Holmes HAPF30-U4 Replace Filter

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

Good air filter — I’ve used Holmes filter for 10-15 years, March 4, 2005

I bought my first Holmes HEPA air filtering machine more than a decade ago, and have been satisfied enough not to have bought any other brand since then, although I have had four Holmes air filter machines since then.

The first model I bought (I think it was the 220) is apparently discontinued, but it would be no exageration to call it a life-saver. I bought my first one because I lived in a house with a HEAVY chain smoker. Even though rated for only a single small room, that little sucker grabbed enormous amounts of smoke and the white paper on the filter blackened within weeks from particulate cancer-causing material which it saved me from inhaling. The next two filter machines I bought for a house which was infested with black mold. The one closest to the worst mold area blackened very quickly, while the second one, further from the mold, only grayed somewhat in the same time period — the filter was very obviously cleaning potentially deadly black mold spores from the air.

The model I have now uses the HAPF30 replacement, and it is doing “light duty” compared to the first three I owned. I would have given this five stars except that I have the very distinct impression that this particular filter replacement is less efficient than the earlier ones I owned — the filter has grayed with use, but I don’t have the impression that the color change has been due entirely to grabbing airborne pollutants; I suspect (but don’t have any evidence) that the filter is catching carbon which is being blown forward by the fan or else is catching dust which the negative ions generated by the machine itself have caused to fall.

Despite my suspicion that this is less efficient than earlier models, I still rate it four stars because I know that it is filtering SOMETHING out of the air, and I trust the Holmes brand — they have earned my confidence through many years of arduous work. (I’ve never experienced any mechanical problems with one, either, until long, long after the warranty has expired. These things are real workhorses.) If the fans on the machines are kept to low settings they are fairly quiet, but at high speed they genrate quite a bit of noise, which can be a blessing in itself since the machine can act as a “white noise” generator to mask *noise* pollution, too.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Perfect Fit, August 31, 2007

This Holmes filter was exactly what I needed for my air purifier. I use my machine daily & I recently couldn’t find the filter in any local stores. It works wonderfully.