Sunbeam SFH5264MR-UM Retro Radio Heater Fan, Small, Red

This Sunbeam heater provides many unexpected benefits and features, especially given its very attractive price, and I recommend it highly. The "retro radio" design of this heater is appealing, but the beauty of this heater is more than skin deep, for certain.Upon receiving this heater and powering it up, I noticed right away that the level of airflow from the fan exceeds that of many similar heaters, yet the fan is not overly noisy. This helps to heat up your room more quickly, and it's also a safety feature, as it keeps the housing of the heater cooler. Indeed, when this heater is running, the sides of the cabinet are barely warm to the touch, indicating that the fan is doing an excellent job of moving heat from the heating elements to the air in the room, which is exactly what you want to happen. Of course, a cooler housing also reduces the chance that the heater could ever start a fire.The controls on this heater are easy to use, as well. On the mode selector knob, there are four positions: off, fan only, low heat and high heat. The fan only setting can be used to circulate air when no heating is needed. Low heat is excellent for a small room, and it can also be used to maintain heat in a room that is already somewhat warm, while high heat is best for rapid warm up of a larger room. I used a Kill-A-Watt electricity usage meter to measure the power consumption of the heater in each mode. The fan only setting draws 16-18 watts, while the heater draws about 770 watts in low heat and 1,500 watts in high heat. This means that the heater is running at 1/2 power in low heat mode. Given this, low heat is an excellent way to save electricity and also reduce the load on electrical circuits in your home if it is necessary to plug the heater into a circuit that already has other significant loads on it.On the high heat setting, this heater produces the maximum amount of heat that any 120-volt portable electrical heater sold in the United States is allowed to produce under the provisions of the National Electrical Code - 1,500 watts. Please keep that in mind if you're considering the purchase of some $200 (or more) heater that's supposedly "more efficient" than other electric heaters, for this is never the case. This Sunbeam heater, producing the full 1,500 watts allowed of any electric heater in the United States, will heat your room just as effectively as any other portable electric heater producing the same wattage, even if the other heater costs 10 times as much. Furthermore, the fan in this heater allows it to warm your room more evenly than a heater that relies solely on natural convection, such as the costly "wood box"-style heaters sold by many manufacturers for prices far in excess of what they're worth.The other knob on the front of this heater is a thermostat that will regulate the heater's operation to maintain a desired room temperature. To use the thermostat, all you need to do is turn it up all the way until the room reaches a comfortable temperature, and then slowly reduce the thermostat setting until the heater shuts off. The heater will then cycle on and off to maintain the room temperature that you have set. I have found that the thermostat on this heater is quite effective, and it will maintain a desired room temperature within just a degree or two of up and down variation. This is another benefit I attribute to this heater's very effective fan, as it allows the heater's thermostat to get a better reading of the room temperature. (If a heater has a fan that moves little air, the thermostat in the heater tends to be affected by the heat produced by the heating element itself, and it will run in short cycles - on 30 seconds, off 20 or 30 seconds, back on again, etc. - driving you crazy and probably subjecting the heater to excessive wear. This heater doesn't do that. It will run for a few minutes, turn off for a few minutes, etc., just like the furnace in your home. Of course, if you prefer to just keep the heater running constantly, you can just turn the thermostat up all the way, and it will continue to run until you manually shut it off.For a very modest price, this little Sunbeam heater looks great, and it will heat your room every bit as effectively as any other heater on the market in America - bar none - since it produces the maximum 1,500 watts allowed by law. And, if you don't need that much heat, it also offers an energy-saving 750-watt setting that's great for smaller rooms, or to reduce the load on on your wiring.Finally, by heating up the room where you spend most of your time, this heater could also allow you to turn down the setting of your main furnace, saving energy and money. Used in this way, this little heater could pay for itself in less than a month, since it could reduce your overall energy costs.

I received this heater on March 30th. It is kinda cute but feels and looks cheap. I guess that is because it was cheap. However, it pumped out the amount of heat I need for my little bathroom, which has no other heat source. The first day that I used it, I knocked it over....it just kept running....I guess I just ASSumed that all space heaters now came equipped with an automatic shut off for those situations. I decided that I would plug it in and unplug it instead of turning it off and on with the switch, thereby eliminating the fire hazard. In addition, today, less than one month after receiving it, I plugged it in and it would not come on. I dinked around with the knobs, unplugged it, plugged it back in...I left it alone for about 15 minutes and plugged it in again and it worked this time. With all that said, this thing seems really unreliable and that is something I prefer not to have in something that could burn our house down.... so...I'm shopping!!!! Update: IT NO LONGER WORKS

I missed the return window. This heater doesn't put out a lot of heat and shuts off frequently. However, if you tip the heater over while running, it stays on. This is a safety issue. You're paying for the retro look. I purchased a $14 heater that I like better.

I like the old-school look of the space heater, looks nice on top of the cabinet, specifically the credenza that I have. It works fine for a small 12x12 bedroom. Fan make some noise, sounds something like a 15 years old refrigerator is running, not obnoxiously loud but it let you know it is working. I tried out the space heater for the large living room with the radiant ceiling heat (an energy pig) turned off but this heater doesn't do well for heating such large area. The heater get along well with my Lux Win100 digital wall outlet thermostat. My concern that this Sunbeam space heater doesn't have a tip-over shut off protection my other ComfortZone space heater have, although I have this heater away 3ft away from all things that could catch on fire, I want to see that Sunbeam add the tip-over protection for their heaters anyway.

It looks just like the pic, it's very cute, looks like a vintage radio. I got it for my office but it is too loud when I have patients in the room. It does heat it up though and I like how it has just a fan option.

When my old space heater croaked, I immediately went to comparison shop for a replacement as we have a bad draft in our bedroom. This came up in the top of the results and I nearly ignored it because my first impulse was to buy it just based on how cute it was, but the truth is we really needed something fuctional.After reading the reviews and consulting a few other options in my price range, I decided to go for it, and I'm glad I did. It works very well, and so far we have used it daily for well over a month. It heats up our whole bedroom easily, which is on the smaller side but with a very large window that has bad sealing, one small one and cathedral ceilings that make it very drafty. It doesn't get too hot to the touch and the automatic cycle never fails to kick into gear and turn itself off again.My only warning is that it is a little loud, certainly louder than our old one, but I got used to it quickly and I'm sensitive to these things. Frankly, it can be a bonus if you have a partner that snores like mine does- now I just turn up the heat and it drones him out enough that I can get back to sleep.I might miss it in the summer!

It literally caught FIRE inside after a few months of use