Programmable timer Useful for setting a heater to turn on just before you get home or wake up, so there's no waiting around for the heater to warm up. Although the comparison might make your electric heater look cheaper to run, bear in mind that it will only be heating a much smaller area, whereas your central heating will be aiming to heat your whole home. In terms of how much it would cost your fan heater to heat a room, this would depend on a variety of factors. These are:

Due to the long list of factors that come into play to calculate your central heating costs, the only way you can confidently compare a heater to your central heating is to install a smart meter. You then divide your weekly heating cost by the number of hours you have it switched on and compare that figure to the cost of running your heater.

Find Challenge 2kW Ceramic Fan Heater reviews

These can still be bought, but they aren't as popular or widely available as fan or convector heaters. Just before we get into the detail of analysing the price of this product, we want to briefly highlight the importance of setting yourself a budget before you spend too much time shopping around for a suitable product. It’s all too often that we get carried away when shopping and find ourselves buying a fantastic product, but probably actually overdelivers on what we need and therefore costs a lot more than we should have spent. So spend a bit of time looking around at the sort of price you can expect to pay for products in the Heaters and radiators category and use that alongside your own financial situation to set yourself a budget. Adjustable thermostat Using this function, a portable heater will heat the room and when the desired temperature is reached, it will try to maintain the room at that temperature. Most of the cheaper, simpler heaters we tested have a dial thermostat that doesn't let you choose specific temperatures in °C. You'll likely need to buy a more expensive model for that. Our tests also found that they're rarely 100% accurate and will probably think the room is a couple of °C warmer or cooler than it is.

The next step after looking at products in the same category, was to look at products from the same brand, Challenge.

If you were to try replacing the use of your central heating by putting an electric heater in each room, it will definitely end up costing much more. On the downside, this type can be quite noisy and they don't have some of the more advanced features you can get with convector heaters. This Challenge ceramic fan heater keeps your home heated or comfortably cool with 2 heat settings, a normal room-temp wind setting and the option to blow cool air. It's freestanding, thermostatically controlled and has a 1.5-metre cord. For your own peace of mind, it has a safety cut out switch to prevent it from overheating as well as a tip-over protection switch. Heat output 2kW. 2 heat settings. Safety cut out switch. Thermostatically controlled. Cool air blow feature. Suitable for room size up to 15m². Freestanding. Suitable for floor standing. 1.5m cord length. 2000 watts. Size H22.8, W17.5, D13.5cm. Weight 1.44kg. Fully assembled. The brand of product you buy can vary in importance, from person to person. Some people will of course be much more particular about the brands they will use. Whilst others aren’t interested in the brand and are more interested in the overall quality or price of the product itself. Thankfully Challenge is a brand that many customers have grown to love over the years and is very popular for items in the Heaters and radiators category. Cold air setting Some fan heaters can help cool you down too. They're not nearly as effective as a dedicated air conditioner, but a light breeze of cold air is better than nothing.