The lounge in my house only has a storage heater in it. It's great for heating the room but it does mean that you have to put it on the night before if you want any warmth the following day. The problem here is that you have no timer on it so if you go away for a few days it either stays on the whole time or not at all. I was fed up with coming back to a cold house and having to wait another day before any heat came through so I listened to recommendations and went out and bought myself a halogen heater.

My aunt has had one for years and often sings its praises. Apparently they are inexpensive to run, don't take up much space and churn out a lot of heat. I saw my one for £10 in Wilkinson's and I was initially surprised at how cheap it was although I have since seen similar products for the same or slightly less money.

The product stands roughly 2 and a half feet high and around 18 inches wide. It is also very lightweight and can easily be carried by our 4 year old when its in the way of her toys. You have several buttons on the top - the first 3 decide how much heat you want the heater to churn out and the last button decides on whether you want the main section to rotate on its base or just stay in the same position. A handy feature means that if you knock the heater while it is on, the heat turns off until the heater returns to its natural position. There is no real setup to have to worry about - plug it in, press the buttons to choose the heat setting and sit back.

The big advantage for me is that it will slightly increase the room temperature and it gives off a nice glow that makes it a good replacement for romantic lighting in the evening. Also the temperature it gives out means that our child can go right up against it without hurting herself.

The huge disadavantate is that it takes an age to heat up a room and will never get it very hot. The first time I tried it I had been on a weeks holiday and came back to a very cold house (so cold you could see your breath). We put the heater on the maximum heat setting in the lounge (the lounge is around 2m50 wide and 8m long) closed the doors to trap the heat in the room, and waited...and waited...and waited. 2 hours later we were still sat there in our coats and hats. We found that by setting the heater to rotate nobody felt any difference in room temperature but if you put the heater 1m directly in front of someone and turned off the rotation then that person would have warm legs after 10 minutes. Even then it would never get so hot as to be unbearable.

We do get some use out of it however....In smaller rooms you do feel the room temperature rise more quickly and we quite often leave it on all night in our daughters bedroom as we know she won't be get too hot.

I know £10 is not a lot to pay for a heater and I can hardly expect miracles for that kind of money but I was at least hoping for something to heat up a room in say 30 minutes. This product completely fails to do that. All in all, very very disappointing