Buy This: Nordic Pure Air Filters

I'm interrupting this week's Stretch Your Spending marathon to share an unsolicited tip I recently gave a friend from work.

If you're a homeowner or renter that needs to replace your furnace and/or air conditioner's air filter, buy and use Nordic Pure air filters.  They are less expensive than other brands (namely 3M's Filtrete) and are just as good, if not better.


My Recommended Air Filter

From a purely cost perspective, a six-pack of 16x25x1 Nordic Pure air filters costs $36.31 on Amazon.  The similar Filtrete six-pack costs $101.69.  That makes the Nordic Pure product a little over a third of the cost of Filtrete's.

From a quality perspective, the Nordic Pure product is equal if not superior to it's closest Filtrete competitor.* The Nordic Pure filter is rated MERV 12, which is supposedly equivalent to an MPR rating of 1500-1915.  The similar Filtrete model has a MPR 1500 rating.  In plain language, both filters will capture everything from  pollen, fine dust, smoke particles, airborne plant spores, bacteria, and even some viruses.

Finally, Nordic Pure makes at least 29 different sizes of air filters.  My system requires filters of three different sizes, all of which are carried by Amazon.  I'd bet that they carry whatever size filter you need.

If I have to have one knock on the filters, it's that you have to buy them in six-packs, which means the extra five will take up some space until you go through them all.  This could be a significant drawback for those that don't have the storage space.  However, if you can get three months of use out of each filter, that's a solid year-and-a-half of filters in one purchase. 

Buy Nordic Pure air filters and start saving some serious money.


*The two companies use different rating systems to measure their filters' success at capturing particles. Nordic Pure uses the universal standard, which is MERV, while Filtrete uses a term they coined called MPR.  In both cases, the higher the value, the better the filter.

2 comments:

  1. MERV ratings are not well-defined or regulated. A company can lie about their MERV ratings, and there's no government agency to stop them. I have heard that 3M tests filters at 500 feet per minute of air, while Nordic Pure tests them at 300 feet per minute, which makes them perform better on the test.

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  2. Agree with shagbark. The Nordic Pure filter seems like a pretty decent filter for the buck, but I wouldn't compare them directly with Filtrete air filters. Today, 8/25, I was able to purchase a 6 pack of Filtrete 2200 MPR (14 MERV) on amazon for $84.99. In addition, Filtrete currently has a $12 mail in rebate when buying 4 or more filters. That's $72.99 out the door for 6.

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