Russell Hobbs 650W Oil Filled Radiator, 9 Fin Portable Electric Heater - Black, Adjustable Thermostat, Safety Cut-off, 10 m sq Room Size, ‎RHOFR5002B-AZ, 2 Year Guarantee

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When the price of gas soars, a portable electric heater (sometimes known as a space heater) is worth considering. Used properly, with judicious use of the thermostat, they can be economical – particularly for heating bedrooms and for occasional use in the coldest parts of the house. “When gas prices are unaffordable they may help cut bills if used sparingly,” says Rob Bennett, technical service manager at Pimlico Plumbers. “But electricity is not exactly cheap at the moment either. So you’re looking for the most heating output from the lowest electricity usage.” You may be surprised to hear that oil-filled radiators don’t burn oil as fuel. Instead, they store it in a reservoir where it’s heated and spreads heat in the room. That’s why you never have to refill it. For the same reason, they’re incredibly efficient because they convert almost all of the energy they consume into heat. We buy all the electric heaters we test. We put the bestselling heaters from popular UK retailers through these tests: Heating speed, evenness, and accuracy 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.

Also, once turned off, the convector heater will not radiate any more heat, unlike the oil radiator, which will continue to warm the surrounding air as the oil slowly cools to room temperature. These can still be bought, but they aren't as popular or widely available as fan or convector heaters. This product comes with a free one year manufacturer guarantee. A free second year guarantee is available upon registering your product.Once connected to the mains, the electricity heats the oil, which heats the surrounding air. The oil is used as a heat reservoir rather than being used as a fuel. Efficiency The most useful addition is a timer, allowing you to set the heating for the moment you wake up or arrive home. Upmarket models use an app for this, although you’d get much the same functionality with a smart plug. They tend to be cheap to run, but some can be really slow to heat up. Most oil-filled heaters are also fairly heavy and cumbersome, so look out for models that come with wheels. If you’re sitting a few feet away from this not particularly handsome oil-filled radiator, initially it’s underwhelming. The oil takes a while to warm up, plinking and plonking as it goes, and the heat that slowly emerges from the top in a “chimney” effect goes up, not out. Over time, as cool air is drawn in from beneath due to convection, the whole room heats up, but in my test it took half an hour for the temperature monitor set ten feet away to register any rise at all. Of the 41 products in the Heating and cooling category, 14 were more expensive than RUSSELL HOBBS RHOFR5002 Portable Oil-Filled Radiator and 26 were cheaper. Prices from Russell Hobbs

The integrated handle, castors and power cable storage allow you to easily manoeuvre it around to where it’s needed most. Safety features include overheat and tip over protection, and the power indicator ensures you know when the radiator is switched on. Product Features: 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. However, central heating is suitable for heating all the rooms in your house together. Meanwhile, an oil-filled radiator is best suited for adjusting the temperature in any single room, whether that might be a bedroom, living room, conservatory, or garage.

Standing knee-high, it can be plugged in anywhere, but you won’t be moving it around much: at 50kg, it takes two people to lift and does get very hot. The heat escapes from the vent at the top, making this a convection heater like many others, but after about half an hour the rest of the cast iron body heats up too, radiating warmth outwards for quite a while after it’s turned off. On the downside, this type can be quite noisy and they don't have some of the more advanced features you can get with convector heaters. Consider the brand. We’ll go into more detail in a moment about brand and whether Russell Hobbs is your best option for Heating and cooling. But the point here is just to make sure you’re factoring in brand when considering the quality of a product. Some brands will be better known for quality than others, and no doubt some of the much higher quality brands will attract a higher price for their products.