Top-Rated Picks for Home, Office

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A poorly-heated room can be pretty miserable. Whether you’re trying to heat a drafty room in an old house or you need something to keep you from constantly shivering at the office, a small space heater is a popular option to help you stay warm and comfortable.

The best portable space heaters will quickly heat up any given space, while easily letting you turn the temp down from a simple switch or dial. If you don’t have a home heating unit (which heats up the entire house), the best space heaters let you focus on your immediate area, so you can choose your preferred heat settings without affecting everyone else. Space heaters can help save a lot of money on energy bills too, and they’re easier to use than a thermostat, where you have to constantly go back and forth between on and off just to maintain a comfortable atmosphere.

They’re also handy to have in your arsenal if you don’t live in a colder climate, for those times when the temperatures do dip lower than normal. Even a compact space heater can make a world of difference when you’re trying to heat up a smaller living space. That’s why we’ve rounded up the best portable space heaters, based on 4.0+star reviewed products from top-rated brands, so you can beat the chill from anywhere in your home.

In This Article

What Are the Best Portable Space Heaters?

Buying Guide: How We Picked the Best Portable Space Heaters

What Are the Best Portable Space Heaters?

Space heaters come in a wide variety of styles and models, including larger-scale heaters that are not ideal for carrying around, but great if you plan to leave them in one spot. The most popular portable space heaters are usually towers, which are slightly larger, or small handheld heaters perfect for stashing under a desk. Here are our top picks.

BEST OVERALL: Vornado AVH10

BEST TOWER: Honeywell Motion Sensor Ceramic Convection Heater

BEST BUDGET-FRIENDLY: GiveBest Portable Electric Space Heater

BEST DESIGN: Duraflame 3D Infrared Electric Fireplace

BEST FEATURES: Lasko 755320 Ceramic Space Heater

BEST WITH AIR PURIFIER: Dyson Pure Hot + Cool HP02

1. Vornado AVH10

Vornado’s AVH10 is our top pick because it packs a ton of heating power into a compact package, and comes with some thoughtful, key features to boot.

It’s a fan-style heater, so you’ll be able to feel the stream of air instantly, and it can heat up an entire room in minutes, hotter and faster than the rest of the picks on our list. This is all thanks to using vortex circulation, which is similar to how a forced air furnace work, so it distributes the heat more evenly throughout any given space. Even with all its power, it still runs an impressively quiet operation (about 46 decibels on high, about the sound of a refrigerator running).

While it doesn’t come with a remote control, we love the convenient digital display, cord-wrapping post for easy storage, and the countdown clock when you turn it off. It can also intelligently sense how much heat and circulation is needed to maintain the set temperature, and makes adjustments automatically so you don’t have to. Bottom line? The Vornado’s AVH10 is the perfect blend of powerful operation, comfort, and convenience.

Promising Customer Feedback: “This is 100% without a doubt the best space heater I’ve ever used and I will only buy this heater for as long as they make it. I’ve been searching for years to find a reliable heater that would heat my drafty two-car garage during the winter and it works! The temperature of my garage can be 40°F and it reaches my set temperature of 69° F within 10-20 minutes every single time. It’s a very simple yet powerful design, not a lot to go wrong with this model.” —DVS

2. Honeywell Motion Sensor Ceramic Convection Heater

Honeywell’s Motion Sensor Ceramic is great tower heater because it offers a lot of fine-grain control and comes in a slim package.

It has two heat settings (high and low), but allows you to change the temperature manually. The target temperature is shown in big digital numbers, which makes them really easy to rad. The heater sits on an osculating base, so it can heat your room evenly, and has tip protection to keep it from falling over.

You can set this space heater to turn on when its motion sensor is triggered, or put it on a timer — one, two, four, or eight hours —  if you’re using it before going to bed. Honeywell says its heater is cool to the touch despite putting out a lot of heat, so you can move it to different parts of your room (be sure to turn it off first) without waiting for it to cool down.

Its ease of use, relative portability, and control options make Honeywell’s Motion Sensor Ceramic Convection Heater the first one you should consider.

Promising Customer Feedback: “I had my doubts this little compact heater would heat my large bedroom. It easily heats it and maintains great temperature on low! Saving me money. My previous heater stopped working and never could keep up on high. This little ceramic gem gets it done.” —Placeholder

3. GiveBest Portable Electric Space Heater

GiveBest’s Portable Electric Space Heater is our entry-level pick, but it’s the one I use every day in the autumn and winter and it’s the easiest in terms of movability on our list.

One knob controls its power settings: I, II, and fan, and another controls its heat settings. The heat setting knob is analog, so you won’t know exactly how hot your room will get, and have to play around with it to strike the right balance.

Despite its small size, this space heater puts out a lot of heat. I regularly have to turn it down, or even off, because my room gets too toasty. Although it’s simple, GiveBest’s heater does have an important safety measure. If it’s tipped over, a button on the bottom will pop up and cut power to the heater.

This is our budget and ultra-portable pick, and it’s the right choice if you need extra heat and don’t have much space. It may take a little while to dial the settings in just right, but GiveBest’s heater does a great job once you do.

Promising Customer Feedback: “Bought this for my office at work because it gets very little heat in the winter. This mini heater is the perfect size and don’t take up too much space. Even though it’s small, it puts out lots of heat and heats up the whole room in no time. The temperature control works perfectly, and it turns off on its own once it reaches the desired temperature. I like that it has low, medium, and high modes. And if it accidentally gets moved or bumped into, it shuts off, which is a great safety feature.” —Sydney Nicole

4. Duraflame 3D Infrared Electric Fireplace

If aesthetics are important to you as heating your room, we recommend Duraflame’s 3D Infrared Electric Fireplace.

This space heater is designed to look like a traditional fire place, but blows hot air through a vent toward the top of the unit. Its controls are located on a panel that’s revealed when you open the door, and let you select a temperature, set the heater on a timer, or adjust the color, brightness, and speed of the “flames.”

Duraflame says this heater will work well in rooms up to 1,000 sq. ft., which means it’s a great choice for a small living room. The company says that using this space heater may allow you to turn your thermostat down between 10 and 15 degrees, ultimately lowering your energy bill.

If you want to heat your home, but don’t have access to a wood-burning fireplace, Duraflame’s electric model is the space heater you should get.

Promising Customer Feedback: “I have been using my Duraflame heater daily and love looking over at its cheerful ‘fire.’ The stove puts out good heat, and accurately reaches whatever temperature I have set it at. (I have checked this by looking at my wall thermostat.) It can be set as low as 62 and as high as 84.
I have also frequently used it without the heater on — just for the ambiance, the cozy look of a fire in my corner ‘fireplace.’” —Theresa

5. Lasko 755320 Ceramic Space Heater

Another oscillating tower version, this space heater also has convenient extra features, including programmable thermostat and remote control. We especially like that it has different fan settings to control the noise level, and this model gets top marks for how quiet and unobtrusive it is.

Choose from “high heat” or “low heat” settings, and let the heater’s 1500 watts of power work to push warmth into your room. The built-in timer lets you run the heater in one-hour intervals, up to eight hours. It’ll automatically shut off after that.

This heater is conveniently small and lightweight, with a handy built-in handle so it can be easily moved from room to room. At 23 inches, it’s best kept on the floor though, versus on a countertop or table.

6. Dyson Pure Hot + Cool HP02

Dyson’s HP02 is a heater, cooler, and air purifier that change the temperature of your room while improving its air quality. Yes it’s a little bigger and bulkier than other picks on our list, but the three-in-one capability can’t be beat.

Air is sucked in through the base of the HP02, run through Dyson’s filtration system, then blown in multiple directions through fans on top. Dyson says the HP02 can capture 99.7% of pollutants in your room.

Dyson bundles this device with a remote, which lets you adjust the temperature of the air it blows out. You can use the HP02 as a heater in the winter and fan in the summer, which means it’ll be useful to you all of the time. Dyson’s remote also allows you to put the HP02 on a timer, change its osculation radius, or change the directions of its fan. Using the Dyson Link app, you can also monitor indoor air quality or get air quality updates from your area right on your smartphone. Add voice control by combining with an Alexa device like the Echo Dot to adjust settings on the HP02 hands-free.

If you’d like a high-end heater you can use year-round as a cooling fan and air purifier, Dyson’s Pure Hot + Cool HP02 is the one we recommend.

Buying Guide: How We Picked the Best Portable Space Heaters

While there are a number of different portable space heaters, we considered factors such as safety components, size and portability, and extras like remote controls when deciding what should go in this guide.

Safety: As with any heating apparatus, improperly or carelessly used space heaters, especially ones that are poorly made, can become dangerous. We picked space heaters with a variety of standard safety features, like an automatic timer that turns the machine off after a certain number of hours, an automatic overheat function, or tip-over protection, which shuts off the heat in case it is kicked or knocked over.

Efficiency: If you don’t want to wait around for heat to kick in while your teeth are still chattering, look for a product that heats up quickly. We chose heaters that act fast (within 10-20 minutes), especially in smaller spaces.

Thermostat: Most heaters have adjustable temperature settings, but not all of them are as precise as you’d want them to be. We found reliable space heaters with sensitive and accurate thermostats.

Extra Features: Many space heaters include additional components and features. Remote control capability, for instance, often comes in handy when you want to make adjustments but you don’t want to move.