Customer Reviews

Eco-heater 602 High-Efficiency Electric Panel Whole-Room Heater

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(37)

 

 

It was love at first sight, A great looking heater, producing oodles of heat - even in upstate New York, and using 1/3 of the wattage of my baseboard heaters - what's not to love? I picked up six of them and mounted them on various walls around the house.
The honeymoon ended after 18 months. The heater in my bedroom started singing a tuneful but dolorous melody whenever it turned on. A few weeks of that and it sang no more. Curious, I removed it from its wall mounting and discovered large, deep cracks on the surface of its backside. Even more curious, I started removing some of the other heaters. Though only three had scary cracks, all showed some signs of cracking. It did not seem to matter whether they had been mounted on interior or exterior walls. They cracked. I wish the manufacturer had gone to Corning for the ceramic!
Fire hazard, I said to myself.
Divorce was inevitable.

As we try to turn back the temps at night, so we dont heat a 2,000 sq ft house, while we sleep under the covers...I have 2 kids which dont always stay under the covers!

So I used the typical space heaters for a while, ugly as the are, and at 750 or 1500 watts, they kept the room temps up just fine.

Along comes this wall unit, at 400 watts. It attaches to the wall, can be painted to match the room, plugs into any outlet, and one can heat a small room by itself.

While I do not recommend these for primary heating, because they take too long to warm up, I HIGHLY recommend them for seconardy zone heating for bedrooms.

Connecting two of more per room, and you probably could use them for primary heating and *could* take the place of base board heaters. But 2 or 3 panels would take up a lot of space and not look good, thus I do not recommend replacing baseboard heaters with these panels.

These are on simple switches out of the box, there is no thermostat. I have found the Lux WIN100 Smart Temp Fully Programmable Thermostat to be the ultimate solution. Set the times you want the heater on and off, set the temps you want, plug it in, then plug in the heater...and your done for the season.

My house is heated by a propane fireplace. With the cost of propane rising dramatically, I bought three of these heaters last year and used them all winter. I heated my full 1200 square foot living area with those three heaters at an approximate cost of $1 per day. I can't recommend these highly enough. And if you have children or pets, they are very safe--they do get hot, but not hot enough to burn you. Plus, they are totally quiet.
I have recommended these heaters to friends and neighbors.

I have a defective unit and econo heat will give you every excuse in the book not to honor there 18 month warranty, all they will tell you is that you are pass the 30 days. This is not a company you want to do business with, once they have your money they don't care about you and you are stuck with a defective unit with no recourse.The best part is when you question their 18 month warranty the supervisor hung-up on me, now I ask you is this a company you want to business with.

In a word...Hooray. Low energy consumption (400 watts), no tipping over, easy to install, nice toasty heat, this heater has many benefits. My home is heated by a centrally located fireplace (so I'm already a fan of radiant heat) and I use this heater to keep a bedroom warm. Installed this about 1 week ago and so far so good. As promised on the packaging, it really does only take 10 minutes to install.
The only downside is that the panel itself does get reasonably hot, it's true that it's safe enough that you can touch it and not get burnt, but you won't want too do that. I was going to install in a kids room, but had second thoughts after giving it a test run. Also it would have been great for the manufacturer to include information re: direct wire installation or use of a thermostat. ..but these are really minor points compared to having a great heat source that is safely out of the way, mounted to the wall, and efficient.

I bought this heater to install in the nursery so the baby's room would stay warmer overnight while the rest of the house went down to 60 degrees. The house has attic insulation, but no wall insulation, and there are storm windows.

The good about the heater: It is unobtrusive. We have it installed on an interior wall out of the way. It is easy to install; it took about 10 minutes. It keeps the baby's room warmer than the rest of the house. I also like the fact that it uses less power than a standard heater. Not only is it cheaper to run, I have fewer concerns about overloading circuits. I like the fact that it has a paintable surface, although I haven't decided if I am going to paint it. I have heard that painting radiators reduces their efficiency and I don't know if that applies to this heater.

The less than good: We have had this heater on in a rather small room (10 by 10) with a hot water radiator system, and over night it only seems to bring the temperature about 5 degrees above the temperature in the rest of the house. Based on other reviews of this heater and others, I ordered the plug in thermostat. I think I will return it because I won't ever need to turn off the heat because it is too hot. Also, the passive heating means that it takes a while for the heater to have any impact on the temperature of the room. I turn it on at 6 pm so that the room will be comfortable when the central heat goes down to 60 degrees at 10 pm. My final concern is that the heater says it can be mounted at any height, but that it works best closest to the ground -- 6 to 18 inches above the baseboard. I was hoping to install it higher so my baby wouldn't accidentally burn himself on it. Since heat rises, I should have realized this flaw in my logic.

I don't think this is a bad product, it just isn't as good as I wanted it to be for $150.

I was enthusiastic about supporting green technology and saving money on electricity this winter, but unfortunately the eco-heater really needs to go back to the drawing board for some serious improvement. It is just simply low-grade. The heat it puts out would hardly keep you warm if you were standing right next to it. My bedroom is very small, and the eco-heater just did not warm it significantly at all. Too bad, because it seemed like such a great idea. I went instead with a Delongi 'dragon' oil radiator. It has two eco-settings (600, and 800 watts along with 1500), is silent and has a really easy-to-program timer that makes the heat come on for the specific intervals you choose, which saves on electricity.

For some uses this will be fine. It's a low output heater, which is a good fit for some situations. The fact that it's wall mountable helps keep it out of the way. Though at 24" square, it's not really that small. And like other panel convection heaters, it's very quiet (though that also means the heat circulates slowly).

But the price is ridiculous.

And to say it's economical or green to run ... it's no more or less economical than any other electric heater. It's merely low output. You can easily get the same result with any heater by running it less. There's no something for nothing here ... creating a certain amount of heat takes a certain amount of energy.

And, it would be more economical if it had a thermostat to shut itself off when it got to the temperature you wanted.

While not as small or unobtrusive, the DeLonghi HHP1500 Mica Panel Radiator has two power settings and a thermostat, can be wall mounted, and while hot to the touch is not dangerously hot.

The unit did generate heat but only within a 3 foot radius from the wall it was mounted on. After leaving the unit on for over 5 hours, I expected the small (6 x 10) room to warm up a little, but the thermostat in the room showed that the temperature had remained the same.

WARNING - READY THE RETURN POLICY FIRST....

Returning mine today, which according to the return policy, will cost me 20% restocking fee and I have to pay the return shipping.

This heater didn't even heat a small bedroom (12 x 12). After 6 hours, the temp dropped in the room from 69deg (with old electric heater) to 53deg with the ECO-heater.

The flat panel was hot to the touch, so I guess it's a good hand warmer, although a pair of gloves would be cheaper.

Bottom Line: Not a space heater and not worth the money.