looks very similar to the one i ahve.
yes, they say distilled because you need pure water. if you used strait tap water, or even bad RO water, the ppm of solvents would be pretty high and your rating woudl be WAY off. distilled is pretty much as pure as you are going to get, but you wouldnt notice a difference if you used fresh DI. They do make some calibration solutions that have a known salinity. and these are fine too. all you need is osmethign with a known salinity. pure water just has one of 0. so there is no error in the production, it costs the least, and it is garenteed every time.