4 heaters to avoid – and a budget one we love

The drop in temperature might have got you planning some heater shopping. And maybe you think all heaters are much of a muchness. But our testing has found there are some heaters on shop shelves that won’t do a great job of keeping you toasty.

Heaters to avoid

We test heaters in a special room with 81 evenly spaced temperature sensors. We use the sensor readings to create a 3D map that helps us measure the effectiveness of each heater. The map helps us see how quickly each heater warms the room and how good its thermostat is at controlling the temperature.

When calculating the overall score, we also consider how reliable the brand is and how satisfied customers are when they buy that brand.

The 4 heaters that got the worst scores are:

Score: 52


Price: $300

You’d expect more for the price – but like the other duds, this Goldair was also extremely slow to heat the room, it also wasn’t great at distributing the heat around the room. A fan would have helped move the heat around, but this model doesn’t have one, however you can put your own fan next to it to help move the warm air around.

Score: 56


Price: $149

This smart convection heater is quick to heat up a room, but then it’s performance falls shot as it’s terrible at managing the temperature in the room and poor at distributing the heat around the room.

Goldair 11 Fin Oil Column Heater GOC1211

Score: 57


Price: $119

This is the lowest-scoring heater we’ve tested. It only got 14 out of 100 for heating speed because it’s so slow. There’s a much cheaper Goldair heater that scores a lot higher in our heater test results.

Score: 57


Price: $164

This convection heater is quick to heat up a room, but then poor at managing the temperature in the room while its ability to distribute the heat is OK. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a fan which could help move the heat around. And there’s no remote, so you can’t change the heat settings from the couch.

The budget heater we recommend