It also depends on what you're looking to do with your exploration. If it's money and the really cool/rare finds, using the filter is not a bad idea at all, as you're bound to draw quite a few "duds" if you don't.
If you're a bit like me, terrified of missing out on some very nifty sights in systems you've filtered out and you also just want to tag a lot of previously unseen systems, using the filters are going to have you jump into a lot of systems by other "filterers". Granted, that won't spoil the joy of finding an ELW that nobody's ever found before, but you may have to travel quite a bit to get there.
It's all a matter of what you like best.
There is one "trick" that I use, though, in order to not have to spend all my time in the black wading through the empty beer cans and discarded food wrappers of previous explorers. I didn't learn it from anybody, but I'm sure that I'm far from the first to come up with it. Anyway, here goes:
I personally like to have a "goal" at the end of each trip like, say, "I want to see Sag A*" because, seriously, who doesn't? Don't go straight from the bubble to Sag A*, you'll be traveling along the same path that countless others used. It'll still be profitable, but you're much less likely to get that cool "I'm the first here" feeling from it.
Instead, what I do is I pick an interesting destination that is relatively close to the Bubble. I'll have my heat vents clogged with old Kumo Burger wrappers by the time I get there, but that's not the point. What I then do is NOT go back to the bubble. I pick another interesting destination. Then another one, and another one, until I finally feel space madness creeping up on me and head back to the Bubble. Why does this work? Because even though every one of my destinations have most likely already been visited, it's quite unlikely that everybody else who was there followed the same route. Take A-D and back again. You're not going to see anything new. Take A-B. You won't see much on that leg. But if you then go to C, you'll only be traveling through space used by others who chose to go in that exact order, A-B-C. Then go to D. I'm sure you get the point by now. More first discoveries that way.
Another one I like is to go in one direction using "fastest route" and then, when I get to a point where the last several systems I've dropped into were unexplored, I'll switch to "economic route", which will give me more stops. Again, a lot of explorers just set a destination and use "fastest" all the way, meaning that even on a well-traveled route, they probably skipped a lot of systems worth stopping at, systems you won't be missing because you'll be stopping more often.
Just a few things I do because it fits my play style, use them or not
