Hey Preston, hey all,
a dust collector with a carbon-brush motor? Didn’t know that this exists. Isn’t it too loud?
Apart from the fact that its impeller is plastic and, at 15 cm/6 inches, a little small (in fact much smaller than its big housing), this device definitely works like a dust collector by principle, which means that the chips and dust go through the impeller (unlike with the workshop vacuum cleaner, where the impeller sits behind the dust bag).
But one major advantage of dust collectors like the Harbor Freight 97869 or the Felder AF 22 is that they use induction motors motors, which are very quiet and can be very powerful while usually not driven fast. Induction motors also have excellent efficiency, which means much power with less power consumption. Induction motors are considered the workhorse in industry. Induction motors are familiar to many here: The so-called “spindles”. By the way, the induction motors offered for single-phase current as in the dust collectors are called capacitor induction motors, recognizable by the capacitor on the side. The capacitor produces the auxiliary phase so that it can start rotating at all, without needing three-phase current.
But this WEN DC4301, to which you link, has unfortunately no induction motor, but only a universal motor, recognizable by the carbon-brush commutators. This is a completely different type of motor, also called commutated series-wound motor, which is above all by principle much louder and has a much poorer efficiency, i.e. less suction power with more power consumption, and those are often also operated at higher speed (the latter seems not to be the case with your device). Such motors can also be found in workshop vacuum cleaners, but where they are usually better shielded acoustically. Nevertheless, I often read that people complain that their workshop vac is louder than their CNC’s milling motor and is very annoying. That’s why I think, on principle, I wouldn’t buy a machine which has to run all the time if it is equipped with a carbon-brush commutated motor that is by design noisy. For this purpose I would always try to use a dust collector with an induction motor.
But I don’t know Preston @newbiee how loud your machine actually is, I just mean that in principle. You seem to be very satisfied with it 
In the manual, it says 71 dB(A). That’s the noise that my Festool Workshop Vac makes.
You know that WEN also offers one model with an induction motor?
By the way I would strongly advise against using a bag filter in a room where people or animals are present. Bag filters can only be dust class “L” at highest, which is not suitable for wood dust (even if they sell it for wood dust). Not even with an upstream dust separator. A dust separator will not catch the finest particles, and those are the most dangerous. Those are the ones you can’t see. If it’s wood dust, you always need a filter of dust class “M” or higher. I would always recommend a dust collection system with a pleated polyester filter cartridge with dust class “M” for reasons of health. Wood dust is cancerogenic.
I heard that for the Harbour Freight, people buy a Wynn filter however I did not see mentioned whether they comply a IEC 60335-2-69 dust class.
Further Reading
Difference between a Workshop Vacuum Cleaner and a Dust collector