Best electric heaters 2024: Portable devices, tried and tested

With temperatures across the UK beginning to drop as we enter autumn, you may be looking for ways to keep warm that don’t involve costly central heating. Whether you want to increase the cosiness of a home office, bedroom or even a garden shed, the best electric heaters offer short bursts of targeted warmth to heat up a room, so you don’t need to go to the expense of warming up the whole house.

There are lots of different heaters out there but the main types are convection heaters and fan heaters. Convection heaters circulate air through the appliance and are often strong and silent, whereas fan heaters blow air over a heating element, to provide a blissful blast of warm air.

Each type of heater varies in energy efficiency and running costs, as well as maximum operating temperatures and additional features such as timers and remote controls. Most of the devices on this list are also highly portable, so can be moved to different rooms in the house, as and when needed. Read on to find out which ones offer the best value for money.

How we tested

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Working from home, we put the portable heaters through their paces in a chilly Victorian terrace house during early winter. Once the heating had been off for a few hours post-school run, we cranked up a portable heater to the top setting and timed how long it took to heat up the room, setting a stopwatch on our phone to record an accurate measurement. We used a room temperature thermometer to measure how hot the room got. We also took into account size, portability, design and ease of use when choosing our favourites.

The best electric heaters for 2024 are: