I recently bought the Honeywell 50250-S HEPA Round Air Purifier from Amazon. It was nearly half price from Amazon Warehouse Deals since it was a returned unit, but it was listed as “Like New” so I gave it a shot. It turns out the unit would not turn on, but after I took apart the control panel I realized that one of the wires of the power cable was loose. Once I connected it back to the right spot, it worked perfectly. Now I know why it was a returned unit.
The purifier seems to do a pretty good job at removing odors, but it is noisy and uses a decent amount of power. How much power? Well, the purifier has three speed settings: High, Medium, and Low, which you can select with the knob shown:
I used my Kill-A-Watt to measure how many watts the purifier used at each speed level:
So, as you can see, the High speed setting uses a whopping 200 W of power. Medium reduces the consumption to 165 W, while Low uses 103 W.
At $0.15/kWh, that means the air purifier would have a yearly cost of $263 on High, $217 on Medium, or $135 on Low if run 24/7 – not exactly insignificant, and all of which are more than what I paid for the unit in the first place!
4 comments on “How Many Watts Does the Honeywell 50250 Air Purifier Use?”
Thanks for sharing. I use 1900KwH a month; in NYC, that means my bill is roughly $500 a month (electric supply/electric delivery/taxes/surcharges/etc…) I’ve cut back on using it 24/7 (I have two of them, same model) and my bill reflects it after reading your article, thanks!
Thanks – I was wondering this myself today – I have two of these that I run 24/7 on low (mostly) – plus I added a dehumidifier so I figure that I added about 250-300 kWHr to my bill this month – not insignificant at all. Thinking about buying an Air Oasis ozone unit to replace these – the model I am looking at costs about $440 but burns only 14 Watts, so you save about 100W = 2.4 kWHr = $0.36 x 365 = $131/year assuming 15c/KwHr and just using the low setting on the Honeywell. at High setting, the savings closes in on $200/year. The AirOasis ends up paying for itself in about 2.5 years/1.4years, respectively using rough calculations. Plus the ir Oasis seems to clean the air even MORE that the Honeywell ( at least AS GOOD) and it is a whole lot quieter. I will relegate my Honeywells for special times and, one will go to my office at work where my employers foots the electric bill!
I have 5 of these units and they average 165 to 175 W on the high setting. I suspect you have one pulling a little more than normal.
Curiously my WeMo outlet reports 81W, 105W, and 160W for the 2012-era Honeywell 50250-S. I have replaced the pre-filter regularly and recently. Maybe there’s more power exerted if your carbon filter is full.