Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The unit works well and as I had expected. I have only good things to say so far. I will update if my view changes. I purchased 2 heaters as I am away from home working on a contract and I don't need to heat the whole place very often, just the 20x20 bedroom and/or 15x12 bathroom. I will get a little wordy here and try to debunk some of the armchair junk science being thrown about and maybe make it a little fun for some. In short let noise-level and cycling temp swings decide for you, unless you really just like something about one as another - but don't fool yourself. Odor There is an initial odor as the paint cures and any coating/film burns off. Wiping it down carefully might possibly reduce this period of odor (off-gassing). Those that say there is no initial odor, simply do not have optimal senses (and how many people have you ever heard say that their senses are dull - none!) - people don't know what they dont know. Think about that for a moment, or.longer. Trust the canaries - they are mostly unbiased and they ARE telling you something. Just because one can't sense something doesn't mean all is just fine and dandy. Heat Output The heat output is as expected - not because I say so, but because the laws of physics say so. Those laws rarely change, and rarely from armchairs. Power is power, or said in one type of unit, wattage is wattage (exluding of any minor deficiencies). With that in mind, a (100V x 15A) 1500w ceramic heater and a 1500w oil radiator will produce the same heat transfer (one may be more directionally focused or dampened/diffused or quieter than the other). All the oil and fins do is difuse the direction of the heat dispersion/transfer and dampen the relative temp swings when the unit cycles - smooth temp graph over time or a spikey one (other characterizations are generally imaginary). 1500w for an hour, is 1500w for an hour - barring no major losses somewhere (sinewave, squarewave, rms aren't real differences here). Losses here in the heater, itself would produce HEAT - heaters are interesting devices, they can be crude and yet they are pretty consistent in behavior for a given power consumption. This is in contrast to say an air conditioner where Ineffeciencies (less heat evacuated) produce counter-productive heat (heat = bad). This oil-filled heater unit provides no more or less heat transfer into a given size sealed room then any other heater, based on what we silly humans can realize (some minor inefficiencies, those produce waste heat as well, a loss is a win!). Any fixation otherwise is mostly irrelevant to use mere humans. Temp The temperature setting works fine (assuming no defect in your unit). The temp settings here are probably not best stated in F or C - as this misleads some. A better (relative) scale would be 1-10. The marketers over-ruled the engineers, again. :( Here is why a temp setting is silly; To start with, these type of units at best use a cheap DS1820b 20 cent sensor, or perhaps even something less accurate than that, like bimetallic coils in older thermostats - not sure here (I didnt read the details, not important to me). These bimetallic coils even work well enough unless defective (100+ years of experience there). The next level up of semiconductor temp sensor costs 5+ dollars. But it doesn't matter how accurate they are, for many other reasons. First, you are an error-prone subjectively-influenced human (think speaker cables, what a topic that ignores blind testing). If one had a 100 dollar temp sensor it would be of no more benefit (OCD excluded) to us silly humans. Where is one measuring the temp? On the oil tank? Near it? What does "near" mean? 6" away? 10' away? Is the unit in a 10x10 room? 30x30? Is there forced circulation in the room, or into or from other rooms? How about the humidity (5% vs 95%) and its the impact on heat transfer across a given space? So many variables to consider. Having 10 "highly" accurate temp sensors spatially placed in the room, and averaged, still wouldn't mean much in the real world - are you really concerned about keeping the spider in the corner nice and comfy? Our human concerns here are mostly silly, biased and subjective. There is no concept making everyone happy here, beyond those who understand the science here (formally or informally). If one is the type that thinks there is such a concept of something being exactly 85F, or something being exactly 1 ft long, or that stepping one half the distance to the wall will eventually get one to the wall (head in palm), then they will be dissapointed by any and every type of heater (and only subjective "feelings" will rule). You can have 12 eggs, but you will never have 1lb of eggs (near a pound yes, but not an exact pound). Ask yourself, setting the heater to 80F means what? 80F where? Ponder that. The science majors at the manufacturer cannot accurately answer this, and 99% of the marketing majors surely cannot answer more accurately - but they might in turn make you feel better with their product specs and nicely crafted literature. They did "produce" a lot of product info - being kind there. Timer The timer seems to work fine for me but I have not tried every setting. Again time accuracy/precision is relative, and close enough is plenty good enough (99% vs 99.9%). Just like with temperature, one could add a microcontroller to get really close timing (remember, nothing is exactly X days, hrs or milliseconds in duration) but that costly higher precision would mean nothing to us mere humans in the real world - it just perhaps make a few consumers "feel" better. I am happy with my unit so far, as in my case I wanted a quieter more-difused heat with cycling (less temp swings) but I too am being subjective - and probably spending double for little gain. A heater that produces 1500w at 50% duty cycle vs 750w at 100% duty cycle is no different (you just have the spikes that may affect your comfort). You might tolerate the cycling spikes, or not. With respect to overall heat produced by each, if you think there is a dramatic differences please feel correct Mr Einstein and many others, and they'll go prepare the universe for some troubled times ahead. Here I just wanted to counter some of the armchair scientists using subjective pseudo-science in their evaluations, though I do find the readings enjoyable. I learn a lot from them. Noise-level As I write this, my 1500w 30 dollar oscillating ceramic heater with internal fan is keeping me just as toasty in my 20x20' bedroom, as the doubly-priced 1500w oil heater does, but the ceramic heater produces more noise for that same heat production and transfer. I think this is perhaps the biggest difference that could impact a buyer. Relatively high noise vs relatively low noise. That is probably the decider for many - silence good, white-noise good - finally something you decide. Happy Heating