After reading reviews a number of places online, I decided to buy the Blueair products. In ended up sampling the 402, 501 and 601, and ultimately returned the 501 and 601 and replaced them with 402s.The 402 is truly quiet. This was an important consideration for me; the reason I returned the 501 and 601 was because they were noisy. The 402 has four fan speed settings. The fastest is unpleasantly noisy; I would not want to be in the room while the unit is in this mode. The next fastest, though, is *much* quieter. We usually leave the units in this mode. Sometimes we use the next-to-slowest mode, for example when I'm watching a movie and sitting in a chair right next to the 402. The middle two speeds are sufficiently quiet that I never feel like I need to use the slowest speed. (The 501s and 601s are unbearably noisy at any but the slowest setting which is slower than the middle speeds of the 402. For 2/3 the price you can move more air, more quietly. Go figure.)
The only downside to the unit is size. It is about the same size as a tower PC. It's tall enough not to easily fit under furniture, and it's airflow pattern (in one of the skinny vertical sides, out the opposite side) means that the best placement is with one of the long sides against a wall. If wall space is at a premium, it can be hard to find a place to put it.
I haven't had the units long enough to replace the filters yet, but I have taken out the filters that came with them, and put them back in. It was very easy to do. After two months, only one filter is showing any visible dirt but the house is *much* less dusty.
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