Portability features: If the heater will remain in the same spot, you won’t need these, but if you’re likely to move it around your home, wheels and handles can prove useful. Infrared heaters are different to all the other models on our list, as they radiate heat, rather than circulating it. This means they won’t heat a whole room in quite the same way, but if they’re positioned near you, they should make you nice and toasty. This was reinforced when we tested the Princess model; while the overall room temperature was lower than you’d find using a convection heater, it still rose after some use. And our expert found that when sat in front of it, they were suitably warm within just ten minutes, feeling the benefits even from 1.5 meters away.

They also carry out two tests to see how effective each heater is at warming a small room. Firstly, they measure the temperature at a series of set distances away from the heater. This helps them ascertain whether it needs to be placed near you or if it can heat the whole space from afar. Like most modern heaters, this one uses a thermostat to control output, so all you need to do is set the target temperature and the Kiasa will do the rest. It also has two power bands – 600W or 1,200W – which deliver extra control when outdoor temperatures are either super-cold or just a bit chilly.Direct warmth isn’t the only advantage of infrared. As there’s no fan, the Princess heater was extremely quiet, even on its highest setting. Plus, it was the most energy efficient of all the heaters we’ve tested – and by a long way. On its highest setting it used just 13p of electricity over the course of an hour. From the control panel you can turn the heater on or off, change the target temperature, and trigger the Wi-Fi pairing mode. With the Princess Glass Smart Panel Heater on maximum setting, I measured the middle of the panel at 58C and the top at 78C, with the controls sub 25C. That’s good, as you won’t burn yourself if you need to adjust the temperature and don’t want to use the app. The best infrared heaters you can buy in 2023 1. Klarstein HeatPal Marble Infrared Heater: Best infrared heater for extended use

There’s no fan in this model, but warm air rising causes air movement, which I measured at 0.52m/s. It’s enough of a breeze to gently warm a room through, even if it’s not immediately felt in the way that a fan heater’s directional blast is. If you’ve ever been to the Alps in winter, you will have experienced the sudden warmth on your body when the sun peeks through the clouds. One minute it’s freezing cold, the next you’re unzipping your skiing clothes because it almost feels like a summer’s day on the Costa del Sol. That, in a nutshell, best describes how infrared heating works. They take longer to warm up, but they also continue to give out heat after they have been switched off. They are generally more economical to run than a fan heater or a convection heater. However, the fins still get quite hot so keep children from touching the radiators while they warm.” Convection heatersThis model comes with two heat settings, 500W and 1,000W, a thermostat with a wide temperature range up to a maximum temperature of 65°C, and oscillation to spread the warmth far and wide around a room.

If you need to use an electric heater, place it in the part of the room you want to warm, a safe distance from you and any furniture. Use the heater’s thermostat and timer to avoid using more energy than you need.” We would advise people to only use these devices when they are in attendance and awake. It’s important that you never leave them unattended or on overnight in case something happens. Alternatively, people could warm the room before going to bed.” What type of heater is best? Infrared heaters made with marble are fast gaining popularity, because of this material’s remarkable heat-retaining and distribution properties, along with the ability to remain warm for quite a while after being turned off. Some portable, stand-mounted models, such as the Klarstein HeatPal we review below, use raw, unpolished marble to help radiate the heat generated by the internal coil, while companies such as Elith produce beautifully polished slabs of high-quality marble with infrared coils behind them. Polished marble panel heaters aren’t cheap to buy or install, but they’re unquestionably the most elegant way to heat a home.

In This Article

Gas is a cheaper fuel than standard rate electricity, so if you have gas central heating, it will generally be cheaper to use than an electric heater,” she explains. “If you don’t want to heat the whole home, turn your radiator valves lower in the rooms you’re not heating and higher in the rooms you are. The Princess is a great option that won’t break the bank – and, at just 350 watts, it’s cheap to run, too. From the app, you can set the heat mode (high or low), temperature target and toggle standby mode. The app also gives you schedules, so you can set the Princess Glass Smart Panel Heater up to work much like a smart thermostat. Once you’ve settled on the best type of heater for your room and needs, there are a few extra things to consider. We then test the heaters in various rooms and locations around our home – a home office, a living room and a cold, poorly insulated room. For the panel and bar heaters, we put them behind a work desk to see how well they warm the legs and waist area. We then move the products to a typical sitting room position – the panels are positioned a couple of metres from our seating position, and we time how long it took for the infrared rays to reach us. We also time how long it takes for the heaters to reach full heating capacity. Finally, we also test each unit in a small but very cold room to see how effective they are at projecting heat across an exceedingly cold environment.

If you’re after an infrared heater that retains and emits a certain amount of heat once it’s been turned off, try the Klarstein HeatPal for size. The HeatPal works just like an oil-filled model, only it’s much more energy-efficient – and, in many ways, more effective. This is because it has a very heavy slab of unpolished Mongolian marble sitting behind the grille, which is heated by the element behind it to produce an amazing amount of heat that’s pushed outward and upward. For instance, where a typical 1.2kW fan heater could cost upwards of 50p per hour to run, an infrared heater will typically cost a fraction of that sum, around 15p at today’s higher energy prices. The heater can shut off automatically by setting time schedules in the app or using the timer function The HeatPal feels warm near the top about four minutes after turning it on, taking a further ten minutes or so for the marble to emit a small amount of infrared warmth. However, about 30 minutes after having been switched on, the marble reaches full temperature and you can really feel the effects from several feet away.

Out of the box, the panel heater can either be wall-mounted or it can have feet screwed into place so that it can be free-standing. With the latter, the feet are fiddly to screw into place and the instruction manual doesn’t tell you which way round they should go; it just says that if the heater is tilting, you’ve got them on incorrectly.