The 7 Best Space Heaters of 2025

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Top pick

The Vornado VH200 offers the best combination of power, comfort, and quietness. It heats a room faster and more evenly than other models we tested.

The Vornado VH200 offers the best overall combination of heating speed and distribution, safety features, easy operation, and affordability. Plus, this heater is just generally pleasant to live with, thanks to its simple controls and quiet performance. There’s a reason it’s been our top pick since 2018.

The VH200 can warm a room faster than most other heaters. Vornado fans have a reputation for powerful air circulation, and the company’s space heaters are no exception. In our tests, the VH200 raised the temperature by nearly 20 degrees in just two hours. The only other models that came close to that were also from Vornado.

The VH200 also spreads that heat more evenly around the room. We measured an average difference of about 6 degrees between the sensor we placed 3 feet away from the VH200 and the one that was 6 feet away; that makes the VH200 one of the most consistent models we tested. This all-encompassing and diffuse heat felt natural, not forced, and it made the room feel more comfortable overall. Other Vornado models produced a little more heat, but there was a difference of about 8 to 10 degrees between their sensors. Our Lasko budget pick was a little more consistent than the VH200, but it didn’t produce nearly as much heat overall.

It’s surprisingly quiet, too. Despite its abundant heating ability, the VH200 operated with a quiet murmur that we didn’t find distracting or unpleasant. At the heater’s highest setting, we recorded a decibel level of 45 dBA at a distance of 3 feet and 44 dBA at 6 feet, making the VH200 quieter than most of the other radiant or ceramic heaters we tested. It’s still louder than a radiator, yet it’s also quieter than a household refrigerator (PDF).

The VH200 also comes with all of the safety features we look for, and more. The VH200 is UL-certified, with a tip-over switch that shuts off whenever the heater tilts off the ground, as well as built-in overheat protection. The overheat switch also activates when the airflow gets blocked, as an added layer of protection. The 6-foot-long cable gives you plenty of room to plug the heater into a wall outlet—not a power strip!—and still bring it near you. (You should never plug a space heater into a power strip!) During our tests, the exterior plastic shell stayed relatively cool, at around 95 degrees. Even the heat source behind the grille stayed under 140 degrees, making this one of the coolest models we tested. You still probably wouldn’t want to touch the grille at that temperature, but luckily, the fins are placed close enough together that even a toddler’s curious fingers will have a hard time reaching inside. To be clear, space-heater safety largely depends on using the heater correctly. But all of these features are still reassuring.

The controls are simple and straightforward, too. This space heater has a power button, three “mode” settings (one more than the typical low and high settings), and a thermostat dial with seven settings. And there’s also a built-in thermostatic climate-control feature, which is a bit less obvious but still nice to have. To activate it, simply turn the thermostat knob past your ideal temperature level. Then turn it back, counterclockwise, until you hear a click, and the VH200 will self-regulate to maintain the temperature where you want it, within about 1 degree. In our tests, we were surprised to find that this feature actually worked as advertised, too.

The VH200 has a slim, lightweight design, so it’s easy to tuck away. At 3.5 pounds, the VH200 is about the size of a coffee maker, and it can easily fit under your chair or desk. It’s not a particularly attractive piece of home decor, but it won’t stand out as an eyesore, either, and that’s pretty much exactly what you want. It’s also pleasantly pear-shaped, so it’s harder to tip over (and thus safer to use overall).

If anything goes wrong, Vornado offers the best warranty we’ve seen. The vast majority of space heaters are guaranteed for only a year, if that. But the VH200, like all Vornado products, has a five-year warranty—a generous coverage length that makes the VH200 feel like an even more reliable investment. And the company has a reliable reputation for delivering on these warranties.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The VH200 doesn’t come with a remote control or a timer feature. Either one would be a nice added convenience, and a timer would be particularly nice, since it could turn the heater off after you’ve fallen asleep, for example. You can, however, plug the VH200 into one of our smart-plug picks, which could replicate some of these same controls.

The VH200 doesn’t oscillate, and you can’t tilt the fan to aim the heat in a specific direction. To be clear, the VH200 outperformed every oscillating space heater we tested, and it still did a better job of distributing the warmth than any model with a directional heat source. But we also recognize that some people are skeptical of the VH200’s air-circulation claims. And some folks just really enjoy having something that blasts the heat directly at them, even for a brief moment. This is not that heater.

It doesn’t have a digital (or even numeric) thermostat, either. The VH200 could be frustrating for anyone who’s hoping to keep the room at a specific temperature. You can still set the thermostat knob to “4” if that’s where you feel most comfortable, but there’s no way to translate that directly to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (or whatever the actual temperature is).

The VH200 also lacks a fan-only mode. This is really a bummer only because room fans are Vornado’s primary area of expertise, and so the lack of a fan-only mode prevents this model from becoming a year-round companion for home climate control.