Customer Reviews

Soleus Air MS-20A Ceramic Heater with Remote Control

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I live in an old house with no central air & heat, so we heat room by room. This heater is perfect and being able to wall mount is a must with kids around. It's very safe and you can mount it high enough that kids can't reach. Have tried other wall mounts, but this one is best by far. Heats a 12x12 room quickly and well (and with door open to that room, knocks the chill off of adjoining one), even on coldest of nights. Timer is very helpful too. The fans blow well, so circulates air very well.

Only product improvement I could recommend is ability to use an air filter in or on it.

Purchased one to try. Will purchase more for other rooms.

Pros: Wall-mountable; Puts out a good amount of heat; Relatively quiet; Cool to the touch

Cons: Breaks after two months; No thermostat or sophistocated timer; Poor customer service

I'm renting a small house that doesn't have a very good heating system, and I have a baby daughter crawling around. So at the beginning of the winter I started looking for space heaters that would be safe for her and require no serious installation. This model seemed perfect since I could mount it high on the wall, and I bought two of them in November 2005.

For about a month and a half they worked fine. I ran the first one most of the day and night, the second for just a couple of hours each evening, and they kept the house warm. The only serious drawback was that there's no thermostat and the built-in timer is very simple. You can set it to run for a certain number of hours, but there's no way to set it to turn on an hour before you wake up. You can't connect it to a thermostat or a more sophistocated timer because once it loses power you need to manually turn it back on, it won't come on again when power is restored.

In January the first heater stopped working. The fan would still blow, but no hot air would come out. I called customer service and they agreed to replace it, but I would need to pay the shipping. Shipping cost $15 for standard delivery (five business days), $125 for next-day delivery. I argued that $125 was ridiculous, and that since this is a heater that stopped working in the middle of winter less than two months after I bought it, they should be able to do better than five business days. They offered standard delivery for $10, but said they couldn't knock anything off next-day delivery.

I took the standard delivery and for a week I just used the second heater. Worried that I had over-used the first one, I tried to run the second for only a few hours at a time. The replacement (third) heater arrived and worked fine, and to prevent over-use I ran it for only a few hours at a time.

A few days later, the second heater stopped working with the exact same problem as the first. I called customer service again and they assured me that this is not a typical problem. I again paid for standard shipping on another replacement (fourth) heater, which I received in a week.

Less than two months later, the third heater stopped working, in the exact same way as the first two. At this point, I bought a different heater to replace it and am now waiting for the fourth heater to break.

Summary: I've had three of these heaters all break in exactly the same way, each after less than two months of use. One of them was used heavily, one lightly, and the third moderately. I believe this heater has a serious reliability problem, and I recommend choosing a different heater.

We've had this heater for 2 years and have never had a problem. It heats evenly and well (we like the lowest heat setting), the remote is a nice feature, and the housing has never gotten warm to the touch - even after being on all night.

I wish it had a thermostat control, and that it didn't 'beep' everytime you turn it on or off or change a setting; but for the price, it really is a great and reliable little appliance!

It's also perfect for a baby or child's room because the unit can be wall mounted (as our is), thus safe from curious, exploring hands.

I purchased this item early this year. We live in a condo with 800 sq ft area, and we normally use this in our living rm/kitchen (doors closed for both rooms) -- keeps the room warm & just set the thermostat to LOW setting (timer if needed). Toddler's curiosity is unlimited, it's a must to have one!

We have an apartment and the baby's room has no heater, and it's starting to get cold in there. We're pretty cautious about safety and all the parenting web sites and books tell you to beware of space heaters and give all these restrictions about not putting it on carpet or closer than 3 feet from anything, don't use an extension cord, and so on. The fire dept. says space heaters are the #1 cause of household fires. Often that's because of extension cord overload.

This unit seemed like a good option: wall-mountable, powerful, compact, and so on.

By the way, the manual for this thing is HILARIOUS. Such as something about not leaving it alone with "children of invalids" [i'm sure they meant "or"]. And all sorts of terrible grammar and so on. One hopes that the person who wrote the manual didn't also build the heater!!!

Look at the picture of the unit. That little black circle to the right is the limited control panel. The thick power cord comes out beneath that. So if you want to mount it on a wall and not use an extension cord, that's something you should know. The black strip across the front is the grill where the heat comes out. It seems to be fairly directional, and as it turned out, the part of wall near an outlet that I had the thing slated for was bad for the direction the heat was going (straight into a wardrobe), or if you rotated it around so the heat was blowing in the right direction, the cord was sticking straight up and couldn't loop around and make it down to the outlet. So the only option ended up being to put it on TOP of the wardrobe, but now the vent was blowing the warm air, basically, over our heads and keeping the top 1/3 of the room nice and warm, and leaving us and the baby cold. And we can't really see the control panel to know if it's on low or high or what setting the timer is on.

So, basically, make sure you have researched safety on space heaters, and have the right layout in the room you want to use this thing in, and it may very well work fine for you.

I wanted to get the Brookstone wall mount heater or others but I KNEW there was nowhere to put 'em in that room.

Don't worry... we'll figure something out! Hopefully you will too!

Installed easy, heats up the room great. Wish it had a better timer and more options, but that is what most likely kept the price down. Good Value for the money

I bought this heater after moving into an apartment where the heat rarely works. I was able to mount it and get it going within 5 minutes, and even a freezing cold room (of small to moderate size) heats up to a comfortable temperature within about a half hour. There's a great timer feature that lets you choose from a half hour to seven and a half hours before an automatic shutoff, or you can leave it on low or high for as long as you like.

The mounting instructions say that you should put it 5 feet up on the wall and with its own outlet (and definitely no extension cords); I found that the 5 foot thing works well for keeping all levels of the room warm, but you may want to change that depending on what the room is used for and the furniture arrangement. The heated air comes out from the bottom of the heater at about a 45º angle, so don't plan to put it directly above/behind anything if you want it to work effectively.

Ultimately I found this to be perfect for me; it works well, heats fairly quickly, and it has posed no safety concerns thusfar. If you've got the right place to put it, it could be perfect for you too.

At first, I thought this was a good heater, but it stopped working pretty soon after I installed it. The fan blows, but no hot air comes out - just like someone else' experience on these reviews.

I'd give this 1 star, but the Amazon service won't let me change the 4 stars that I first gave it.

Controls are awkward. Fan doesn't push much air. Hard to mount. But it heats up the room and the remote and timer works.

I have purchased 7 of these heaters over the past 9 months. We have already had to warranty 1 unit because the fan stopped working. The price is reasonable, and the remote control is good. The only upgrade that would make the heater a better unit is if it had a temperature controller in it. I think if they put a Temp control module in, where it would cycle on and off to keep a constant Temp in the room, then the fans wouldn't burn out so easily. According to quite a few of the other reviews, this seems to be a trend.. Maybe Soleus needs to look at some possible design upgrades, even if it costs a little more in the long run.