9 best electric heaters, tried and tested energy-efficient portable devices
Look for timers and remote controls to crank up the heat without ever having to emerge from your blanket (IndyBest)
With temperatures across the UK starting to dip below zero, you may be looking for ways to keep warm that don’t involve costly central heating.
Whether it’s to increase the cosiness in a home office, a bedroom or a garden shed, portable heaters offer short bursts of targeted warmth to heat up a room, so that you don’t need to go to the expense of heating 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.
How we tested
The heaters we tested in action
(Zoe Griffin)
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.