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We tried and tested energy-efficent fan, ceramic and convection heaters
With temperatures across the UK dipping below zero, you may be looking for ways to keep warm that don’t involve costly central heating. Whether you want to increase the cosiness of a home office, a bedroom or a garden shed, the best electric heaters offer short bursts of targeted warmth to heat up a room, so you don’t need to go to the expense of warming up the whole house.
There are lots of different heaters out there but the main types are convection heaters and fan heaters. Convection heaters circulate air through the appliance and are often strong and silent whereas fan heaters blow air over a heating element to provide a blissful blast of warm air.
Each type of heater varies in energy efficiency and running costs as well as maximum operating temperatures and additional features such as timers and remote controls. Read on to find out which ones offer the most value for money.
Working from home, we put the portable heaters through their paces in a chilly Victorian terrace house during early winter. Once the heating had been off for a few hours post-school run, we cranked up a portable heater to the top and timed how long it took to heat up the room, setting a stopwatch on our phone to record an accurate measurement. We used a room temperature thermometer to measure how hot the room got. We also took into account size, portability, design and ease of use when choosing our favourites.
The cost of electricity per hour is higher than gas, meaning electric heaters can be quite costly if you use them for long periods of time. That said, you can use an electric heater to target one room rather than turn on the central heating for all rooms, which should save you money.
The cost of running an electric heater depends on its size and power output. The best way to work out how much it costs to run is to look at your electricity bill to find out how much energy costs per kilowatt. If this is 29p per kilowatt, then a heater with a 2kW power output will cost 58p per hour to run, and so on.
The Everhot electric heater with stove (£1,495, Everhotessentials.co.uk) gives out between 0.3kW and 1.5kW of heat an hour, depending on how high you run it. So, with a standard electricity cost of 29p per kWh, your heater would cost between 9p and 45p per hour.
In this tried and tested review, the Duux threesixty 2 smart portable ceramic heater (£99.99, Amazon.co.uk) was found to be the best electric heater, thanks to the fact it is powerful enough to warm up large spaces, distributes heat evenly and is easy to operate manually or by using the Duux app.
With a stylish design and an intuitive app, the Duux threesixty 2 feels a lot more expensive than its price tag. We were impressed by how it dispersed heat into the entire room and by how we didn’t need to be anywhere near it to power it on. Meanwhile, we really loved having an oven built into the Everhot design, but appreciate it’s an expensive purchase, especially when it was possible to generate heat for less than £25 with the Netta ceramic fan heater.
For extra cosiness, snuggle up under one of the best electric blankets that will keep you warm through winter