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4.2 out of 5 stars

Amazon Basics Portable Digital Radiator

$41.99
$89.99 53% off Reference Price
Condition: New
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Top positive review
H
By Thomas Deprimo on Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2025
Great
Top critical review
95 people found this helpful
Does not work, not 1500 W, thermostat design flaw makes it pointless
By Rory Shauan on Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2024
Not sure why anyone would even keep these, I suppose in a very specific use case they could be fine, but the specifications are not correct and the terrible thermostat makes any reasonable temperature control impossible. The maximum amount of power this unit will draw is only about 900 watts, not 1500 W as is specified. I had multiple units shipped to me, as Amazon said they were defective, and each performed exactly the same. This leads me to believe that it is not in fact defective, but inherent design flaws or rampant and unacceptable levels of manufacturing flaws. All units pulled a maximum of just a little less than 900 watts on hi no matter what conditions I subjected them to. The unit just isn't capable of being set to heat at 1500 watts. The low setting is even lower, likely around 500 from my testing, though the low setting was not at all useful to me, so I did very limited testing. The other major issue, and really only other thing that can be wrong with something this simple, is the thermostat. It's supposed to turn on and off as it detects the temperature in the room fluctuating outside of the temperatures you have set. The thermostat however does not work at all and seems to just randomly display temperatures and come on. If it is an actual thermostat it is comedicly awful, to the point of being completely worthless to even have in the unit. I did extensive testing and the range of it's accuracy seems to be around plus/minus 6 degrees F when the unit is not on. This doesn't seem all that bad except for two important factors, the first being that the unit seems to allow a plus/minus three degree difference from the set temperature before turning on/off. Meaning your room could be as much as 9 degrees colder than you would like before the heater comes on, and heat to as much as 9 degrees over that temperature...well, if it weren't for the terrible thermostat that is. Once you factor the thermostat in the range is closer to plus minus 14 degrees F. However this detects temperature, the heating of the unit itself drastically effect the thermostat reading. In as small 110 sq. ft. room I used this and it started out reading 6 degrees f lower than the actual room temperature on a NIST traceable thermometer. In a matter of less than 15 minutes of being turned on high the unit reported it had raised the room temperature 14 degrees based on it's thermostat. The NIST traceable thermostat registered a 2 degree rise. The unit turned off and continued to cycle, eventually heating the room to 63 degrees after multiple hours of going back and forth between the thermostat reading 57 and 71. The temperature I had it set to was originally 65. At that setting it only heated the room to 60 degrees. I had to turn the unit all the way up to 75 to get it to heat the small room up to 63, while it read anywhere between 57 and 71. At no point did the unit pull more than 890 watts. After an entire 10 hours, even that small of a room never heated to 65. Meanwhile another radiator heater I have heated a room almost 3 times that size to 65 in less than 2 hours, and kept it within plus/minus 1 degree of the set temperature. The thermostat readings on that heater were within plus minus 2 at all times, and it pulled 1500 watts multiple times. I live in southern California, and the nighttime low was in the low 40s when I was running these tests. Subsequent heaters that were sent performed pretty much exactly the same. The design is awful, and the specifications are complete lies. There is no use case for this product, and no chance you will be happy with it unless you want a 900 w heater that doesn't have a working thermostat. I'm extremely disappointed in the product and the time I wasted trying to get it to work. Don't waste your time.

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