The first is brand. Looking at the brand of the product is often a really good indicator for judging product quality. For example you’d expect a much higher quality product from a brand known for providing excellent quality than you would from an unknown or even a budget brand. Dimplex is a leader in the small appliance market so you know that by purchasing this product you are buying a great brand name with great customer service. BEAB Approval We assess how easily each electric heater can be set up and how easily understandable the controls and settings are. We used any handles to lift the heater and move it around. While some heaters can be used straight out of the box, others have complicated program and timer settings.

Next up is material. Read through the product description for Glen 500W Wall Mounted or Freestanding Skirt Heater to get an understanding of the materials the product is made from. Some materials will obviously be known for delivering better quality item than others. You might also have decided that you’ll only accept a product made from a particular material.

This funky looking skirting heater is made by Glen Dimplex or just ‘Dimplex’ as the brand is better known. Frost protection The heater can be set to heat automatically when the temperature drops below 5°C, but you'll need to have it on standby for it to run, so this can limit its usefulness. The brand of product you buy can vary in importance, from person to person. Some people will of course be much more particular about the brands they will use. Whilst others aren’t interested in the brand and are more interested in the overall quality or price of the product itself. Thankfully Glen is a brand that many customers have grown to love over the years and is very popular for items in the Heaters and radiators category. Cold air setting Some fan heaters can help cool you down too. They're not nearly as effective as a dedicated air conditioner, but a light breeze of cold air is better than nothing. Keen to optimise home heating? See our advice on boiler controls and thermostats , smart meters , and loft insulation

Convector heaters are usually taller than fan heaters, but thin and light – making them larger, but still relatively easy to move between rooms. Due to the long list of factors that come into play to calculate your central heating costs, the only way you can confidently compare a heater to your central heating is to install a smart meter. You then divide your weekly heating cost by the number of hours you have it switched on and compare that figure to the cost of running your heater. Portable electric heaters use electricity, which costs 28.62p/kWh under the current energy price cap. Depending on how effective the heater is, they can take anything from 30 minutes to an hour to notably raise the temperature of a medium-sized room, so if you're only planning on using it until the room gets up to temperature, it will likely cost you between 28 and 57p. Bear in mind that Dimplex recommend a clearance space of 23cm on each side of the heater, and 60cm at the top, so ideally your wall, if fitting it to a wall and not leaving it free-standing, would be greater than 128cm long.As you can imagine, pricing is one of the most important factors of any purchasing decision. We can find the perfect product for our needs, that fits the brief in every single way. But if it doesn’t fit our budgets, we simply can’t (or at least shouldn’t) buy it. They tend to be cheap to run, but some can be really slow to heat up. Most oil-filled heaters are also fairly heavy and cumbersome, so look out for models that come with wheels. So let’s carry on with our Glen 500W Wall Mounted or Freestanding Skirt Heater review and explore the product’s pricing.