When we had our conservatory built last year we had to decide did we want to extend our heating system into the room or just go for an electric heater. We decided that we would go for the heater option so spent a bit of time looking round for ones we thought would meet our needs. My husband was familiar with the Dimplex brand with his work and felt they had a good reputation and so we decided to go for a 3077 2kw heater. One of the appeals of this was that there was a turbo function so the room could be heated up quickly in the morning when we came down and so our son could get to play straight away in what is now his playroom and a relaxing space in our house.


Features and our thoughts
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The look
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As with most heaters the finish is a standard white and grey metal whilst it isn't a thing of beauty it is neither ugly and when it is wall mounted like ours it certainly looks similar to a lot of modern radiators and looks the part in our room. The size is High43.2, Width 57.7, Depth 20.5cm this seems to take up little space in our room and is nice and compact. We have it mounted on an internal wall which means it is nice and flush to the wall and takes up little space and any heat bounces back into the house. The depth does mean it juts out slightly but no more so than the book case nearby so it is not easily bumped into by our young son. Though we made the decision to wall mount our radiator as it was going to be easier to have it like a radiator in our room and meant it was less likely to be knocked, it can be free standing and there are handles on either side that are insulated meaning you can move it around when it is on and not burn yourself. How sturdy the legs are I can't comment on but the wall mounting process was very easy to do and it has stayed in place with no movement or damage in over 6 months of use.


Heating abilities and in use
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The heater works like all convection heaters by heating the air around the element and blowing it in the air in this case vertically. As this is in a conservatory room that has quite a high ceiling this is quite good for us as it circulates the air very well. The 2kW power certainly seems to be more than adequate to heat our room that is around 6 meters wide by 3 meters deep. We find that the turbo fan when it is put on in the morning quickly generates a lot of heat that is blown out horizontally as well as vertically and this warms in the room up in less than 10 minutes even on the most frosty of mornings we have had recently in the snow.

The 2 heat settings have proved useful and once we have the room up to heat we turn it down and the background heat that is then generated is enough to keep the room warm. If it is a nice day I often turn the heater off as the heat seems to be held in our room quite well and I know that a quick blast with the turbo fan will soon take any chill off that has developed.

The heater is also thermostatically controlled with an automatic safety feature of cutting out if it becomes too hot. Now it has never over heated yet in our experience but it has got to temperature often and then it goes idle and switches itself off which I find useful as a way of keeping track of the temperature and reducing the heating bills and is certainly a feature I would look for again in a heater.

The noise level with the heater is very quiet and certainly never interferes with conversation; in fact my husband has forgotten to turn it off on a night before as it has been so quite. When the turbo fan is on you can definitely hear the fan going but it is again a background noise that is never stops you hearing what people are saying or interfere with the music on the radio.

There is also frost protection on this model meaning that no matter how cold it is the elements in the heater won't break or be damaged and with these frosty mornings in our conservatory we have never noticed any change to the performance levels at all so I can only assume the frost protection is working a treat.

The running costs don't appear to be excessive and we certainly haven't noticed a huge shift and increase in our electric bills since using the heater these past few months.


Overall
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This heater has proved to be a great buy it is nice and compact and easy to set up and wall mount. The noise level is very quiet normally and even with the turbo fan on still never interferes with conversation in the room. It generates the heat and warms up a cold conservatory very quickly in the frosty mornings we have had recently. I would definitely recommend it to other people who need to heat a room such as a conservatory or a caravan, as we have been so pleased with how well it preforms. We bought ours at Argos for £46 and though it is not the cheapest heater it fits our needs perfectly so for us it is worth the money.