Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The air purification industry is full of smoke and mirrors. Companies attempt to deceive consumers who don't understand the products they are buying, and Alen is doing so with the T500. The T500 is referred to as a "HEPA Tower Air Purifier" when in fact it does not have a HEPA grade filter in it. I spoke with a representative at Alen Corp. this morning and asked them if the product has a HEPA grade filter in it. Their customer service person stated that it did. I asked them why their web site suggests that it only captures "up to 95%" of particles at .3 microns. He told me it uses a "HEPA type" filter, which is less efficient than HEPA. I asked him what "HEPA type" means, and he said it is similar to a HEPA filter. In reality, "HEPA Type" is a term that marketing people in the air purification industry made up. What it really means is "Not really a HEPA filter but if we throw the HEPA acronym in the title, our customers won't know the difference". There actually is no such thing as a "HEPA filter". HEPA is an efficiency standard, not a material type. There are filters that meet the minimum HEPA standard of 99.97% efficiency at .3 microns. When a filter claims "up to 95%", what it is really stating is that it captures anything from zero to 95% of the airborne particles that run through its filter. When I asked them why someone would buy a product like theirs that does not meet the HEPA standard, they told me that they were able to lower the price by using a less expensive filter system. How stupid do they think their customers are? A Sharp FPA80UW cost $237, a Winix 9300 costs $170, and a Whirlpool AP51030K cost $297. All three of these units cost less than the Alen and offer true HEPA performance. He then told me that the Alen is more powerful than the competition. I asked him what the CADR numbers are. The unit is not even CADR rated. So he proceeded to tell me the CFM output on the unit, which at top speed is 150. The top speed on the Sharp is 300, the Winix is 250, and the Whirlpool is over 300. When I pointed all of this out to him, he told me that the Alen has a lifetime warranty, and the other units only have one year. OK, fine. But most consumers find that to exercise warranty coverage they have to pay for shipping both to the service center and back, and when they look at the total shipping costs, it makes the warranty pretty worthless. Alen does not state on their website who pays shipping, so perhaps they may pay for the shipping for customer good will. But I can't imagine paying this much for such a low powered unit just to get a lifetime warranty. I could buy two Winix units for almost the same price and keep the second one around as a spare in case the first one goes bad. Alen does make some good products, but the marketing executives at Alen really let their customers down by making the decision to market this product in the misleading way they are doing. Don't waste your money on this. There are so many better choices out there for less. Any of the above three mentioned units clearly outperform this machine and would be a much better buy.