What are the benefits of this over just the hose?

 

Thanks to the good old EPA, the oil breather can no longer be just let to spew into the atmosphere and as a result they now dump into the air intake, for the purpose of burning off in the engine. This makes for a gummy mess in your intake tube and especially at the throttle body. It's one of the two reasons why we have to clean our throttle bodies so often.

By using a catch can or a stand alone filter, it gets this tar laden mess out of the air intake system...

 

What's preferred, catch can, or filter?

catch can has to be emptied and clean I imagine.

will the filter breathe residue all over the place, just not in your intake?

 

I don't know that one is any better than the other, I just happened upon a deal on a chrome catch can about a year and a half ago when a local auto accessory store was having a sidewalk sale. I opted to go this way because I've made some stuff for the engine bay out of billet aluminum and I figured it would match up nice.

The filter will catch the crap until the material becomes saturated, then you just replace it. They only run about $9 in my local auto parts store...

 

10-4 on the billet accessories; I think that will look better than a mini filter.

Although there's a bit of price difference.