Originally Posted by luigi524td

Several years back I took the "cheap" approach and bought a couple of no-name cabin filters from a seller on ebay. After all, I wasn't driving in places with lots of air-borne pollution so wasn't too concerned about the activated carbon stuff.

Well, after a few thousand miles, I decided to pull them to have a look. When new the paper filter pleats looked pretty much just like another filter. BUT - after only a few thousand miles they looked like crap - not dirty, but it looked like moisture in the air that passed through them made them start to fall apart. I still had the old BMW filters that had more than 20K miles of use and they looked like they'd do a better job of filtering than the relatively new aftermarket ones.

I took the lesson learned and bought an OEM Mann set from one of the import parts houses ... and have taken that approach ever since. Mann, Mahle are solid brands!

And here's something that may surprise you I have even found Purolater and Fram items (filters) that are actually marked and made by BMW but sold in Purolater/Fram packaging !