Comment Re: So... (Score 2) 21
The reason people go for less effective filters is that it takes less force to push air through them, which lets you put more air through it with the same force/noise. The filters have a similar particle profile, they are all very good at stopping tiny particles and very good at stopping larger particles, and comparatively worse at particles between 0.1 and 0.3 microns. It's just that a HEPA grade filter stops 99.7% or more of those hardest particles, whereas a MERV 13 filter (the most common furnace-grade throughput-optimized filter grade) stops 85%.
People who haven't looked into it probably imagine that there exists some small size of particle which HEPA stops but non-HEPA filters let through. But that isn't so. All particles which gets stopped by one gets stopped by the other, the difference is just at what rate - and the smallest particles are actually easier to stop (something to do with Brownian motion)