They work well but take up a relatively large amount of space.
#The wirecutter space heater portable#
Radiant units feel "slower" because they are heating the room and not a stream of air directed at the userĪ plug in baseboard as linked to by pammeke are basically portable version of baseboard heat. They also obviously are noisier than passive units. However as the temperature in the room rises to the set point they can feel colder because moving air is cooling (which is why we use fans in the summer). Fan units can feel warmer because they blow over ambient temperature air directly on you. Complications arise when one factors in how warm a unit feels. Posted by jamjam at 10:17 PM on December 13, 2017īasically all electric heat is 100% efficient and any unit will, eventually, heat the space the same given the same wattage. Though it must be said that every authoritative source I've looked at echoes fedward's advice to plug it directly into the wall. I also think a good power strip (15 amp breaker and 12 gauge cord) is better than plugging it into the wall, because the power strip breaker will pop at 15 amps and the wall circuit will let you draw 20-30 amps before it lets go. I'm completely positive no current model contains PCBs, but there have been recalls for other issues over the years as you can see in my link, and I'm not really comfortable with a device in which hot, flammable oil and electricity are mixed the way they are in an oil-filled heater. But a couple of years later, some Delonghi oil-filled heaters were recalled for contamination with PCBs, including mine, though I'm certain it had nothing to do with my phone call.
It reminded me of the smell of transformer oil, and in my naïveté I called the EPA and suggested they check them out for contamination with PCBs, then took my heater down to the basement and forgot about it. I bought a Delonghi a long time ago, but the smell did not go away and after about a week started giving me a severe headache. If you trip breakers or blow fuses, you're overloading the circuit and creating a real fire risk. That may be difficult depending on how your apartment is wired. Plug it directly into the wall, preferably on a circuit without any other loads. One thing to be clear on: don't plug a space heater into a power strip. I can't tell if that current model allows the fan to be turned completely off, since they mention "whisper quiet heat" and not "silent operation." They do heat a room faster with the fan on, but you can turn the fan off for silent, if less effective, heat. We have two of a previous model of this thing and they have a fan that comes on when the control is set to high. You can get some that have big flat panels (so they look a bit more like a radiator than a box fan that heats). If you need something that will heat up a room quickly (and not just keep it at a set temperature, once it gets there) then you'll want one of the ceramic things with a fan. Periodically I check it to make sure it's still on and hasn't blown a fuse or anything, but our pipes didn't freeze last year so I consider it a success. We have a similar oil-filled DeLonghi to the one mentioned above in a room in our basement where we've had pipes freeze, and it makes no noise at all. Best answer: There's a tradeoff between silence and speed.