Sunday, September 26, 2010

Vornado TouchStone 500 Vortex Full-Room Electric Heater

I have owned a few of these hot air fan heaters and this is by far the best. I have a large apartment with about a 12' high ceiling and I can notice the "vornado action" moving a feather hanging from a dreamcatcher at the corner of the ceiling with the fan sitting on the middle opposite side of the floor. This shows me that the fan is truely pumping the air around as it is heating and it is not just a gimmick or false claim. Other fans I have had did not do this and took like an hour to heat the room. The Vornado takes the chill out of the room within 15 minutes and is nice and warm reaching thermostat temperature by 30 minutes (most of the time depending on how cold it is.) What's even more impressive is that it is also so quiet I don't even know it's on sometimes!

However, since nothing is perfect here are a some design suggestions for the manufacturers:

1) The Sony remote problem is true, I have the same problem but thankfully my bed blocks my TV remote's "line of fire" so it rarely turns down the heater but it has on several ocassions--- Vornado should have picked a more obscure signal to use for the remote.

2) The remote needs to be more ergonomic so it's easy to hold and there should be indentations on the buttons so that you know what to press when fumbing in the dark--as it is now it's too small and impossible to tell if you're even holding it in the right direction.

3) The fan is so quiet it would be nice if the red "on" light would actually turn green so that you know it's on.

4) The blue LCD display is way too bright--it's like having 2 nightlights on in the room...very annoying and I wish it was darker since there is no need for it to be so bright (I'd put black tape over it but then can't see the temperature).

Overall though, only buy this if you are truely a design freak, it is beautiful and the quality of the metal housing is well worth the price if you are willing to drop that much money on a heater to just look stylish.

In terms of function though you can get the exact same results by buying the much cheaper (about half price) original Vornado without the remote. A friend of mine has this original Vornado which is what inspired me to buy mine. There is also a "clone" type heater competing with the original Vornado made by Holmes and I suspect the performance of that one is going to be very comparable and also a bit less expensive.

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