must be present, or output arrives demineralised. Water recovery decides your monthly bill in a tanker-fed city. And the service network decides whether the unit is still working in year three — which, in this category, is the failure mode that actually happens.
The ranking below weights all four, plus five-year running cost rather than sticker price. Stage counts are deliberately ignored: brands inflate them by counting sediment pads, and a well-built 6-stage unit beats a badly built 12-stage one every time.