The 7 Best Space Heaters of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Thom Dunn

Thom Dunn is a writer focusing on home heating and cooling. He once blew up a power strip with a space heater and a Marshall half-stack.

We’ve added the De’longhi HMP1500 Mica Panel Heater as a new pick for anyone hoping to save some floor space.

Whether you need to offset the chill in a drafty bedroom or give your home’s heating system a little boost, it’s always good to have a space heater on hand. We’ve researched over 100 models and tested 75 since 2011, and we think the Vornado VH200 is the best space heater for most people. A lot of space heaters can make you feel as if you’re sitting in front of a hair dryer. But our picks can warm an entire room faster and more comfortably than other models, while still offering plenty of reliable safety features, just in case.

The Vornado VH200 offers the best combination of power, comfort, and quietness. It heats a room faster and more evenly than other models we tested.

The Vornado AVH10 was the most powerful space heater we tested, and it has a few thoughtful details that set it apart from others. But it tends to cost more.

This effective portable heater works quickly and lasts for years. But its narrow stream of hot air doesn’t feel as comfortable as the heat from models that warm a whole room, and it lacks some safety features.

Oil-filled radiators are silent but slow. The De’Longhi TRD40615T is the best of its type because it’s sturdier than competitors, with an exterior that stays cooler to the touch.

This attractive space heater is able to oscillate, which helps to spread the heat quickly and evenly around the room.

This wide, tall, flat heater takes up surprisingly little space in the room—especially if you choose to mount it on the wall.

If you need an electric heater for the bathroom, the Dreo DR-HSH004A will do the job safely.

The Vornado VH200 offers the best combination of power, comfort, and quietness. It heats a room faster and more evenly than other models we tested.

The Vornado VH200 has been our top pick since 2018. That’s because in speed and overall effectiveness, it has consistently surpassed nearly every other space heater we’ve tested, delivering an immediate temperature increase that builds steadily and evenly across the room over time. The VH200 is incredibly simple to use, with just three buttons (including the power switch). It’s also quieter than most other ceramic heaters we’ve tried, emitting only a soft, fanlike whir, and it’s compact enough to tuck away in a corner. Plus, it has all of the safety features we look for, along with a generous five-year warranty, just in case anything goes wrong.

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The Vornado AVH10 was the most powerful space heater we tested, and it has a few thoughtful details that set it apart from others. But it tends to cost more.

The Vornado AVH10 is a lot like the VH200, with a few added features, such as a digital display, a convenient cord-wrapping post (for easy storage), and a countdown clock when you turn it off (for added safety). This model made the room hotter and warmed it faster than our top pick, but it also didn’t distribute that warm air quite as evenly. And it usually costs around $30 to $50 more. But the AVH10 is a great alternative if you find it for a good price, or if you really want those extra features.

This effective portable heater works quickly and lasts for years. But its narrow stream of hot air doesn’t feel as comfortable as the heat from models that warm a whole room, and it lacks some safety features.

We’ve been recommending the Lasko 754200 Ceramic Heater since 2013, and it remains one of the cheapest and most reliable space heaters you can find. It warms up faster than most fan heaters we tested, and it has a compact, lightweight body (about the size of a loaf of bread) and can fit right under your desk. This heater’s focused stream of hot air is great for warming the area directly in front of it, but it’s not as good at spreading the heat around. So the Lasko 754200 is a better choice for a small bedroom or an office than for a large room. But overall, this is a consistent, reliable, and affordable powerhouse.

Oil-filled radiators are silent but slow. The De’Longhi TRD40615T is the best of its type because it’s sturdier than competitors, with an exterior that stays cooler to the touch.

Most space heaters can deliver quick heat to a single person, but oil-filled radiators are better at heating a whole room for a longer duration, and the De’Longhi TRD40615T is the best of its kind. Like most oil-filled radiators, this heater warms up much more slowly than a ceramic model. But it also retains that heat longer, providing a cozier, more-ambient warmth throughout the room. The TRD40615T’s burly, all-metal construction is more durable than that of our plastic picks, but it does take up more space.

This attractive space heater is able to oscillate, which helps to spread the heat quickly and evenly around the room.

The Dreo Solaris Slim H3 (DR-HSH003) stands out not only for its stylish appearance but also because it’s the rare oscillating heater that actually succeeds at spreading the warm air evenly around the room. It can’t warm you up quite as quickly as some of our other picks, but its steady arc of motion creates comfortable and uniform heating throughout your space. It also just looks great, with a sleek design and simple controls that let you choose between basic heat settings and a specific, dialed-in temperature. Plus, it has all of the usual safety features that we look for. It is still technically a tower fan, though, so it’s not fun to clean.

This wide, tall, flat heater takes up surprisingly little space in the room—especially if you choose to mount it on the wall.

If you’re strapped for space, or you just don’t like having large, hot objects sitting on your floor, the De’longhi HMP1500 Mica Panel Heater is a great choice. It offers a wider, taller heating area—enough to warm several people sitting in a medium- to large-size room—but the heater itself is hardly more than 2 inches wide. Think of it as a big, hot picture frame. You can roll it from room to room on the included coaster feet, or save even more space by using the handle on the back to mount this heater up on a wall. Just be warned: The front panel gets really hot to touch—all the more reason to get it up off the floor.

If you need an electric heater for the bathroom, the Dreo DR-HSH004A will do the job safely.

The Dreo DR-HSH004A are the most effective and—more important—safe way to bring some infrared warmth to your bathroom. Although you should still try to keep your space heater far away from water, this model comes with an ALCI safety plug as well as overheat protection, for added safety in the case of stray splashes. In our tests, it did a great job of warming up the cold bathroom tile, too, and it even comes with a remote control so you can heat things up before you get out of bed.

Whichever space heater you choose, there are some common safety concerns that many people overlook: You can’t use any space heater with an extension cord, and you shouldn’t leave any heater unattended. And most heaters can’t be used in a bathroom, unless they’re specifically designed for it. We go over these and other considerations in detail in our section on space-heater care, maintenance, and safety.

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We’ve tested more than 80 different space heaters since we first started reviewing them, back in 2011. Over the years, we’ve interviewed experts from places including the Office of the Fire Commissioner in British Columbia and the global safety certification company UL. We’ve also spoken with product designers and engineers from companies such as De’Longhi and Vornado. And we’ve pored over reams of data and research from the U.S. Fire Administration (PDF), the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Fire Protection Association, among others.

The current version of this guide was written by staff writer Thom Dunn, who has also written Wirecutter’s guides to portable air conditioners, window air conditioners, heat pumps, and outdoor patio heaters. And he’s learned firsthand that plugging a space heater and a half-stack Marshall guitar amp into the same power strip can cause some pyrotechnics (and not the cool, rock ’n’ roll kind).

Space heaters are great for supplementing the heat in certain rooms. Maybe there’s an area of your home that has noticeably poorer heat distribution. Perhaps your office is too cold, and you want a small, personal heater to keep at your desk. Or maybe you want to save money—and energy—by spot-heating a room (or yourself), as opposed to filling the entire space with hot air or pumping heat into a room with no one in it. A typical 1,500-watt space heater costs just under $1.50 to run for a full eight-hour workday, assuming average US electric rates for fall 2023—a fair price to pay for a little more comfort in the cooler months.

For that same reason, however, you probably shouldn’t rely on a space heater as the primary heating source for your entire home. For that, you’ll want to winterize your windows and look into getting a heat pump. But if you can’t do that, or you still have a room that just won’t warm up sufficiently, then a space heater could be your savior.

If you do think you need a new space heater, we recommend getting one before the cold weather hits. Retailers usually stock them seasonally, and that means prices and availability can fluctuate wildly in the winter months.

It’s also worth noting that space heaters can be dangerous. In the US alone, there are more than 1,000 home fires each year, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Though we try to limit our picks to models that include certain built-in safety technologies, you should be aware that getting a space heater—any space heater—could still mean you’re bringing a potentially deadly hazard into your home. If you’re not sure whether a space heater will work for your specific situation, our section on space-heater care, maintenance, and safety could help you make your decision.

Space heaters can be dangerous—we combed the manuals and spoke to experts to get advice on using them safely.

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A good space heater should make you feel more comfortable. That may sound obvious, but a space heater needs to do more than just keep you warm. It should also be convenient and easy to use, as well as safe. Below we list some of the things we look for when selecting models:

You’ll notice that we didn’t mention anything about efficiency or power. That’s because, technically speaking, most electric space heaters put out the same amount of heat: 1,500 watts (about 5,110 BTU) on high and 750 watts (about 2,560 BTU) on low. They’re all technically 100% efficient, too, which means that every watt they use gets converted directly into heat. The difference between a good space heater and a lousy one is how well it moves that warmth around the room—plus the aforementioned safety and user-experience factors.

When it came time for testing, we let each space heater run in a room for four hours, and we took measurements on things like:

While the heaters ran, we also took subjective notes about our experiences with the controls, as well as the overall comfort and feeling of the room.

The Vornado VH200 offers the best combination of power, comfort, and quietness. It heats a room faster and more evenly than other models we tested.

The Vornado VH200 offers the best overall combination of heating speed and distribution, safety features, easy operation, and affordability. Plus, this heater is just generally pleasant to live with, thanks to its simple controls and quiet performance. There’s a reason it’s been our top pick since 2018.

The VH200 can warm a room faster than most other heaters. Vornado fans have a reputation for powerful air circulation, and the company’s space heaters are no exception. In our tests, the VH200 raised the temperature by nearly 20 degrees in just two hours. The only other models that came close to that were also from Vornado.

The VH200 also spreads that heat more evenly around the room. We measured an average difference of about 6 degrees between the sensor we placed 3 feet away from the VH200 and the one that was 6 feet away; that makes the VH200 one of the most consistent models we tested. This all-encompassing and diffuse heat felt natural, not forced, and it made the room feel more comfortable overall. Other Vornado models produced a little more heat, but there was a difference of about 8 to 10 degrees between their sensors. Our Lasko budget pick was a little more consistent than the VH200, but it didn’t produce nearly as much heat overall.

It’s surprisingly quiet, too. Despite its abundant heating ability, the VH200 operated with a quiet murmur that we didn’t find distracting or unpleasant. At the heater’s highest setting, we recorded a decibel level of 45 dBA at a distance of 3 feet and 44 dBA at 6 feet, making the VH200 quieter than most of the other radiant or ceramic heaters we tested. It’s still louder than a radiator, yet it’s also quieter than a household refrigerator (PDF).

The VH200 also comes with all of the safety features we look for, and more. The VH200 is UL-certified, with a tip-over switch that shuts off whenever the heater tilts off the ground, as well as built-in overheat protection. The overheat switch also activates when the airflow gets blocked, as an added layer of protection. The 6-foot-long cable gives you plenty of room to plug the heater into a wall outlet—not a power strip!—and still bring it near you. (You should never plug a space heater into a power strip!) During our tests, the exterior plastic shell stayed relatively cool, at around 95 degrees. Even the heat source behind the grille stayed under 140 degrees, making this one of the coolest models we tested. You still probably wouldn’t want to touch the grille at that temperature, but luckily, the fins are placed close enough together that even a toddler’s curious fingers will have a hard time reaching inside. To be clear, space-heater safety largely depends on using the heater correctly. But all of these features are still reassuring.

The controls are simple and straightforward, too. This space heater has a power button, three “mode” settings (one more than the typical low and high settings), and a thermostat dial with seven settings. And there’s also a built-in thermostatic climate-control feature, which is a bit less obvious but still nice to have. To activate it, simply turn the thermostat knob past your ideal temperature level. Then turn it back, counterclockwise, until you hear a click, and the VH200 will self-regulate to maintain the temperature where you want it, within about 1 degree. In our tests, we were surprised to find that this feature actually worked as advertised, too.

The VH200 has a slim, lightweight design, so it’s easy to tuck away. At 3.5 pounds, the VH200 is about the size of a coffee maker, and it can easily fit under your chair or desk. It’s not a particularly attractive piece of home decor, but it won’t stand out as an eyesore, either, and that’s pretty much exactly what you want. It’s also pleasantly pear-shaped, so it’s harder to tip over (and thus safer to use overall).

If anything goes wrong, Vornado offers the best warranty we’ve seen. The vast majority of space heaters are guaranteed for only a year, if that. But the VH200, like all Vornado products, has a five-year warranty—a generous coverage length that makes the VH200 feel like an even more reliable investment. And the company has a reliable reputation for delivering on these warranties.

The VH200 doesn’t come with a remote control or a timer feature. Either one would be a nice added convenience, and a timer would be particularly nice, since it could turn the heater off after you’ve fallen asleep, for example. You can, however, plug the VH200 into one of our smart-plug picks, which could replicate some of these same controls.

The VH200 doesn’t oscillate, and you can’t tilt the fan to aim the heat in a specific direction. To be clear, the VH200 outperformed every oscillating space heater we tested, and it still did a better job of distributing the warmth than any model with a directional heat source. But we also recognize that some people are skeptical of the VH200’s air-circulation claims. And some folks just really enjoy having something that blasts the heat directly at them, even for a brief moment. This is not that heater.

It doesn’t have a digital (or even numeric) thermostat, either. The VH200 could be frustrating for anyone who’s hoping to keep the room at a specific temperature. You can still set the thermostat knob to “4” if that’s where you feel most comfortable, but there’s no way to translate that directly to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (or whatever the actual temperature is).

The VH200 also lacks a fan-only mode. This is really a bummer only because room fans are Vornado’s primary area of expertise, and so the lack of a fan-only mode prevents this model from becoming a year-round companion for home climate control.

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The Vornado AVH10 was the most powerful space heater we tested, and it has a few thoughtful details that set it apart from others. But it tends to cost more.

The Vornado AVH10 is similar to our top pick in almost every way, from its powerful performance to its generous five-year warranty. And it has the added benefit of a digital display screen, along with a few other thoughtful bonus features, including a convenient cord-wrapping post (for tidier storage). This heater does tend to cost more, though.

The AVH10’s digital display lets you dial in a more-precise temperature. While the temperature settings on the VH200 are more of a vibe, the AVH10 clearly displays the exact temperature in the room. And the large buttons are convenient and easy to use, even in the dark. In our tests, that onboard thermostat proved to be pretty accurate, too, though it did occasionally get confused between the temperature of the room and the temperature of the hot air it was pumping out. Fortunately, it was quick to self-correct.

It also has a fan-only setting. This could make the AVH10 a more worthwhile investment for people who want year-round climate control, or it could simply help you move the rest of the heat more efficiently around your home.

However, the AVH10 doesn’t distribute the heat quite as evenly. In our tests, the AVH10 increased the room temperature by a whopping 24 degrees over the course of an hour … at least when we measured it from 3 feet away. When we measured the temperature from 6 feet away on a diagonal, it had increased by only about 7 degrees, resulting in a temperature range of 16 degrees across just a few feet of the room.

It also tends to cost more than our top pick. The digital display and the cord-wrapping feature on the AVH10 model currently add a premium of about $30 over the cost of the VH200. Still, if you’re willing to pay that much for similar (albeit less even) heating performance, the AVH10 is a fine alternative.

If the AVH10 is not available, the Vornado AWRH and Vornado TAVH10 are nearly identical, with the addition of timer capabilities and remote control.

This effective portable heater works quickly and lasts for years. But its narrow stream of hot air doesn’t feel as comfortable as the heat from models that warm a whole room, and it lacks some safety features.

We’ve been recommending the Lasko 754200 Ceramic Heater as a pick since 2013. It’s not the quietest, the best-looking, or even safest option out there. But it is powerful and affordable, and that’s really all you need.

The Lasko 754200 is really, really good at blasting heat directly at you. You can feel the concentrated jet of warmth almost as soon as you turn on this space heater. In our tests, it performed nearly as well as our top pick, although it didn’t fill the room with the same kind of soothing, ambient heat. The overall experience of the Lasko 754200 is not unlike having someone point a hair dryer at you, for better or for worse.

It’s also easy to use, and it’s even easier to store away. The Lasko 754200 has two large dials on the top—one to control the power output, the other to control the heat setting (high, low, or fan). And that’s it. This heater is about the size of a loaf of bread, and it weighs only about 3 pounds, so you can stash it pretty much anywhere.

Plus, the Lasko 754200 is incredibly cheap. The Lasko 754200 tends to cost around $30 to $40—about half as much as our top pick. It tends to last, too.

But it doesn’t have a tip-over protection switch. This is a pretty standard safety feature for portable space heaters. Tipped-over heaters tend to overheat, and this Lasko model’s upright stance is not the most stable. But it does have overheat protection, and it’s still ETL-certified, which gives us some comfort. Even so, be very careful.

The Lasko 754200 is also one of the loudest electric heaters we tested. It’s about 7 dBA louder than our top pick, but it’s still below the 60 decibels that the CDC uses to define “normal conversation” level. It’s not necessarily an unpleasant sound, either, though it is gravelly enough that you might find it irritating after a while.

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Oil-filled radiators are silent but slow. The De’Longhi TRD40615T is the best of its type because it’s sturdier than competitors, with an exterior that stays cooler to the touch.

Oil-filled radiators are great at retaining heat, and they typically produce a more natural-feeling, ambient warmth throughout a room. If that’s what you’re looking for, the De’Longhi TRD40615T is the best option available. These kinds of heaters work more slowly than our other picks, and they don’t produce as much concentrated, directional heat. But they’re great at keeping the room cozy for longer periods of time.

The TRD40615T builds up heat and keeps working even after you turn it off. Unlike ceramic heaters, which cool off immediately after powering down, oil-filled radiators, like this one, are designed to retain enough thermal mass that they keep emitting heat even when the power is off. In our tests, the De’Longhi TRD40615T was able to keep a room between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours without using any electricity. Of course, it still took a while to build up that much heat in the first place (we’ll get to that).

Like all oil-filled radiators, it’s completely silent, too. Though all of our other picks rely on a fan to move the warmth around, the TRD40615T’s ambient approach to heating means there’s no extraneous noise. If you ever find yourself needing a space heater in a music recording studio—like I do—this is the one to go with. However, you shouldn’t plug it into the same outlet as your Marshall half-stack, unless you really want to see that outlet explode. (You don’t.)

Also like other oil-filled radiators, the TRD40615T takes a while to warm up. The De’Longhi TRD40615T generates its mighty thermal mass by heating up the oil inside of it. But, like watching a pot of water boil, this also takes some time—sometimes a half-hour or more before you feel any warmth radiating from the machine at all. Even after an hour, it still might raise the room temperature by only a few degrees. If you’re looking for instantaneous heating, this is not the pick for you.

It’s larger than our other picks, too. The TRD40615T is about the same size as a suitcase or, perhaps more accurately, a traditional floor-mounted radiator. This heater is long, 6.6 inches wide, and 25 inches tall, and it weighs 25 pounds. If you live in a cramped space, the TRD40615T may take up room you can’t spare (though the retractable wheels do make it surprisingly easy to move around). This heater is more well balanced than other oil-filled radiators we’ve tested, but that tall metal mass can still be top-heavy, so you’ll want to make sure it doesn’t topple over on anything important.

All radiators are hot to the touch, and this De’Longhi model is no exception. After we ran this model for four hours during our tests, we measured the exterior case at a whopping 180 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot enough to burn your skin on contact—yet it’s still significantly cooler than the 230 degrees we measured emanating from the hard-to-reach interior fins. This one is a lot cooler than any other oil-filled radiator we’ve ever tested (though that might be a … cold comfort?).

Some users have complained about the smell. Brand-new oil-filled radiators sometimes emit a noxious stench from the oil filling that remains on the surface of the heater after manufacturing. Once the oil evaporates, the smell should disappear. If you have particularly sensitive olfactory glands, we recommend running this heater outside to let it off-gas before bringing it inside (keep it dry and away from dirt or grass if you do this).

The TRD40615T comes with just a one-year warranty. But, hey, that’s better than nothing.

This attractive space heater is able to oscillate, which helps to spread the heat quickly and evenly around the room.

If you really love the feel of an oscillating heater wafting the warmth over you, get the Dreo Solaris Slim H3 (DR-HSH003). This sleek spinning tower has a slightly sci-fi vibe, but it performed nearly as well as our top pick—both in how well it warmed the room and in how evenly it distributed that warmth. We’re not typically keen on oscillating heaters or tower heaters, but if you’re determined to get one, the Solaris Slim H3 is the best of both worlds.

The Solaris Slim H3 is the rare oscillating heater that actually distributes the heat uniformly around the whole room. In our tests, we measured an average of less than 1 degree of difference in room temperature from the monitors we placed at 3 feet in front of the heater and 6 feet diagonal from it. In other words, the 70-degree oscillation arc on this heater was comparable to the air circulation of a Vornado.

But oscillating heaters are still more prone to breaking. To be clear, this isn’t a known problem we’ve encountered with this specific model—at least not yet (though we will continue testing it, just to be sure). In general, we tend to prefer heaters with fewer moving parts, since that means there are fewer things to worry about breaking over time.

The Solaris Slim H3 also uses slightly more energy on “low” than other heaters. For some reason, Dreo designed this model to run at 900 watts on low, rather than at 750 watts (common with other heaters). This could make you feel a little more toasty, which is nice, but it could also cost more to run, which is less nice.

It’s technically a tower heater, too, which means it could be harder to clean. We stopped recommending tower fans for cooling back in 2018 because we found them so frustratingly difficult to clean. While we’ve had more positive experiences with tower heaters, we still don’t think it’s an ideal design. Fortunately, the crevices on the Solaris Slim H3 are pretty easy to access and clean. And if anything goes wrong, this heater has a built-in automatic-shutoff system, so the hot air and dust won’t combust into bigger problems.

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This wide, tall, flat heater takes up surprisingly little space in the room—especially if you choose to mount it on the wall.

If you need to save floor space, or you just want to warm up a wider swath of the room, the De’longhi HMP1500 Mica Panel Heater should do the trick. It’s larger than most of our other picks, but you can push it back or hang it up to make more room, without having to sacrifice any heating comfort. The controls are even more basic than those on our other picks, too—but if you just need heat whenever you want, this model is more than enough to do the job.

The HMP1500 is wider and thinner than our other picks. This De’longhi is nearly twice as tall and twice as wide as either of our Vornado picks, providing nearly 400 square inches of heating space. That might sound huge and intrusive, but not to worry—it’s only about 2¼ inches wide, almost like a large picture frame. Even if you attach the rolling wheel attachments (more on that below), it extends the width to only about 10 inches for a narrow strip at either end. Again, that’s not much larger than our Vornado picks, and it’s much easier to work around. But the large panel size means the HMP1500 can heat a lot more people, too.

That size means it heats the room more consistently, too. In our tests, there was never more than a one-degree difference across our temperature monitors, whether they were placed directly in front of the HMP1500 or off to the side. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a huge flat panel blasting out infrared heat provides much more reliable warmth than a heater that needs a fan or an oscillating motor.

The HMP1500 can also be mounted on the wall. If you don’t want to deal with those 10-by-1-inch wheel feet on the bottom of the heater, the HMP1500 also comes with a handle and a few drywall screws, so you can attach it to the wall, saving even more space in the room. You can easily switch between both options, too—just lift it off the wall handle and roll it into the other room for warmth. The small white wall mount is fairly nondescript, too, and it can easily blend into the room if you choose to put your heater away for the warmer months.

The HMP1500 has only two knobs, to control the most basic settings. This heater has only two knobs on the side: one to select between high and low power settings (maxing out at 1,500 watts or 750 watts, respectively), and one to fine-tune the heat within that setting on a scale from 1 to 6. There’s no built-in thermostat or Wi-Fi connection to over-complicate things—you just turn a knob, and you get some heat. If you really need a timer option, you can always plug it into a smart plug.

It barely makes any noise, either. We tried to measure the volume of this heater in our tests, but our decibel reader couldn’t pick up anything above the basic room tone. Sensitive ears may notice a low electrical hum, as with any high-wattage electronics. But otherwise, the HMP-1500 is essentially silent.

But the surface temperature can get really hot. The middle of the heating panel was radiating around 300 degrees Fahrenheit after we let it run for a full hour on high. That’s hot enough to leave a mark. The backside was much cooler, at around 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which was about standard compared with the other heater cases we measured. If you’re worried about the heat—particularly if you have pets or small children running around—you might want to consider mounting this one on the wall.

If you need an electric heater for the bathroom, the Dreo DR-HSH004A will do the job safely.

Placing high-voltage electrical equipment where it can get wet is generally something that’s frowned upon. But if you’re tired of facing freezing bathroom tiles when you step out of the shower in the morning, the Dreo DR-HSH004A is the best choice to warm your water closet while mitigating the risk.

The Dreo DR-HSH004A is one of the only space heaters we’ve found that comes equipped with an ALCI plug. This type of plug works in conjunction with a GFCI outlet (which you hopefully already have in your bathroom, if it’s up to code) to prevent the electrical current from going somewhere it shouldn’t—like, say, into a puddle of water. This safety feature is what specifically sets these heaters apart for low-risk bathroom usage.

It comes with all of the other standard safety features that we look for, too. The DR-HSH004A has built-in overheat protection, as well as a tip-over switch, so you don’t have to worry about it falling face-first into a puddle near the shower. Of course, even if that does happen, the ALCI plug should catch the problem before it turns into something worse. But you can bathe more easily knowing that there are multiple layers of protection in place.

You can even control the powerful heating on the DR-HSH004A remotely. In our tests, this heater warmed the room just as well as our other Dreo pick, making it one of the better models we tested. And it comes with several different heating modes, including an Eco setting; all of them can be selected using the included remote control, so you can make sure the bathroom’s actually warm before you step inside.

But you should still try to keep it away from water. Even with all of the thoughtful safety features on the DR-HSH004A, you’ll still want to mitigate the risk of water exposure, if possible. The heater’s instruction manual explicitly states that you should “never locate [this] heater where it may fall into a bathtub or other water container,” and that it should not be used “in the immediate surroundings of a bath, a shower or a swimming pool.” In other words, just because the DR-HSH004A may be safer in the event of an accident, that doesn’t mean you should willingly expose it to water. Don’t even splash it, if you can avoid it—water and electricity tend to make for a terrible combination.

Space heaters can be dangerous—we combed the manuals and spoke to experts to get advice on using them safely.

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If you want a space heater that also functions as a nice piece of home decor, the Vornado Vheat offers all of the standard perks of our other Vornado picks (including the warranty), with the added bonus of a sturdy metal build and delightfully retro design. It’s a nice choice if you’re willing to trade a little sizzle for style.

We’ve also tested a variety of other Vornado models over the years that all performed well in our tests, but they weren’t quite as all-around excellent as our picks. The Vornado Velocity 5R utilizes the company’s “Velocity Tuned Heat” technology, which supposedly helps the heat move farther and faster; we didn’t notice that much of a difference, but it still worked pretty well. The Vornado VH10 is nearly identical to our top pick, with an added ledge for coil-wrapping and a few other subtle control tweaks that we just really didn’t like as much. It works fine though. Similarly, the Vornado AWRH and Vornado TAVH10 are both variants on our runner-up pick with added remote control and timer capabilities.

The Lasko CD08200 Ceramic Bathroom Heater is another reliable bathroom heater, with a single button on top that’s huge and hard to miss, even in that groggy morning daze. It also has built-in overheat protection, in addition to the ALCI plug—which is good, because it’s prone to overheating.

If you’d prefer a semi-permanent installation in your bathroom, the wall-mounted Dreo WH517S Smart Panel Heater is another good choice. It also has an ALCI plug, as well as smart- home capabilities, but it costs nearly as much as our other Dreo bathroom heater pick.

We liked the Honeywell HHF360V Surround Heater well enough, though the “surround heating” wasn’t quite as even and consistent as we’d hoped. The plastic design also felt a little clunky and cheap. It could be a good budget option, if you can find it at the right price.

Unlike our other picks, the Sunkos Portable Electric Space Heater uses far infrared heat, which is typically better at penetrating human skin—the kind of warmth you can truly feel in your bones (even if it doesn’t heat the rest of the room quite as well). It’s also completely silent. At roughly two feet tall and wide and only two inches thick, it can be a little wobbly, and also tends to get hotter to touch than other models we’ve tested. But overall, it’s a decent choice if you’re craving warmth that goes beyond skin deep, though it might not be the best choice for homes with kids or pets.

The Lasko FH500 All Season Comfort Control Tower was a pick for many years, and it’s still the best (and largest) tower heater we’ve tested. We still think it’s great, but we’re bullish on tower fans in general.

The oscillating Vornado OSCTH1 looks sort of like the obelisk from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it did a great job of providing even, powerful heat distribution. But we have heard some complaints about the oscillating gears causing all sorts of problems (a common issue with any oscillating heater or fan).

We previously recommended the Honeywell UberHeat Ceramic Heater HCE200W, and we still think it works pretty well for a loud, cheap fireball, if that’s what you’re looking for.

The Dreo Solaris 718 Tower Heater DR-HSH008 is supposed to be a newer version of our oscillating Dreo pick that produced some surprisingly uneven heating throughout the room. It also dehumidified our test space more than any other heater we tested (though that may be a perk for some people).

The neat part about the Honeywell VersaHeat HHF260 bathroom heater is that you can position it horizontally or vertically, depending on how you want the heat to spread. Unfortunately, in both orientations, it still performed poorly in our tests.

The desktop-size Vornado Velocity 1 is a “personal” space heater that maxes out at 750 watts. It’s also one of the worst Vornados we’ve ever tested. If you want something cheap, just get our budget pick from Lasko.

The Vornado MVH is almost identical to our top pick, and it works almost as well, too—unless the overheat switch gets activated, which tends to brick the entire thing.

The tiltable Vornado Glide reminded us aesthetically of Prince Robot IV from the comic book Saga. But it took a while to warm up, and it felt like a constant safety concern (also like Prince Robot IV).

The Atomi Smart Space Tower Heater is the first space heater we’ve tested with built-in smart-home capabilities. Unfortunately, those don’t really add anything to the user experience that you can’t get just as easily by pairing the Vornado VH200 with one of our smart-plug picks.

If you want something that looks like a cheap Dyson knockoff but still costs about the same as a Dyson, you could get the Westinghouse 2-in-1 Digital Bladeless Fan with Heater WSFBLA018BK. That’s about the only circumstance where it would make sense for anyone to buy this heater.

The Amazon Basics Portable Digital Radiator was cooler to the touch than our current oil-filled radiator pick from De’Longhi, but that’s because it raised the room temperature by only 4 degrees after two hours. Disappointing performance and safety concerns made this model a quick dismissal.

We’ve also tested several other oil-filled radiators from De’Longhi, including the Comfort Temp Full Room Radiant Heater KH390715CB and the Silent System EW7707CM. But we found that their features distracted from the simplicity that makes our De’Longhi pick so good.

We’ve also tested several other Lasko heaters, including the Lasko Ellipse Tower Heater CT18950 and Tabletop Heater CD12950; the Lasko CW210 Oscillating Bladeless Ceramic Heater; the Lasko FHV820 Oscillating Hybrid Fan and Space Heater; and the Lasko CC23630 Elite Collection Revolution Ceramic Heater. They were all perfectly mediocre in their own slightly distinct ways.

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We cannot stress this enough: Space heaters can be dangerous. Though modern space heaters are generally much safer than older models with open heating elements, they’re still not without risk. Even if you follow all of the instructions—and even if you buy one of the models we recommend, which all boast certified safety features—it’s still too easy to make a mistake that could lead to catastrophic consequences. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, portable heaters are involved in more than 1,000 fires per year, resulting in an annual average of about 50 deaths and dozens of injuries. The data from the National Fire Protection Association is even more dire; it reported that space heaters were involved in almost 90% of home heating fire deaths between 2014 and 2018, and that they caused more than a billion dollars in property damage.

Generally speaking, you should always follow the safety instructions in the manual that came with your space heater. To help you mitigate the risks, we’ve also written a separate guide with some additional advice, including:

We were initially skeptical of the Boldr Kelvin, a sleek new wall-mounted heater that looks like a literal Black Mirror. The standard size model maxes out around 400 watts, which is less than ⅓ of the power output of most space heaters on high—a surprising move, considering the hefty price tag. But we were pleasantly surprised at how well it actually performed in our initial tests, thanks to its far infrared heating mechanism and refractive glass surface. We plan to continue testing it as the weather gets colder, and we will update this guide with more complete thoughts.

This article was edited by Harry Sawyers.

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Thom Dunn

Thom Dunn is a staff writer at Wirecutter reporting on heating, cooling, and other home-improvement topics. Sometimes his curiosity gets the best of him, such as when he plugged a space heater and a Marshall guitar amp into the same power strip. Pro tip: Don’t do that.

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