Electric Heater efficiency

[Geffers]

As winter approaches one often gets adverts for heaters developed by some student who's dad was a rocket technician and these heaters can heat up a warehouse in 2 minutes. Well maybe I have exaggerated slightly but you have probably seen them.

From what I understand 1kW is one kW whether it is a £400 Dyson or a £20 Robert Dyas blow heater. A blow heater is effectively a convection heater, the latter has air that circulates upwards whereas the blow heater blows it forward then the air convects upwards, I guess the advantage of a blow heater over a convector is the former can direct warm air flow to heat a specific area quicker but the overall room may not heat any quicker than a convector. Appreciate style, mounting and control options are important, many cheaper units have awful thermostats but am wondering; is there any extra heating efficiency to a £400 Dyson over a £20 Robert Dyas heater?

Looked on the Dyson site at the specs for their £400 heaters and oddly cannot find the wattage, maybe if one can afford £400 for a blow heater then that person is not going to worry about silly things like running costs.

Geffers

 

[Retro]

Oh yeah, those scammy ads with big claims.

Indeed a unit of energy is the same regardless of the cost of the device. The only difference is the efficiency with which that heat is distributed. I wouldn't think that there's much difference regardless of price.

Those "fanless" Dyson fans are a con too. They say there's no fan, but there is, in the base. They charge stupid money for something that looks fancy, but doesn't work any better than a conventional fan. A while back, The Action Lab did a video to test this, asking if it's a scam and found that the Dyson actually had less airflow than a fan on its own. Check it out:

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