Kitchen & Housewares : Vornado EH1-0028-06 DVH Digital Vortex Heater

Rating: - 2 broken in less than 30 days
I bought this heater for our baby's room. I liked that it didn't get hot and had a lot of safety features. When it worked, it was wonderful. However, the first unit broke in 2 weeks: it just stopped turning on. Thinking we had a defective unit, we exchanged it (at Linens and Things). The second heater continues to turn on, a week later, but has stopped producing any heat. It will show the room tempurature and the temperature you set it at, but will not actually produce heat. VERY DISAPPOINTING. I am returning it today and buying a DeLonghi HHP1500 with hopes for better results.

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Rating: - Temperature sensor not reliable
I bought and used two units for the past two winters to heat up my daughter's bedroom and the master bedroom. It is very quiet. However the digital temperature control does not work very well. When left for the night, it would not control the room temperature effectively (as one reviewer said it stops heating after a while). If I set the desired temp higher then I'd eventually wake up to a hotter room than I want.

I opened up the front grill and saw that the temperature sensor wire inside, extending from the top controller board, is only 2.5" long. Being on top of the heating element (and hot air travels upward), this means the sensor would eventually pick up the heating element's heat and get the reading wrong. I had to drill a hole on the case near the sensor wire and pull the wire (and sensor tip) out of the case for about 1". So far it's doing much better than before ... I'll see if it could give me a winter of carefree sleeps or not. I'm a bit upset that for an expensive temperature control heater, the design is this flawed.

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Rating: - Heat
I found this to generate a lot of heat for its size. I was worried that it was so small. We have a large room and it does the job well.

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Rating: - Finally, A Great Little Heater!
We have a one bedroom apartment, and although lovely, it is SUPER drafty due to the giant windows. It is also hard to keep warm since we have high 9 ft ceilings and most of the heat rises to the top. I have been using an old heat dish which just heats that little direct area around it.. but the rest of the room stays frigid. Finally I decided to look for a good space heater. I decided on this one and am very pleased. First of all, it shipped SUPER FAST. I turned it on, it's so quiet I barely know it's on. Then the digital controls allow you to pre-set your temperature. The little heater does the rest. I was skeptical at first since it's so small, but the air does circulate well and pretty soon the whole room is warm and comfortable. I am so thrilled to have found this. Hopefully it will last me a long time!

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Rating: - Great concept, moderate implementation
This is almost a perfect space heater. It's a lot like having an extra vent of a forced air heater working for you- gentle warm air pours out of it. The temperature performance is great. Unfortunately there is one glaring issue - bzzzzzzz

Here's my only complaint: at the lowest fan operating speed, the unit produces an audible buzz. I wanted a quiet heater. I have learned to sleep through the sound, but that wasn't really the point.

"Why not skip the low fan setting?" you may ask. I would if I could. The user doesn't get to choose the fan speed. The controls of this unit are fully automated. You simply set the temp you want and the unit modulates fan speed and heater output to achieve the requested temp. Once the setpoint is reached, the controller drops the fan speed to the low (buzzing) setting.

I disassembled my brand new unit to see if I could find a loose component or some other problem that could be making the noise. No such items were found. I must comment that the internal and overall design of the product was quite clever. Eventually I had to conclude that the noise was endemic to the fan speed control circuit design which appears to be some kind of 60Hz chopper. The torque pulses on the motor shaft produced by this design cause the entire chassis resonate like an acoustic guitar.

Which is too bad, because, otherwise this would be perfect.