Smart heater to keep room cosy while cutting energy bills

With colder weather and higher fuel prices making us all aware of how we are heating our homes, the arrival of the Aeno Premium Eco Smart heater was timely.

The panel promises to heat your rooms in a more efficient manner, using less electricity than the standard heaters you might already have, including fan heaters and oil-filled radiators. That’s down to the infrared technology, which heats the room quickly, almost without you noticing. There is no fan noise or smell generated by the heater, which puts it ahead of other options.

The heater itself looks quite smart. A thin tempered glass panel in either black or white it feels sturdy but is still sleek enough to blend in with your home. The Aeno heater can be left free standing, or mounted on a wall or ceiling, depending on what suits your room. The wall mounts are included in the box – ceiling mounting the device should only be attempted by a professional – but for this review, it was used free-standing on the supplied stand. That took only a few minutes to put together.

The panel used here is suitable for a room up to 30sq m, which should cover most standard rooms in Irish homes.

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As you might expect there is an app to go with it, bringing the “smart” element to the heater. Paired with the Aeno app, you can control heat level, the heating mode or set a schedule on a daily basis. If you want your room to be 24 degrees on weekday evenings you can use the app to set a schedule to do that; ditto for a different schedule on the weekends.

The heater has two modes: constant heating, which does exactly what it says, and smart mode. Using the latter you can set a desired room temperature in the app and the panel will heat the room up to that temperature and keep it there. That is monitored by a sensor in the cord, so be careful where you place it; put it near a draught or a door and you will get a lower temperature than expected, meaning your heater will continue to work long after it should have shut itself off.

Link the Aeno app to your smarthome hub, such as Google Home, and you can use voice commands to turn it on and off and adjust the temperature threshold.

In smart mode the room heated up quickly to a cosy temperature and stayed that way, with the sensor doing its job to keep the temperature constant.

If you are interested you can see just what impact the smart heater is having on your power bill. The app shows you how much energy the panel is consuming in real time and cumulatively.

When heating the room the draw on the grid – measured by an energy monitor rather than the app – jumped by 730 watts per hour, as expected. Turning the panel’s heat down from 120 degrees to 60 degrees dropped that power consumption by 200 watts or more, depending on the heat of the panel and the target temperature, the panel can consume as little as 160 watts per hour. That is good news if you want to keep your central heating turned off in the rest of the house and heat one room during the day, for example.

Good

Energy efficient and effective, this heater is a good option if you want an alternative to more power hungry – and expensive to run – heating solutions. It looks good, too, with a sleek glass panel that can blend in with the most sophisticated decor.

It is capable of being a free-standing heater, a wall mounted panel or ceiling mounted heater, so it can fit in with most rooms.

Bad

The initial cost of the panel might put this out of the reach of those who want to save money on their heating bills. That saving will also depend on how your home is heated. Higher electricity bills will have to be balanced out against savings on oil, gas or biomass heating systems.

Everything else

The panel is safe to use around pets and children thanks to the adjustable temperature. It will also turn off when tilted, so if knocked over the heater will automatically switch off. That feature is disabled if the panel is ceiling mounted, although Aeno recommends that such an installation is carried out by a professional – for obvious reasons.

Verdict

The Aeno Premium Eco Smart Heater looks good and works well, although the higher cost of the heater might wipe out some of the financial benefits its lower energy use brings.