[Big Clive] picked up a tiny heater for less than £8 from the usual sources. Would you be shocked to learn that its heating capacity wasn’t as advertised? No, we weren’t either. But [Clive] treats us to his usual fun teardown and analysis in the video below.
A simple test shows that the heater drew about 800 W for a moment and drops as it heats until it stabilizes at about 300 W. Despite that, these units are often touted as 800 W heaters with claims of heating up an entire house in minutes. Inside are a fan, a ceramic heater, and two PCBs.
The ceramic heaters are dwarfed by metal fins used as a heat exchanger. The display uses a clever series of touch sensors to save money on switches. The other board is what actually does the work.
[Clive] was, overall, impressed with the PCB. A triac runs the heaters and the fan. It also includes a thermistor for reading the temperature.
You can learn more about the power supply and how the heater measures up in the video. Suffice it to say, that a cheap heater acts like a cheap heater, although as cheap heaters go, this one is built well enough.
I had the Eurom VK2002. I’ll never forget that heater and don’t even need to google the product number as it’s burned into my mind next to a huge danger sign. I bought in a local store in the Netherlands. The package mentioned EU, CE, TUV etc.
Winter came around and my workshop didn’t have heating yet. I grabbed the electric heater I used for only a few hours previously from the attic, put it on a table in the workshop, not close to anything and plugged it in. The fan didn’t turn on. It failed somehow. Within a second or two, the entire inside was glowing bright red. I immediately unplugged it. The entire time between plugging it in and unplugging it was maybe, if being generous, ten seconds, but probably less. The entire top of the device was melting, black smoke was coming off and I saw flames inside the device.
The building of a previous employer burned down, due to a locally bought electric heater. My grandparents had to evacuate the assisted living facility they were living in due to a fire, from an electric heater. I don’t trust these devices. I’d rather put on a few extra sweaters.
That was not a PTC heater.
They are safe even if the fan halts.
Clive published another video demonstrating exactly this!
I was wondering why “…The package mentioned EU, CE, TUV etc…”, and it sure looks like these alphabet soup agencies failed to spot the clear and present danger that they SUPPOSED to spot.
Meaning, if the device failed to fail safely, then WHAT are these regulations are for? For their own sake of existing?
Lots of manufacturers (from certain areas) find it easier to just print the alphabet soup on their products rather than have any actual testing or approvals done. They can print and sell a batch, and then if anyone complains, they can say that they don’t make that particular product anymore.
Yeah, not gonna trust ANY heater in a plastic case. Just “no”.
I bought a cheap electric heater (metal case) off Amazon for my basement workspace. It’s plugged into a mechanical timer and I only use it when I’m actually in the room. Just to take the chill off the otherwise unheated space in the winter.
It does have UL, Intertek and ETL logos, but it’s from China, so I’m fairly sure they’re fakes.
I have a Milwaukee drill, and it´s red so it must be communist. Or it´s a fake and it must be American and racist.
LOL :P
Completely ignore a real problem about fake safety certifications, because of potentially implied racism. While using racism to fight against this implied racism.
StyroPyro is a loony, but he’s a happy loony.
(Lucky bastard.)
Come on, can there be ONE corner of the Internet where it’s possible to take a break from people shoehorning obnoxious partisan politics into irrelevant conversations?
Add aluminum cases to the “no” list too- Styro Pyro (YouTube) just tested a light bulb at >25000 Watts, using aluminum flashing as a reflector with maybe 8″ of clearance from the fused quartz bulb. It melted!
My comments containing juicy tidbit often times removed, even though it is obvious (to me at least) that I am just stating the facts that are PERSONALLY KNOWN to me. Dismiss all you want, censor, but the same facts can be obtained from other sources unrelated to my personal story.
The tidbit is this – a LOT of chinese investors are US citizens. Take this with whatever grain of salt you think is needed, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is THOSE investors who are telling the factories “it is perfectly okay to make and sell unsafe crapware, as long as it makes ME a profit”.
Whether those are US citizens or not (not always, btw, plenty of wealthy russians/ukrainians/iranians/whatever, too) makes no difference, but I always find it interesting how those are not found to be unpatriotic, blahlblahblah, just tells one that patriotism and nationality (ie, belonging to a particular nation) is not related to profit-making, in any way. Politics-schmolitics, it is just money.
Another tidbit often times removed that bribes are part of the chinese economy. Literally. You cannot open or operate a factory without bribing. With crypto it became as easy as pie, no more traceable by any alphabet soup agency who pays who when and for what.
Usually these small heater are PTC heating elements with a curve with a top temperature at 80C.
Not matter if the fan is blowing or not they will never have a temperature higher than that so wont melt any plastic if the fan fails.
The video tells another story :) It might be PTC but it reached 230°C without a fan…
It did – and the plastic didn’t melt, so they presumably chose a decent plastic as well as doing a pretty good PCB design.
Without the fan bringing in cooler air then heat can stagnate. 80c mixed with air is cooler than 80c just sitting there. Still safer, but can still cause melting
Why am I not surprised something branded Tesla is a pile of overhyped junk
It’s not branded Tesla, that’s how Clive describes the category since they often link these things to Nikolas Tesla claiming it’s some magical invention that does more than you expect it could.
Sorry if that ruined you snide remark though, if it had been branded Tesla and especially if it was ‘that’ Tesla it would have been a decent sting.
TDS support chat!
Eventually one of you will ask the key question:
“Are we the baddies?”
Found one!
IMO Tesla is just a company, not better or worse than others.
As for Musk, I think his Hitler salute was actually not a Hitler salute, but much worse, it was a roman emperor salute. Given to Trump of all people, just the guy you want to encourage.
As for Musk in general, I think he’s turning worse and worse but not for the reasons the left shouts a lot.
And I personally think he’s bad because he works with the military, enthusiastically, messing with people outside the US too. And he thinks that humanity is wonderful (and should be preserved at all cost), and the US the most wonderful of all and Texas the most wonderful of the US. So he’s clearly mad as a hatter.
Wait a minute, are you in fact Musk in disguise HaHa? :)
If it was made by Tesla it would have been a good quality product.
I have a strong hatred for electric cars for an laundry list of reasons, but I have to admit that out of all the electric vehicles, the only one worth buying is Tesla. Every other manufacturer is just trying to copy them and failing at it.
Fiat is laughable. They start out with a range worse then the first ever made Tesla has right now and after 3 years, you can’t even drive them properly without carrying a generator in the trunk to charge them while driving. Renault is a joke, almost all the cars listed for sales come without a battery for a reason. Opel, I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole. We got a few Opel vans at work. With the current temperature here (close to freezing) you get about a 40km range and they constantly have to be towed back to the dealer for problems. Mercedes has enough electrical problems with their normal cars that it’s not a smart move to even think about an EV from them. Company switched to BMW for executive cars due to ongoing electrical problems with the fleet of S class Mercedes. I can go on, but the end result is that I’d rather buy a 10 year old Tesla over a brand new EV from any other manufacturer.
Tesla is reliable, safe, properly made, has all the newest tech years before the rest has it and the only one reliable enough to last for many years.
I don’t want an electric car, I don’t even want a free electric car, but if I was forced at gunpoint to buy one, I would buy a Tesla.
Did Volvo/Polestar go under? Also VW bought Rivian, something might come of that, they have a fairly efficient motor design according to Sandy Munroe (sp). Leaf seems to be winning the ‘cheap and cheerful’ segment, but also Hyundai seems to be killing it.
Al Williams, why did you write a ceramic heater when it’s a PTC heater?
Do you know how a positive temperature coifficent resistor works?
Heaters of this type use a ceramic PTC element. It’s often referred to as a ceramic heater. The heating element is ceramic.
Other “ceramic” heaters use metallic conductors wound or plated on a ceramic scaffold or substrate. The ceramic simply functions as mechanical support. It is not the heat source.
So which one is correct?
Don’t dis the editors. They do a great job, worth infinitely more than you’re paying for the service.
(And it’s “coefficient.” But you can blame the lack of an edit button if you want. Isn’t there a law describing this effect?)
Once, as part of researching the feasibility of building an espresso machine, I bought a copy of the UL/CSA standard for water heating appliances and it was a real eye-opener to see how lenient these standards are. Most of the requirements were in the “I should bloody well hope so” category, like requiring that it not drip molten solder and not have bare wiring within an inch of a grille, stuff like that.
The thing is, these are personal heaters. So of course it doesn’t generate enough heat to heat the room, but most of them will do a pretty effective job of increasing the comfort for the human right in front of it. But the other thing is, its safety comes entirely from its supervision.
I’m bringing this up because the superstitious approach of caring about the price you paid, the shop you bought it at, or the country of manufacture isn’t going to help you. No matter where it came from, if you don’t supervise it, it isn’t safe. And if you do, it is.
And the same for high temp cutoff / PTC. If you’re monitoring it, this is a nice function to have. But if you’re not monitoring it, it’s not enough to prevent a fire.
If you need to pump 1500W (max from a typical US eletrical receptacle) into a room without attending it, I’d recommend the “oil filled heater” style. Which still has its caveats but at least is designed for that use.
I second oil-filled heaters.
There are small-ish kinds rated either 600 or 700 Watts that do reasonably good job of keeping one (or two) humans near warm, and since we are in the US are now permanently stuck with only two form factors (large or small, nothing in between or smaller than the small) for the average Sam’s products, I recommend the small one. Large ones sometimes have a switch to run it at half-power, so essentially there is no difference, except the size of the gills, hence, the thermal inertia would be larger, too (ie, it retains heat between turning on and off longer).
There used to exist other oil-filled heaters (I believe they were called “radiators” back in the 1980s) that were flat pancake style, which were actually better at radiating heat, so to speak. Where they disappeared I do not know, but I recall they were actually cheaper to make, since they were flat AND they were safer, since they were not square, so they could be placed far from curtains, etc. We had one years and years back, though, of course, every time you move you part with things you cannot take with you; I am quite sure it now heats someone’s house.
Jus think of all the fantastic finest Chinese plastic additives being baked and blown into the living quarters.
When I need heat during (the admittedly mild) winters in my area, I just run my ancient server.
No, really.
L🤣L
Why are we still showing Big Clive’s content when he thinks it’s hilarious to be xenophobic?
Because it is hilarious that you deciding someone’s mind as xenophobic.
There is no ‘we’.
It’s just you.
The advertised 800W is no more of a scam than LED bulbs that promise 50,000 hours of life based on ideal conditions in the datasheet and not their actual overdriven state in the bulb.