Honeywell Enviracaire 50250-N

Owners and experts are generally fond of the Honeywell Enviracaire 50250-N air purifier, with two major caveats. First, this low-priced air purifier isn't meant for big rooms, and second, it's very noisy. Ed Sherbenou of Air-Purifier-Power.com, who praises the Honeywell's cleaning power, says he refuses to use it in his bedroom because of the noise. The Honeywell air purifier takes in air from all sides of its cylindrical design, expelling clean air out the top, but it doesn't pull as much air through its HEPA filter as more expensive models such as the IQAir HealthPro Plus (*Est. $900), experts say. The Honeywell's "permanent" HEPA filter should be vacuumed twice a year, but Sherbenou says it will eventually have to be replaced. The Honeywell also uses an odor-reducing carbon prefilter (*Est. $15) that should be replaced every three months. The consensus is that this model is fine for the price, but the Austin Air HealthMate (*Est. $450) is better.

The Honeywell Enviracaire 50250 series is listed among the 10 best air purifiers at Air-Purifier-Power.com, a retail site that goes into great depth about the pros and cons of various machines. It also pops up in ConsumerReports.org's comparison test of 36 room-sized air purifiers, although editors there test the disposable-filter model, not the permanent-filter one. The Enviracaire air purifier also receives a fair number of comments from owners posting to Amazon.com and Epinions.com and is one of the top-rated models.