Customer Reviews

Bionaire BCH4138-U Digital Triple Ceramic Heater with Galileo

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I've had this heater a few weeks now, and I'm very pleased. I wanted to be able to heat up the bathroom without getting out of bed, so I needed either a timer or a remote. This one has both.

All the features are very cool, and work mostly as described. I'd like to share what I learned after I got it.

I haven't had any problems syncing the remote like the other reviewer. I plugged in the heater and put the batteries in the remote, and followed the instructions to press one button, and off it went.

It heats well, bringing up the temperature of my bathroom very quickly.

I set the remote on top of my home thermostat for a day to test the thermometer, and it was off by one degree. Perfectly acceptable for me. The remote shows the room temperature at all times, even when the heater is off. It has a backlight, which turns on for about ten seconds whenever a key is pressed. After a minute of inactivity, the remote locks itself, to prevent accidental keypresses. To unlock it you hold the mode button for two seconds.

Something not mentioned in the description is the heat settings: Low is 1200W and High is 1500W.

Note that you can turn the heater on without the remote, but only to constant Low or High, not to an Auto (thermostat) setting.

A minor disappointment was the timer function. From the description I was hoping to set a timer so that the heater would turn on every morning at a certain time. Instead, you can only program it to turn on in a certain number of hours, one time. So, if I know the next morning will be cold, I set it the night before, but I have to do it each night. This is probably fine for most people. BTW, when it turns itself on in timer mode, it runs for two hours on High, with a setting of 72F. Apparently you can't change this. It also has a timer to turn itself off after a number of hours, like the Sleep Timer setting on a clock radio.

One really minor surprise was the depth of the unit -- it's not as flat as it looks. From the pictures, you can't tell that the fan intake sticks out a few inches on the back. This was not at all a problem for me, just a surprise. The whole unit is still very compact, maybe the size of a soccer ball. It's also very lightweight; the outer body is all plastic. Mine's gray instead of the white in the picture. The weird orange thing in the middle vent in the picture must be some sort of sensor; mine has it too.

A pleasant surprise is the cool-down feature in Auto (thermostat) mode. When the room temperature has reached your setting, the heater of course turns off. But it seems to shut off the heating elements and just run the fan for maybe a minute, to flush out any residual heat. When I had more primitive heaters I'd do this manually, to cool down the heater and to get all the heat I'd paid for. This one does it automatically.

The only problem I've had is that sometimes on High it shuts itself down. I believe this is because I have it in a confined space and close to two walls, and it thinks it's overheating. I have not had this problem on Low, and I'm sure I wouldn't have it at all if I moved it into a more open space.

In case you're worried about wireless problems, I have 900MHz and 2.4GHz cordless phones, an X10 video sender, an 802.11g wireless network, RF ceiling fan remotes, an RF Dish remote, and other RF products, and I haven't had any issues with the heater and remote.

Oh yeah, and it's really quiet, probably because the fan isn't very powerful. If it's around a corner or there's something else going on, I don't notice that it's running. Since the fan is weak, it doesn't blow heat at you very far, but it still moves air and heat fine. It probably projects heat a foot or two straight out.

The wind chill hit -56 this morning (only -28 otherwise) and fighting the cold trying to come through the brick wall that makes up the back wall of my ground floor basement office is the Bionaire Galileo Digital Triple Ceramic Heater. Not only that, this little heater is winning the war. By that I set the temperature that I want and this little unit hits the mark. Granted, it is rather strange to have a remote for your heater, but the controls are fairly simple. You push "mode" until it unlocks and then you have five choices: high, low, high automatic, low automatic, and off. For the most part automatic is how you want to go and low works fine unless you are trying to play catch up. The three directional heaters are nice because it works perfectly in a corner, in my case underneath the table.

Yes, a timer that would go off every morning to start heating up your designated area before you were up and about would be nice, but it is not that much of a problem to reset it each night and in the morning. It takes less than 10 seconds to do this. This unit will warm things up pretty quick once it gets going, so this is a minor inconvenience at best (especially in terms of what is on the other side of that brick wall down here tonight). The Bionaire Galileo Digital Triple Ceramic Heater is one of those items that once you discover it you wonder why you waited so long to get one. This is the first winter in the Zenith City where I have not been wearing my turtlenecks and sweaters all the time because of what this little unit can do.

I would have given this 5 stars but it took awhile to get the remote control in sync with the unit. I found that if you took the batteries out the remote and put them back in again, the unit will work. It gives off decent heat and heats up a room in no time at all. I have a sun porch that is all windows and has no radiators and it's perfect for that room. Do not let young children near this even when it's not plugged in. My son shoved pennies in it and broke it. It will probably cost more to fix then I paid for it so I might buy another one.

I operate an animal rescue (African hedgehogs) where room temperature is very important. I use three of these heaters at the rescue for supplemental heating at the floor level in our external building (The Hedgiehouse) and the Dispensary (in the lower level of our home). All three have worked remarkably well over the last four years, especially when the outside temperature fell to levels where the heating system in the external building could not handle the cold (20 below zero). The units have proven safe, quiet, and the thermostats reasonably manageable - certainly better than other space heaters we have tried.

I think I received a lemon too. I bought this same brand at a store and the fan was not mounted properly. I returned that one. I bought the same one here on Amazon and when I got it, I noticed that not much air was coming out. I looked from behind the unit and one of the fan blades was broken off. Returning the one I bought at Amazon back too. I definitely think it is not the retailers fault...it's a manufacturing/assembly defect/problem.

I have a sunken den which stays colder than the rest of the house in the winter. We considered putting in a gas auxiliary heater but did not want to compromise the decor. The fireplace produces no appreciable heat. Instead we tried putting this little unobstrusive heater on the hearth, and were surprised when it raised the area temperature five degrees. We can now enjoy the den and entertain without the normal chill during the winter. I really like the remote thermostat, which allows me toprecisely control the temperature. I was so delighted I bought another one.

I ordered this portable space heater last week for use in our pop up camper. We have an infant that camps with us and we like to camp into the fall, so it gets a little chilly at night. We're not looking to turn the camper into a furnace, just something to keep it comfortable.

Upon opening up the box and removing everything, I read the directions that said to put the batteries into the remote first, then plug the unit into the wall. The unit should then beep repeatedly so you can sync the remote to the unit. Well, ours didn't beep repeatedly, it beeped once. I couldn't get the remote to sync. I tried resetting the unit, removing the batteries, etc. I went to Bionaire's website for help, and of course any information on this unit was unavailble.

Before giving in and calling Bionaire for help, I futzed around with it a few more times and came up with a fix. I put the batteries in the remote, then plugged the unit in. I held down the only button on top of the unit and bingo, the remote synced to the unit. Now I have full control of the unit and it's automatic controls via the remote.

I ran the unit for about 30 minutes last night to "cook off" any residue from manufacturing so we don't have to smell it the first time we use it. For as small as it is, it puts out some heat.

We have another camping trip this weekend and the forecast calls for mid 50's overnight, which will be a good test to see how it does to heat our camper.

I may have gotten a lemon, but this thing shuts off and must be reset(by unplugging it) within 5 minutes on low, less time on high setting. Pretty worthless to warm a whole room. At least the risk of it burning the house down would be an act of God. I'm sending this bad boy back!

A friend of mine has one of these and it's been a workhorse. Of particular usefulness is the Galileo remote which has the thermostatic sensor on it. I've tried other brands that had the room temperature sensor on the unit and they were drastically off (sensor too close to the heating element).

Unfortunately, the first unit that I ordered had a bad readout display on one of the temperature digits (you could only read part of the number). I exchanged it for another using Amazon's phenomenally easy exchange procedure (unlike the manufacturer who said the remote was "not under warranty unless I bought it from them directly"). The replacement unit had a fine remote display (which was also accurate to a fraction of a degree), but the heating unit had a permanent buzzing sound that sounded like a transformer. This wasn't a problem in a noisy room, but it was loud enough to disturb sleep in a bedroom.

Look, I can't speak to whatever technical issues / bad luck people are having with this heater - but it is single handedly saving us much $$$$ over the last 2 years. We are about to buy it for friends this Christmas so i thought i'd rave about it some.
1. This is powerful and quiet enough. It can really heat up a large room (our townhome has cathedral 14 ft ceilings throughout, so lots of heat gets lost up there) in a small amount of time and really packs a punch! It's not whisper quiet, but you also don't notice it - so it's perfect.

2. The functions and features work great. We keep it set to a temperature when we go to bed in our bedroom - we put the unit on my wife's side of the bed, and the remote on my side - that way we know the heat will reach all the way over to me. It really does a great job keeping on, getting to your pre-set temp and them autmoatically turning itself off in the middle of the night (however many times that is) - what a great way to keep warm and NOT have to warm the entire rest of the house and waste gas!

Go for it - i HIGHLY recommend it!