Truly Quiet Model

My wife and I bought the 18150 Honeywell because we wanted some relief from the new carpet in our newly acquired house. We loved it from the start. It was quiet and we "seemed" to have less allergies after a month of use. But I also made sure and had the carpet steam cleaned a few times before moving in. We continued to fill our vacuum cleaner bags up on an abnormally frequent basis. Maybe our carpet was cheap. I dunno. We went against the recommendation of the manufacturer and only ran the unit while we were home (didn't want anything to burn up our new house while we were at work). Our friends went to buy a HEPA air purifier after we touted how well ours worked. We called it the "sleep machine." It was so quiet (at the med and low settings) and helped keep out the other noises it truly gave us a good night's sleep. Maybe it was from the actual removal of dust from the air? Unfortunately, they didn't ask us what model of Honeywell we bought and just got a Honeywell unit. It was not a quiet model and oh my gosh how much the difference. We didn't know they could be that loud. We appreciated ours that much more.

After about a year's use we learned that we should replace the pre-filter about once a month when we set the unit on the floor (carpet dust). We also came home one day to turn it on and smell an unnatural odor. Something electrical. We called customer service and they were very helpful. Turns out it was probably the motor burning up. I had kept the original box, so they had me ship it back and even were nice enough to recommend removing the HEPA filter since it was only a year old and the replacement would come with a brand new one, so we'd basically get 3 more years of HEPA filter.

After 5 years of owning the 18150 we've gone through 3-4 boxes of prefilters (~$20 each) and the HEPA indicator came one after the new filter was in for over 2 years. Not bad.

The other benefit was over two years ago we had our first child. We of course agreed to give the HEPA up for her room so that it would be as clean as possible. Actually the unit acted as a great background noise (low setting) to keep the baby asleep while we lumbered around the house trying to avoid waking her up.

In summary, this is a great unit. Our experience is limited, but barring the first unit burning up our replacement has stayed in there for over four years with no issue and constant (every night) use. The HEPA filter is expensive but necessary for any unit. The pre-filters are easy to replace. I don't trust the indicator lights at all. Basically, the pre-filter is easy enough to see that I just change it whenever it gets a certain shade of grey. The HEPA I'll probably keep to the 2-3 year expected cycle unless the indicator light comes on in the next year, which is when it should. I recommend this unit highly for its truly quiet operation, 5-year warranty, and consistent performance.