{"id":93354,"date":"2025-07-23T06:19:48","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T20:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=93354"},"modified":"2025-07-23T06:19:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T20:49:48","slug":"plug-in-mini-heaters-mb3231","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/plug-in-mini-heaters-mb3231\/","title":{"rendered":"Plug-In Mini-Heaters: Don’t Get Burned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

It’s winter, it’s cold and Australians are looking for economical ways to stay warm in their homes. Enter cheap plug-in mini-heaters. But both your hip pocket and you could get burned \u2014 literally.<\/p>\n

Getting off gas for heating<\/a> and switching to electric (done right) is a good move<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But over the last couple of months, I’ve been seeing ads increasingly appear on a bunch of websites and social media for electric plug-in mini heaters. The ads and pages they take you to make all sorts of claims including cutting energy costs, warming up a room in just minutes and the list goes on.<\/p>\n

They are sold under various names, but the common point is they are small fan heaters that plug directly into a power outlet \u2014 there’s no lead between the heater and the outlet. That on its own is enough to raise eyebrows (before they potentially get singed off).<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the good folks at CHOICE published another warning<\/a> about these devices, stating that:<\/p>\n

“Overseas online retailers are continuing to sell dangerous plug-in electric heaters, even after regulators effectively banned them from being sold in Australia.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Recalled<\/p>\n

The image above depicts a plug-in mini-heater that was sold by an Australian firm and subsequently recalled<\/a>. But a quick search of eBay’s Australian website reveals plenty of listings still spruiking this type of device.<\/p>\n

BlumeHeat: Lots Of Unhappy Customers<\/h2>\n

BlumeHeat is a name that keeps popping up in ads on various sites I visit, some of them very popular news sites \u2014 and the device looks like many being sold on eBay at a much lower cost. Among the many claims the vendor makes:<\/p>\n

“BlumeHeat is highly efficient, converting almost all the energy it consumes into heat, allowing you to save up to 80% on heating costs.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s what any electric fan\/resistive heater does: it converts most of the electricity it uses into heat \u2014 there’s nothing particularly ‘smart-tech’ here. As for the savings claim, if you have conventional fan heater with an 800 Watt setting and run it on that, using a Blumeheat unit (reportedly rated at 800 Watts1<\/a><\/sup>) will save you exactly zero dollars on electricity. And a conventional fan heater would do a better job at pushing the heat and directing it than one with a comparatively tiny fan.<\/p>\n

While the ‘customer reviews’ on the vendor’s site are of course glowing (no pun intended), Blumeheat reviews on Trustpilot<\/a> tell a very different story: 115 reviews from Australians at the time of writing, and a star-rating of just 1.2 out of 5. The common complaints:<\/p>\n