Honeywell Air Genius 5 Air Purifier for Large Rooms up to 1200 Ft², Permanent Washable Filters, Reduces Dust, Pollen, Pet Dander, Odors, Smoke, Black, HFD320

Many air purifiers are very expensive to run because of costly filters that must be replaced regularly. This air purifier - which is also a recommended buy in Consumer Reports - is the exception, because of its washable filters! (That said, If you want additional filtering for odors, incl VOCs - like those emitted by new pressboard furniture, or new mattresses - you can instead use its optional filter for this purpose. Replacement 2-packs are readily available at a good price from Amazon.) I just bought a second of this same model air purifier - 4 years after the first purchase - because I like it so much. Its 5 settings let you choose how aggressively (or quietly) to run it. The sleep mode isn’t totally silent, but is not noisy either - kind of like a sound machine. And the purifier’s fan not only sends purified air back into the room - but in summer, essentially acts like a gentle tower fan as well. I have not tried out the timer feature, so I can’t review that feature. After I ran my 4 year old air purifier on the oscillation mode for a couple of years (not every day), it began to creak as it reached the end of the oscillation arc (slightly bothersome at night) - so now I just run the old one with the oscillation mode off. (We have carpeting here, though, not hard flooring - so perhaps even with having placed a board underneath it to provide firmer base support, the carpeting contributed to the issue.) Even if the same thing happened to the oscillation feature on this new one, it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me. It purifies the air well, is affordable to run, has a small footprint, and has proven longevity. I recently tried the optional VOC-removing odor filter with the new air purifier, after a newly delivered mattress emitted odd odors that bothered my lungs and gave me a headache. (I hadn’t been running my air purifier.) I couldn’t believe how effective this air purifier was in removing the strong odor, replacing it with fresh, clean-smelling air! Those optional filters really work. They are very effective in removing cooking odors, too. But for everyday pollen and allergen removal, I just use the washable filters, and they work just fine.

I have asthma and I'm allergic to dust and pollen. The Honeywell does a great job cleaning the air, reducing the number of times I need to use my inhaler. It's quiet and the black housing makes it barely noticeable.

This is one of the purchases I should have made long time ago. It's always a good idea to have a clean/fresh air to breathe. Who knows what's in the air ducts in a central heating/cooling system. I've been using this for six months now so I've been through the cycle of cleaning up the reusable filter as well so this review is after some usage not the just a week or two in. First off, it really does what it's supposed to do. Purify air. You will notice it immediately. I like the oscillator feature which works on a slightly larger room. I've been using this on both 10 x 10 sq ft room and 15 x 14 sq ft room and it performs equally well for both of the rooms but the bigger room takes slightly longer time which is expected. This is also perfect for a den if your home/apartment has one where air flow is hard to come by. We recently had rooms painted and we weren't able to properly dry them during the winter months so we still had fresh paint smell along with new furniture/rug smell combined. I ran AirGenius overnight on Max setting (#5) and the next morning the smell/order is gone. I was pleasantly surprised. I normally run in #3 setting (medium) and it works great. The best time to run this device is overnight when it's off peak electricity usage so you get charged less on your electric bill but also get fresh air when you sleep and get going for the day. That's when the time time control comes in really handy. I set it for 4 hours at night in my home office and it's great all morning and day. I washed/rinsed both the filters with soap detergent water and let it dry for a day and the performance came back to as if it was when it was brand new. I cleaned after 5 months but I recommend every 3 months even if you are using infrequently. Filter indicator will provide you with a reminder which seems accurate for the most part. The only complain I have which isn't anything for many customers is it's a bit noisy so I can't have it running overnight even in sleep mode setting. I'm a light sleeper though so that could be the reason for that. If Honewell can improve on one thing is reducing the noise level but that may be a tall task as it could impact its effectiveness. Other than that it's the perfect device given the price and it's range. Buy with confidence and you would be disappointed.

Decent air cleaner for the price. It doesn't seem to capture as much as a proper HEPA based air cleaner, but it does the job. I bought it mainly to help reduce dust/allergens and to move the air around my office a bit. Compared to my BlueAir 203 I run in my bedroom, which is a good bit more expensive, it seems to capture almost as much dust. It works really well as a tower fan, but gets loud at the higher settings. I typically leave it on the second setting called germs with the oscillate feature turned on. It moves a good bit of air through the filter without being loud. I did notice a strong plastic smell when I first turned it on, but that dissipated after running it for a day or two. Though if the filter is off for more than an hour or two and you turn it back on, the smell comes back for a few minutes before going away again. I have one major concern at this point. After running the unit for about a week, the oscillator motor has gotten noticeably louder and the unit now has a fairly loud hum when the oscillate function is turned on (if you turn off oscillate, the hum goes away). I have also noticed that there is a point in the middle of the oscillation that you can hear it make a thump sound like there is something wearing down in the mechanism. I am really concerned that after another week or two, this feature may completely stop working. I will update this if it breaks down, or gets loud enough that I have to contact them for repair. -Additional Update- The oscillate function is still working at this point. It continued to get louder for awhile, but now has quieted back down to almost as quiet as when I first started using it. It has helped with the dust/allergens in my office, but not as much as I was hoping compared to a true HEPA style filter. The major upside though is that I do not have to buy expensive filters every 4-6 months for it. Just wash out the foam prefilter and electrostatic block and let them dry thoroughly (at least 24 hours). Also, you don't need to go by the little Filter Status indicator on the top. After a month of use, there were noticeable grey streaks in the electrostatic block filter, so I cleaned it then. As best I can tell, the Filter Status is just a reminder or hours in use counter, not an actual airflow or blockage meter - so not so useful except to nag you to clean it once and awhile (also, you can't just reset the counter until the bars are all full which is silly imho).

This is my 3rd Honeywell Genius 5 Purifier. I started with these air purifiers in 2017. This product works well. Keep it clean and they will do the job as intended.

Very poorly designed unit. Does not filter as well as it claims and does not last. Let’s start with filtering. There are two filters in the unit one is a cheap mesh filter with small hexagonal shaped holes which cleans the air of large particles prior to the second filter. The second filter is a static filter made out of what looks like the plastic equivalent of cardboard only much thicker with many small straight channels for the air to go through. Its suppose to filter the air of even smaller particles. Be careful when removing this second filter as it is charged to several hundred volts and will give you a nasty shock if your finger happens to be near the metal contacts when you remove it to clean. I purchased this unit in October 2015 and have cleaned the filters at least 5 times. I also run the unit for about 6-7 hours a night and then turn it off before I leave to work. Out of those 5 times I’ve cleaned the filters the first stage filter was always messy which leads me to believe it’s doing its job. The static filter on the other hand would always appear like nothing was trapped on it. I even looked closely at it with a magnifying lens and didn’t see any dust. If this filter is really working well then the discharge air side should be clean right? Wrong! Looking closer at the squirrel cage blowers I noticed a very light layer of dust caking the blades! This leads me to believe that the static filter in this product is absolutely useless. I would have had better results with a fiber glass filter. Now let’s go over durability. This unit simply does not last. After 3 months of operation it began making a rumbling noise. At first I didn’t mind as I do like a little white noise while I sleep, but then it slowly got louder as the days went on. It’s been 11 months since I purchased the unit and now it’s too loud and erratic for me to even sleep. I can only explain the noise as a very loud rattle together with random squeaks and squeals. I’m very hands on when it comes to fixing things and took the air cleaner completely apart. I had a hunch the bearings on the blower were bad and I spun the squirrel cage to see how balanced it was. Immediately I noticed it was not balanced as it wobbled about the shaft. I then removed the squirrel cage from the motor shaft and then took apart the motor housing to attempt to replace the bearings. Sure enough the bearings were shot as they had lots of run out and rattled when handled. All I can say is this product is too cheap and worthless to repair. The housing is casted and there are no features to ensure the two bearings are concentric with each other like on more expensive motors, so even if I did replace the bearings with something of better quality it would have failed again. I would of expected better from Honeywell and with the high price commanded, but this is a piece of #*#@ for an air cleaner!

Updated October 12, 2026 - After a summer of use. Still going strong and silent. Couple of notes: I did clean the filters recently even though the status meter only showed 3 bars. It helps if you shake the main filters really hard to get the water out as they tend to hold a lot during cleaning and rinsing. Also, you can't reset the status meters yet, It says to hold the button for 3 seconds, but nothing happens. I'm guessing I have to wait until the entire meter lights up as it's probably time related, versus an actual sensor? --- original post --- So glad at least a few companies are still making air purifiers with permanent washable filters, without going ionic. Airdog is pretty much the biggest competitor, but they're a little more money and their smallest unit is bigger than the Honeywell or discontinued, of course they released a new smaller unit right after I bought this one. I guess manufacturers would rather have consumers continually have to buy HEPA replacement filters every few months instead, I'd rather not sign up for that subscription. I originally bought the Honeywell HFD-120-Q QuietClean tower, which uses the same permanent washable type filters and is roughly about the same size, but with much simpler design with only 3 modes of low, medium and high. And I'm happy to say I'm glad I made the upgrade to the Air Genius 5 !! It only has one more fan speed with "Sleep" mode, but overall it operates much quieter at all fan speeds. Even at fan speed 2, which is normal operation, it's noticeably much quieter than the previous Honeywell. I also like the overall design better and the black color blends in nicer to the decor. Only thing I wish it had – wish you could dim or turn off the LED panel on top, it's kind of bright and is always on. I keep mine around the corner so I don't really notice, but I'd surely have to cover it if it were in my line of sight. I use primarily use it in a studio ADU and I have two cats, I pretty much just leave it running 24/7 in sleep mode all the time and don't even notice it 10 fee away near the bathroom and kitty litter boxes. Comes with extra washable pre-filter and the main filter is one long piece, versus the HFD which was two panels. Nice purifier !

I know this is long but my soapbox is that this is SO much cheaper by cost over time AND so much better it's a no brainer. If you can spend $40 more upfront ($135 cost) it will cost more than $300 less over four years (ie., it will still only cost $135 total while the other one $440. That forty bucks saves you so much money. And BESIDES that the product itself is so much better in everyway. FIrst: WAY cheaper than ANYTHING because you don't have to replace filters every six months. This one you wash somehow. The replacement on the other filters can be $50 a pop. At $130 rather than $90 for other highly rated product, just ONE replacement makes the other product more expensive. They guarantee the filter will last 4 years at least (don't know if can buy replacement then?). So if you keep the other purified for four years and use it fulltime, the cost of replacement filters if $350 more. This one: ZERO. So $135 versus $440. You do the math. A little more upfront and the total cost is more than 50% cheapter. And this handles way more air. Is quieter. And then clearly this is such a better product anyway on all the other areas besides price too. I know i sound like cheerleader but have needed filters like this for decades and always had inferior products because I didn't know there were ones that aren't inferior. It is far more sturdy than expected. It is bigger than I expected but obviously can't be smaller to do it's job at the square footage it says it covers. Physics is physics.. It handles way more square feet than the $90 one I compared it to that requires replacement hepa filters every 6 months. I think twice as much. I looked up filters on Consumer reports (which given there are so many products and they are changing name and model constantly, test a small percentage of all of them.) This was ranked in top few. The other one I considered -- forget which one -- was $90. So this is $45 more than that -- but look below. Handles way more air/square footage. WAY quieter. Way more attractive. Way better constructed. I believe this product will last 5 years, the others if you've seen genersally might last two before something goes wrong (the one I STILL have is old and something happened quickly to make it way louded by something rattling inside the fan. I doubt this will happen with this product because unlike the old filter that blue left and right I think this one blows up and down.) I got the black on eand for this kind of thing it is attractive. WAY more attractive than competitors. The touch screen on top is classy. It is SO much quieter than the (superold honeywell) purifier I already had. Of course there will be noise -- it needs to pull air through and thus needs a fan. But even loudest setting is quieter than my old filter's lowest setting. There 5 different settings for amount of air it pulls through. My old product was only low and high. They have a setting called 'germs' and another kooky one and I have no idea if they are legit. BUT the consumer reports evaluated the efficacy of the filters at different settings, and this was the only one that got Good reviews for low volume (and it has excellent for high.) The competitor products they basically said you shouldn't even use the low setting as it hardly did anything. They have an 'ambient' light button I could figure out what it was doing. There is a light sort of recesses at the bottom of the tower that glows blue. You can turn high, low or off. It strikes me as corny and unnecessary but then I thought about it as a night light. It has super efficeint rating -- says takes as much power as a light bulb. OH. Among all the things the other products don't do, IT OSCILATES. Construction seems excellent. Every company should be selling products like this. The washable filter is a million times better than paying 50 bucks every six months

Recommended! This is the second one I’ve purchased. First one about 7-8 years ago. Love it!

The best purifier/fan on the market for the price

My hay fever is considerably better since using this. It hums a bit when running which is a bit annoying if you're sitting near to it but if you put it around a corner the sound is manageable. When it comes to the job it's designed to do it's great (so far so good!).

Ran quietly for about a month, but developed a slight warble in the fan. We still use it during the day, but not while sleeping.

Air-filter works very well.