Handy Heater: Personal and Portable Digital Electric Heater

Product Information

But that’s not all! Handy Heater also comes with a timer function so you can pre-set the amount of time you want it to heat for, and then it will turn off automatically. Great for warming you while you get to sleep, or just giving you peace of mind that you can set it and forget it and it won’t stay on all night. We set up each heater in the centre of our test room and run it on the maximum settings, with the room starting at a cool temperature. We monitor how much the room temperature changed over the course of an hour using temperature probes. We found the most drastic changes happen in the first half an hour and increases in temperature become more incremental after that. Now on to how the Handy Heater actually performs when you use it in real-world scenarios. I used it in my home office and then took it for a ride to a nearby city and used it in a small motel room. Here are some of the things I found:

Due to the long list of factors that come into play to calculate your central heating costs, the only way you can confidently compare a heater to your central heating is to install a smart meter. You then divide your weekly heating cost by the number of hours you have it switched on and compare that figure to the cost of running your heater. Nearly all have some kind of carry handle for moving about and many have a safety cut-out feature, which will switch off the heater if it gets dangerously hot. If you were to try replacing the use of your central heating by putting an electric heater in each room, it will definitely end up costing much more.The only negative I have about the plug-in heater is it makes a loud buzzing sound when in use, which can be distracting if you don't like white noise while working from home or watching television on an evening. In our tests, we set every heater to run at full blast so you can see the maximum amount it cost to heat our medium-sized test room. If you have the thermostat of your heater set to a desired temperature, the heater will toggle on and off once it reaches that temperature – depending on what's needed to maintain it. The heater won't operate continuously, so won't cost you as much to run. Are electric heaters cheaper to use than central heating?

Convector heaters are usually taller than fan heaters, but thin and light – making them larger, but still relatively easy to move between rooms. It’s not always easy to make your immediate surroundings warm and cosy as the cold winter draws in. In garages, shops, offices and especially if travelling or camping, getting warm and cosy usually means wrapping yourself in chunky layers and gloves - not really ideal for getting things done or relaxing in comfort. In the motel room, the Handy Heater took some time to really get things going but once it did, it worked flawlessly through the night. I used the convenient timer function to let it run overnight and it provided me with a nice comfortable temperature throughout the slightly chilly November night. Handy Heater pros: But that's not all! Handy Heater also comes with a timer function so you can pre-set the amount of time you want it to heat for, and then it will turn off automatically. Great for warming you while you get to sleep, pre-heating a chilly corner of a room while the rest of the house heats up, or just giving you peace of mind that you can set it and forget it and it won't stay on all night when you've gone! Central heating is much more effective at maintaining a stable temperature over a longer period, whereas the heat from an electric heater will soon dissipate if the rest of your home is cold.Under current energy prices, the electric heaters we've tested can cost anything from 9p to 87p per hour to run on full blast. We use a force meter to record how much is needed to topple each heater over and a decibel meter to measure how much noise each one makes while running.

Some portable heaters have useful extras, such as an LCD screen that displays the current temperature or a remote control for turning the heater on from across the room. These features may come in handy:

Customer reviews

Pinning down an exact comparison of how much central heating and electric heaters cost to run is nigh-on impossible, as the factors below are just some of the variables that play a part: The oil in the radiator acts as a heat reservoir, which stays hot for some time after the heater's switched off. Some are called 'oil-free' and function in a comparable way, just with an internal heating element instead of any oil. Keen to optimise home heating? See our advice on boiler controls and thermostats , smart meters , and loft insulation This is to be expected though, any space heater will have a lot of trouble when you use it in an open space, and the Handy Heater is exactly the same. As the heater basically heats up the air in the room, if there is a fresh air intake, the temperature won’t go up at all. So make sure there is no active circulation happening in the space you want to heat.