[Closed] Which Electric Heater for Home Office??

There's not that much to it. All electric heaters are 100% efficient. The only difference is how the heat is distributed. If you want to heat the room then get a convection heater. It'll take a while to heat up and is better if the room is insulated. If you just want to heat yourself then a smaller fan heater pointed at you will heat you up locally.

Oil filled with a timer seem to be the most recommended.
That's what I'll be going for and getting in early as suspect come October there's going to be a lack of supply!

I'd say either a timed oil radiator - we have a Delonghi Dragon in the conservatory, or an infra red panel heater. They just fit on the wall, no more than a cm deep, and come with full remote - very effective for heating just 'you'.

I have one of these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/DeLonghi-Dragon-TRD40820T-Filled-Radiator/dp/B00CA1T07G

De'Longhi Dragon 4 TRD40820T

Used it in insulated garage room for a few years. Seems good.

Any £30-50 2KW portable** oil filled radiator will do. No moving parts bar the casters it rolls around on, might come with a timer but if not a standard plug timer you probably have in the drawer will do. I put mine on when I'm having brekkie / sorting kids for school and 30 mins later when I start on here work it's pleasant. I agree they'll be hard to find soon with all the WFHers so act now

** stick it in the garage, move it to another room in the event of power/heating/other failure.

Do you need it to look like it belongs in the room & be silent? These was the biggest factor for me & I ended up with a Millheat glass, the app is crap & when it fails the default is on instead of off which means I don't use that feature but otherwise its ace.

Cheers.

If the room isn't that we'll insulated consider a heat pad as well, like a mini electric blanket. That's what I am going for.

At the start of lockdown when it was a bit cold I had an cheap convection heater bit I put it under the desk and the heat flowed up my legs and in-between the desk and my body worked well.

Is more wattage better? I've a small office room with my desk against external wall. I read about a 2.5KW oil heater which got poor reviews as kept stopping every few minutes.

Can heat pads go on carpet underneath feet or is there a fire risk?

I was meaning heat pad on your lap

Moar power means will heat up more quickly.

Remember your electricity costs 4* what gas does approx, you could try turning all the rads down and heating that room only with its rad.

Otherwise as above: oil filled are popular because the heat doesn't die immediately you switch if off. Fans and halogen can direct the heat well.

I'm looking at this now as I've got the same problem, how to heat 1 room when there's just me in the house. I'm of the old school where putting on an extra jumper is cheaper but it's not pleasant especially typing with cold hands.

I used to have a De-Longhi oil-filled rad 20years ago and the tech can't have moved on that much. I see a lot of new smaller heaters are ceramic.  What do ceramic heaters do that oil-filled don't?

TL;DR - what's the best sub-£100 heater for a room that is 3m * 3.5m * 2,5m high ?

Also, those Dyson Hot/Cold things get rave reviews but £500 is madness. Are there any good cheap alternatives to it?

I'm happy to be proved wrong but when it comes to electric space heating the only difference is the cost of the unit.
All electric heating is [basically] 100% efficient so if you want to spend £500 on a Dyson heater then fill your boots - but it's not going to be more efficient than a £20 (I have no idea how much they cost) convector heater.
In my office (converted two car garage so about 4 x 6m) I just use a single oil filled rad with the temperature and timing controlled by a Raspberry Pi switching a wireless socket adapter.
(I've never really understood how you can have a decent air thermostat on a heater)

Oil filled rads take a little longer to heat up and cool down compared to a convector heater but I have no idea if one is better than the other. TBH unless your house is badly insulated, or the room loses heat quickly for some reason, I'd get a cheap convector.

I don't want to spend £500 on that Dyson, I was just curious about those types of devices.

I don’t really want to keep the central heating blasting every day in order to keep my small (3 x 3.5m) office warm, so an electric heater makes sense.

Is your house that uninsulated that you need the central heating 'blasting'?

IME just leave the central heating on, and use the thermostat (assuming you've not multiple 'wings' on the house).

+1 for an infra red panel. I put one in the extension last winter as the central heating couldn't quite keep it as warm as the main house. Its been great.

I've got a WiFi controlled oil filled rad in my (Dunster) summer house/office. It's set to come on for an hour every 3 hours just to keep the damp away. If I go in there and it's cold, I tell Alexa to turn it on. Works well for me

Fan heater instant but noisy

So your down to an oil filled rad or convection heater

Prefer oil filled rad myself

De Longhi Dragon. Nuff said.

@2unfit2ride - what are the Mill heat heaters like? They look lovely but get mixed reviews.

Apart from what I said up there they are not as good as say the De’Longhi but look much nicer & output heat, I'm more than happy with mine.
Cheers.

I don’t want to spend £500 on that Dyson, I was just curious about those types of devices.

Same principal....anything not "the cheapest".

Office wise depends if you are in and out or just want to keep the room pleasant.
I use a Morrisons bought oil filled rad... when drying cycling stuff (especially 5 tens) I stick a 12v 20cm old server fan underneath.

Other than the occasional click of the thermostat it's near silent.

I think the silence is as important as the heat output as I'm frequently on zoom/teams/Skype calls

oil filled rad here. Had it 10 years+. No idea where we bought it or the cost, but it does the job. I have it on a smart plug which turns in on based on outside temp. So this morning it was 2 degrees outside and 19 in my insulated shed

It does take time to warm up tho, and then I need to turn it down/off when room gets to temp.

I don’t want to spend £500 on that Dyson, I was just curious about those types of devices.

I have one of those (we bought it for a big office that we struggled to keep warm in the winter) and I have a cheap oil filled radiator. When it started to get cool I got the Dyson out and it was rubbish in the small space I work from at the moment - the minute it stopped blowing (ie, when tit got to temperature) it felt cold again and it was relatively noisy. The oil filled cheapo from Argos does the job much better - totally silent and gives good background heat pretty quickly.

Uninsulated mancave here.  I warm it to 10 degrees for turbo session to get the cold & damp out of the air as I’m asthmatic.   I did some numbers of what it requires to get to that point:

a) 1500w oil filled rad, runs 90mins costs 39p

b) 2000w ceramic fan heater, runs 15 mins cost 7p

So the Fan is cheaper for short visits.  I do get frustrated with my constant brain whirring  overthinking about this and am considering leaving the oil filled rad on “frost” setting to keep the damp at bay - the mancave is untreated breeze blocks and the rain seeps through.  No idea how to calculate 24hrs of that as it’d be so variable, but that’s half the point, perhaps I shouldn’t worry about it so much and think of my health more.  Feels financially and environmentally expensive though.

Did you buy both heaters?

I've had the OFR for years but recently bought the ceramic fan heater.  I appreciate its massively offset the cost of the OFD but I realised we had no central heating back so will serve as an emergency heater also....