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108 of 113 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cute desk heater, October 12, 2006
At the low prices at the time, I bought 4 of them.
Unlike a lot of radiant heaters that use a fragile glass, quartz halogen heating element, which are so bright it's like sitting in front of a bright yellow floodlight, or get dangerously hot, these use a durable nichrome & ceramic element that emits a very dim (but warm) red glow.
This is the smallest, lowest powered parabolic heater I ever found. Low power has some advantages in some situations, saves money, & reduces pollution.
There is no fan, so it's totally silent. Because it's only 300 watts, it does not get dangerously hot if nearby. But as with all heaters, you should use some common sense, like don't cover the heater or hang stuff over it, point it at curtains, or place it right next to bedding. I have one on a table about 3' away from the bed, yet I can feel the heat in bed on my face, about 7' away.
It has a standard, tip over, cut-off switch for safety.
This little thing is ideally suited as a desk or small area heater, but for it's low power consumption, it does put out a lot of heat towards what it's pointed at. Don't expect it to heat up an entire room like a 1500 watt or more heater. This heater only consumes 20% of the power. It will not be a suitable for your sole source of heat with the furnace off for a room or house if it gets near 0 degrees F outside. So buy several if you want to use these little heaters a lot to offset your heating bills.
Consuming such little power, they have the advantage of being plugged in most outlets & circuits shared by other stuff without overloading or overheating the outlet or circuit.
It'll take 5 of them to consume as much power as a standard, typical 1500 watt heater.
You save money because most people on the coldest days don't need to heat up the entire room nice & toasty, but only need to heat the area a lot where they're hanging out in. Thus, much less power is required to do it with these. Also, if you're in a drafty or poorly insulated older room, or one with high ceilings, your heat from traditional heaters may leak out fast or rise to the ceiling where you don't need it. Radiant heat feels warmer & is more efficient in those kind of rooms, by directing & concentrating the heat more towards the area it's pointed at.
Parabolic heaters focus the infrared heat in a concentrated direction like a spotlight would, instead of blowing it all over a room. Parabolic (dish) heaters focus this heat to a tighter area than other reflective types.
There's a lot of misconceptions & complaints about radiant heaters that simply are not true. They complain they do not heat up the whole room or as fast as other types of heaters. A 300 watt radiant heater will heat up an entire room just as fast & well as any other type of 300 watt heater, & any 1500 watt radiant heater will heat up a room as fast as any other type of 1500 watt heater would. But you'll feel hotter instantly in the direction a parabolic heater is pointed at instead of waiting for the heater to heat up the whole room.
The problem is people buy a 100-1200 watt radiant heater & expect it to warm up a whole room as fast & good as an over 1500 watt one would.
A 1500 watt or higher heater may strain, overheat, or overload your wiring more, & overheat the cord or outlet for regular or continuous use.
Update: One reviewer said, "Could be the radiant aspect of it not being able to penetrate sneakers and jeans. But since I prefer not to work naked, I replaced with a small ceramic unit that does the trick."
Nope, I believe it's because the heater is only a small, low powered 300 watt heater & your ceramic heater is probably 800-1650 watts. If you were to put an 800-1200 watt parabolic heater under your desk, you'd probably set your pants on fire.
QUOTE: "They are not heat dish. It was conventional electric heater. They are imitations, just the Style is like the heat dish. They even don't have auto thermos. No energy saver."
Reply: These ARE a heat dish & NOT a conventional heater, or more precisely, they're a parabolic heater... which is a heating element with a parabolic reflector. They focus a beam of heat to a narrow area it's pointed at. Like all of these types, some heat will still rise off the top of the heater too by convection too.
I consider these the safest types of heaters because they don't get too hot & don't make the house wiring warm or overload it at only 300 watts.
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