Use it in conjunction with the Princess app and you can control it from wherever you are, or use the built-in thermostat and the tiny onboard LCD temperature screen to set the best temperature for your room. Given that the Kiasa is often mounted out of arm’s reach, you will be pleased to learn that it comes with a remote control. Alternatively, use the excellent SmartLife app to lower or raise the temperature or set a 24-hour timer. The Warmlite is an exceptionally effective heater that isn’t too expensive to run – but, whatever you do, don’t dry your clothing in front of it. Turning the Princess Glass Smart Panel Heater on, I measured it at 1517W when using the higher heat mode, and 764W on the low mode. It’s useful having two heat modes, as the lower one saves money and is more useful when you want to take the edge off a cold room. The higher setting is for when it’s really cold. Infrared heaters have a markedly different effect to fan or convection heaters. The latter heat a room by circulating warm air which, over time, heats the room and everything in it. They also radiate heat, which is chiefly why it feels particularly warm when you stand directly in front of them. Infrared heaters, on the other hand, focus on this second method of heating. They directly warm up any people, surfaces or pets that their infrared light falls on. If you want to feel the benefit, you need to be reasonably close to the heater.

However, it should be noted that very few electric heating systems are capable of beating the lower running costs of heating a whole home using a gas central heating system, so we’re still quite some time away from discovering the Holy Grail. Can you really feel the warmth emitted by an infrared heater? The majority of infrared heaters are panel-based models, and most of them are designed to be professionally installed against a wall or on a ceiling. Indeed, many homeowners these days are opting for infrared panels instead of standard radiators.

Keep toasty and warm, without your bills skyrocketing, with our pick of the best infrared heaters

This is a silent heater, apart from a beep whenever you change its target temperature. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a way to switch this off, but otherwise it should be easy to live with. That’s particularly true if you’re mounting it on a wall: it only stands about five centimetres proud, so it takes up little of your living space. Princess doesn’t mention or recommend it, but in theory it would be possible to mount this panel on a ceiling and have it still be effective. That’s the case for the Aeno Premium Eco Smart Heater; just make sure that ceiling mounting is done carefully. With the Princess Glass Smart Panel Heater on maximum setting, I measured the middle of the panel at 58C and the top at 78C, with the controls sub 25C. That’s good, as you won’t burn yourself if you need to adjust the temperature and don’t want to use the app. Take control of your heating from anywhere with the Smart Infrared Panel Heater 350EL. This innovative heater can be easily connected to your smartphone or tablet via an app, allowing you to adjust the temperature, set timers, and monitor energy consumption remotely. Moreover, this panel heater comes with a remote control. Whether you're on the couch or on the go, you have complete control over your heating system, ensuring maximum comfort and energy efficiency. Control your panel heater with your smartphone, your preferred voice assistant, by remote or manually Out of the box, the panel heater can either be wall-mounted or it can have feet screwed into place so that it can be free-standing. With the latter, the feet are fiddly to screw into place and the instruction manual doesn’t tell you which way round they should go; it just says that if the heater is tilting, you’ve got them on incorrectly. Princess’ app makes it easy to add and configure the heater, although on Android it nags you for Bluetooth and Location permissions every time you use it thereafter. I grumpily refused to grant them other than during setup, but the app still worked fine.

The HeatPal feels warm near the top about four minutes after turning it on, taking a further ten minutes or so for the marble to emit a small amount of infrared warmth. However, about 30 minutes after having been switched on, the marble reaches full temperature and you can really feel the effects from several feet away.

If you want more control, then you need the HomeWizard Climate app, which you use to connect the Princess Glass Smart Panel Heater to your Wi-Fi network; it’s the same app as is used for the Princess Princess Smart Heating and Cooling Tower. We then test the heaters in various rooms and locations around our home – a home office, a living room and a cold, poorly insulated room. For the panel and bar heaters, we put them behind a work desk to see how well they warm the legs and waist area. We then move the products to a typical sitting room position – the panels are positioned a couple of metres from our seating position, and we time how long it took for the infrared rays to reach us. We also time how long it takes for the heaters to reach full heating capacity. Finally, we also test each unit in a small but very cold room to see how effective they are at projecting heat across an exceedingly cold environment. This is a fabulous integrated option that will keep your towels warm and deliver a good amount of infrared warmth to the body from the moment you step out of the bath or shower.

The Princess is a great option that won’t break the bank – and, at just 350 watts, it’s cheap to run, too. The best infrared heaters you can buy in 2023 1. Klarstein HeatPal Marble Infrared Heater: Best infrared heater for extended use Regular heaters make the air feel dense, which makes you feel drowsy unless you ventilate often for some fresh air. This cycle of letting warm and cold air in your room can be a waste of energy. While heated air dissipates easily in a ventilated area, infrared heaters do not rely on heating the air around you. Instead, in the same way the sun warms up the earth, infrared only heats the surface within direct range of the heater. Infrared heaters consume less energy because they don’t have to heat up an entire room, only the people and surfaces in it. This means the air remains cool and fresh, so you can continue focusing on your work or hobbies. Unlike fan heaters, which heat the air by using a lot of electricity (while also blowing dust around the home), infrared heaters have no moving parts and, just like the sun, the heat they emit cuts right through the air to alight on objects in the room – be that a living thing or a solid item.Not enough room to place a panel heater in the room? No problem, you can easily mount the heater to a wall by using the wall mounts. But if you want to use the panel heater in various rooms, just attach the feet to easily move the heater around the house. The panel heater has a carbon crystal heating element. The quality of carbon crystal is very stable and has accurate heating temperatures and power settings. Carbon crystal has a very even heat distribution across the product and so with the same size unit, less carbon crystal is needed meaning lower energy consumption. In use this heater is true to Princess’ power rating, consuming a peak of 365W, and falling below 1W when in standby. Over 30 minutes’ continuous use it consumed 0.19kWh – less than half what I’d expect from a typical fan or convection heater on its lowest setting, and about 6.3p at the current 34p per kilowatt hour price cap. From the app, you can set the heat mode (high or low), temperature target and toggle standby mode. The app also gives you schedules, so you can set the Princess Glass Smart Panel Heater up to work much like a smart thermostat. While some heaters benefit from smart controls, I’m not fully convinced here. Princess has covered all the basics, but remember that this device is about heating people directly, rather than the room. There’s less point in, for example, scheduling it to come on before bedtime if it’s not going to result in a toasty bedroom when you retire for the night. I wonder if the Smart Infrared Heater might benefit more from a movement sensor similar to the one used by Meaco’s Motion Eye 1.8kW. This would allow it to detect when you’re near, and switch on for a predefined time. Performance When you are working from home, you don’t want to heat up the entire house. Therefore, the panel heater is a perfect solution. Simple and easy to control by using voice command, your smartphone or manually and thanks to the free Homewizard Climate app you can set up your own schedules, so you will always enter a nicely heated room. For example, set up a program for family members or for different rooms in your home and set your panel heater to turn itself on and off to suit your daily routines.

This Princess smart infrared panel heater is part of a wide range of smart home items that can be controlled with your smartphone. Interested in other smart products or more information? Visit www.princesshome.eu/smart-products. From the control panel you can turn the heater on or off, change the target temperature, and trigger the Wi-Fi pairing mode.

There’s no fan in this model, but warm air rising causes air movement, which I measured at 0.52m/s. It’s enough of a breeze to gently warm a room through, even if it’s not immediately felt in the way that a fan heater’s directional blast is.