The performance characteristics of a novel solar water desalination system has been inves-tigated experimentally. The desalination unit consisted of a square basin-pyramid solar still coupled with a solar heater. Different DI water based mono and hybrid nanofluids were pre-pared using CuO and GO nanoparticles following the two-step method. DI water when em-ployed as the heat transfer fluid in the system, improved the distillate water yield by about 28.80% relative to the conventional solar still. Out of all the considered CuO mono-nano-fluids, the 1.0 wt.% concentration resulted in the maximum increment of about 78.80% in the distillate water yield followed by 1.5 wt.% (62.05%) and 0.5 wt.% (53.30%) respectively. Utilizing the CuO+GO hybrid nanofluid, resulted in maximum increment of about 127.46% at 25:75 nanoparticle proportion followed by, 50:50 (101.33%) and 75:25 (89.30%) respectively, while employing the 1.0 wt.% GO mono-nanofluid, resulted in an increment of about 54.93% in the distillate water yield. The pumping power of the prepared nanofluids was found to be the function of their concentration. Hence, the performance index was evaluated for all the tested heat transfer fluids followed by an economic analysis of all the considered cases. The pu-rity of the produced distilled water was also assessed by comparing with the Bureau of Indian Standards. Finally, the study proposed the best suitable heat transfer fluid for the investigated system and suggested the possible futuristic research objectives.