BRUNSWICK, Ohio — If you buy a space heater to save money, you might get a surprise when you receive your energy bill. Because electricity is the most expensive way to heat. Central heating is more efficient.
But if you need to heat a drafty room, or warm up your office space, there are some hot heaters for those cold snaps.
We tested space heaters from three price ranges, in an unheated home that registered 56 degrees on our thermometer.
We put each of the 1500 watt space heaters in a different room, setting them on high. And we set a timer to see how fast they heated their individual rooms to 72 degrees.
The high-end, remote controlled Vornado, which we found for $160 went into a 16 x 13 room.
The Honeywell, which was our mid-priced heater at $42, went into a 13 x 13 room.
The budget Amazon heater, which cost $29, was tasked with getting an 11 x 10 room toasty.
Unlike the others, it didn’t have a digital display for the temperature, but our thermometer read 53 degrees.
It took 52 minutes for the Vornado display to read 72 degrees. But what was interesting, is our thermometer only read 59 degrees.
We’re not sure which temperature was right, but it definitely could have been a little warmer in that room.
For the other two heaters it was a bit of a toss up…and they took much longer to heat up the rooms.
After 1 hour and 45 minutes, our mid-priced Honeywell heater clocked in at 62 degrees, while ours registered only 60. So, it never hit the 72 degrees mark.
It was the same for the AmazonBasics. While it didn’t have its own thermometer, 1 hour and 30 minutes in, ours read only 59 degrees. Only one degree less than the Honeywell, but remember, the AmazonBasics was in the smallest of the three rooms.
And it felt it.
We thought it would be better for under your desk to warm your feet than to heat a whole room.
So, based on our unscientific study, when it comes to space heaters, you get what you pay for.
For more space heater reviews from Consumer Reports, click here.
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