The Trion AirBear MERV13 Air Filter manufactured by. The 20″x25″x1 version we tested contained 16 pleats. As of the writing of this review, out of the 30 Amazon best selling filters we had tested, this model has the lowest Filtest permeability score of them all. That type of pressure drop can be detrimental to many residential furnaces and central air conditioners. Chances are that using this filter on your home’s HVAC system would knock a few years from your furnace or ACs life expectancy.

It clogs super fast too. I other words, even if you replaced this model every month, which by itself is too much of a hassle for most homeowners, you would end up with meaningfully higher than necessary energy, maintenance, repairs, and filter replacement associated cost.

As with the Filtrete MPR1500 we had tested earlier, the filtration performance of the  AirBear MERV13 furnace filter at the sub-micron level is less-than-OK (60.4% @ 0.3-1µm) and quite good at the 1-3µm level (81.6%). The performance of this filter at the 3-10µm level is excellent (90.3%), however, Fltest.org does not incorporate this category into the weight of our scores.