Bob, I saw it Friday night, since I do pay quite a bit of attention to oil, and filters, it was interesting. They however didn't state the efficiency capture percentage of the filters at the minimum micron rating, which means as much as pressure drop across the filter, flow, or the micron rating by itself.
They did mention burst pressures of the can on the K&N being above average. They talked also about the mounting plate ports size, and configuration. If the K&N has a good efficiency rating at 10 microns, it would indeed be something to take note of. Until this time the Purolator Boss filter was about top of the heap as far as conventional filter, filtering in the 10 micron range, they however didn't test it.
Mann and Hummel have been around a long time, and they did just buy into some of the biggest name filter lines in the industry. They are a German company that has a good rating, and has ownership in quite a few name brands.
To there credit they did talk somewhat about the Fram filters with their cheap lines using glued cardboard endplates, and the better lines using steel. It seem that Freiburger, and Dulcich didn't see anything of consequence wrong with the carboards end plates, they kind of pooh poohed the cheap Fram construction.
One other interesting thing I didn't know is the Motorcraft filter and one other (which escapes me at the moment) have the relief valve in the top end of the filter, so that by passed oil doesn't travel over the area of filter that catches the particulate. I thought that was a great feature to note.
They also didn't have any way to determine if the filters were opening the by pass valve during testing. If in fact they were going into by pass mode, it would explain why all of the tests were so close in results. That part of the test was pretty inconclusive to me. They also didn't mention any filters like the Pontiac, that has no by pass valve built into it the filters because it has a by pass valve in the engine plumbing. All the filters they tested had integral by pass valves.
While the test covered some of the points, they left as many questions unanswered, as they answered, to me at least........
Of course there was zero mention of by pass filters, and their different process over a conventional full flow filter that interests myself at least. Also no mention of GM, and SAE tests that have proven the removal of very fine particulate, that can easily get into the tight clearance parts in engines do the bulk of the wear. Or that eliminating the very fine particulate extends oil, and engine life substantially over a conventional full flow filter.
They also didn't make any mention of oil analysis, done by labs such as Blackstone. I expect they might receive some comments about things they didn't cover in their initial show, and possibly they might have a follow up later on. To be fair it was only a half hour, so they couldn't cover everything in that short span of time.
FWIW, a little detective work about the 10 micron rating of the K&N is really inconclusive of the efficiency at 10 microns, it eludes to 50%, which makes the 10 micron rating pretty insignificant, and more of a marketing tool. I'm not impressed when a company tries to use the 10 micron rating at 50% efficiency. It doesn't mean much overall.