As the world population is growing, the need for fresh water is increasing. Water desalination is a mean for producing fresh water from saline water abundant in seas and oceans and recently attracted increased attention at various parts of the world. Various technologies have been used to desalinate saline water with different performance characteristics. This work reviews current desalination technologies and assess their performance in terms of input and output water quality, amount of energy required, environmental impact and cost. Comparative analysis was carried out based on these parameters and it was found that adsorption desalination is a promising technology that can handle feed water with high salinity (up to 67,000ppm) and produce potable water (10ppm) with minimum running cost (0.2$/m3) and low environmental impact (0.6kg/m3).