INTRODUCTION

In my house, it takes around 20 minutes for the oil fired central heating to come through, and with home heating oil prices rising in my area to over £350 per 500 litres, it was time to purchase a device to give me a quick fix of heat!

DESIGN AND FEATURES OF THIS HEATER

The Challenge heater is not exactly what one would call aesthetically pleasing. It is made of white plastic in a bulging rectangular shape, if that makes sense. To be honest, I thought it looked quite industrial even from the Argos catalogue, but it was priced at just £22.99 so I decided to get it. The heater measures 13x34x22 cm in dimensions, which makes it a very small and neat little heater.

At the front you have the fan output and on the rear is where the nearly two metre long chord plugs into. Personally, I have found the long lead very useful because with so many electrical devices nowadays, it can be hard to find an available socket near where you need the heat, but with this you can actually move the heater around.

When you venture to the top of the heater, you find the control knobs underneath the flap. There are two easy to operate controls on the top. One controls whether or not you would like a hot or a cold fan setting. And the second control is for varying the strength of output. For example you could choose warm or hot by moving this second dial round, using the image of a widening bar for assistance.
Because the heater is 3kW or 3000W it heats up small room fairly quickly. My bedroom can be heated fully in approximately 4 or 5 minutes. Usually I turn it off after 10 minutes, because after much longer a once cold room becomes extremely stuffy. These timings were based on the highest setting possible because I seldom use the middle or low options.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the cold setting. I could compare it to the cold blower in the car and not the cold air conditioning. To be honest, opening the window or opening the door for a draught will cool your room doing as quick, if not quicker.

PROBLEMS

There are only two problems that I could find with this device. The first being that the unit gets very warm and people often pass comment that there is a burning smell coming from it. That being the case, I would only use it for short bursts of time. You need to leave it for a few moments before moving it after switching it off, in case you make contact with the hot fan grill at the front.
The other problem, as with all electric heaters, they are quite expensive to operate. I think it costs about a pound for every two hours that you use the heater. But as I said earlier, you normally are warm enough after a few minutes anyway...you can always put on an extra layer if it gets too expensive, at least that's what I do!

CONCLUSION

I really do recommend this product. At an affordable price, and a quick heating function, it is particularly to small bedrooms and small offices as opposed to entire dining rooms for example.