Dreamland Eco Fan Heater review: “A good-value, stylish heater that could be great with a few small tweaks”

RRP at time of testing: £95 | Check price at Amazon, Boots or Dreamland

My verdict

Fan heaters aren’t always the most popular heating option in the winter owing to their high running costs. But I think they do have a time and a place and they’re especially useful in outbuildings like garages, sheds, workshops and garden offices.

I work from a garden office and am always looking for ways to keep the space cosy. As an all-day way of keeping warm, I’m partial to an oil-filled radiator, but for a quick blast of heat I think a fan heater can be a good choice too.

At 32cm high and 22cm wide, the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater was bigger than I expected given that it’s portable, but I was impressed by how quickly it heated a room. 

I liked the retro design of it too and thought it looked like a cool feature piece rather than the type of heater you try to hide away because you don’t want it on show.

When the heater isn’t in use, you can coil the cord back underneath it which saves wires from getting tangled, and although it doesn’t have a carry handle, it does have a lip on the back you can lift it by. It was surprisingly light and easy to move.

Another thing I liked was how quiet this heater was. Although it wasn’t silent, it wasn’t really noticeable unless you were paying attention, and there were none of the whirring or clattering sounds you get with some fan heaters.

Overall, I liked the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater and found it a useful gadget to have, but there were a few little niggles which stopped me from loving it.

Mostly, my issues were down to the instructions and product information, which I felt were lacking and made using the heater more complicated than it needed to be. 

Claims about the heater’s ‘eco mode’ or ‘Silent Power® Technology’ were all well and good, but finding out what they meant and how they affected the heater’s operation wasn’t easy. 

The heater also had 10 different temperature settings, which impressed me, but without instructions explaining what each setting actually meant, having so many felt a bit redundant.

For the price, I think this is a good bit of kit for a small space. With better guidance and explanations (a QR code on the box linking to a video would be handy), it could be a really good heater.

How I tested

I tested the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater in my home office, which is in my garden and gets quite cold early in the morning and once the sun has set.

I didn’t intend to use this fan heater all day, so I put it on when I first sat at my desk in the morning, let it heat the room and then switched it back on if I needed another boost later in the day.

The heater has an eco function, which automatically maintains your chosen temperature and switches on and off as needed rather than leaving you to do it manually. I tested this too, but usually found myself opting for a quick blast of heat instead of using it for longer.

The heater has 10 different temperature settings, but there’s no information about the minimum or maximum temperatures, so you have to go by feel and work out which setting suits you. While testing, I usually whacked the dial all the way up to maximum to heat the room quickly on colder mornings, or set it about midway on warmer mornings or in the late afternoon when the sun was setting.

The heater's controls are under a lid, which I found a bit fiddly to use.

What’s in the box? 

Inside the box there’s the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater complete with power cord and the instruction manual.

How easy is the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater to set up and use?

The fan heater can be plugged in and used right away, straight from the box.

It has two dials on the top under a plastic cover, and these are your controls for choosing the mode and temperature.

I found the cover a bit fiddly; it lifts up but doesn’t go far enough back for you to reach the dials easily. Every time I lifted it, I almost snapped it. A hinge positioned further back would be better.

The dials were easy to turn, though, and felt sturdy.

As for whether this fan heater is easy to use: yes and no. You could quite easily plug it in and work out how it operates, but if you wanted to know anything more in-depth about the different functions, you might come unstuck.

Maybe I’m expecting too much, or need an idiot’s guide to everything, but I find instructions rarely give you enough information, and you then need a lot of guesswork or googling to find the answers.

For example, this heater has an eco function. The instructions tell you that you can use it for gradual heating, but there’s no explanation of why it’s ‘eco’, what it does or when to use it.

Online, I discovered that eco mode automatically adjusts and controls the power level needed to reach and maintain your target room temperature. It runs at a lower power (1,850W compared with its usual 2,100W output) and is a useful function, so I found it frustrating that there wasn’t more information about it. 

Dreamland says this heater uses 35% less energy than a traditional fan heater, but there’s no explanation of how its eco mode saves energy.

There’s space underneath it where you can coil the power cord back in for easy storage.

How quiet is the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater?

Fan heaters can be noisy and clunky as the fan whirs around, but this one is definitely on the quieter side and there are no clicks or other annoying noises.

Dreamland doesn’t publish the fan’s decibel level, but it says its ‘patented Silent Power® Technology’ ‘heats the environment in a rapid, safe and super silent way’.

While the fan is very quiet, I think ‘super silent’ might be a bit of a stretch. You can definitely still hear it’s on when you’re using it in a small room, especially when using it on the rapid heating setting.

The heater doubles as a cooling fan and I was impressed at how quiet the fan setting was, even on the maximum power setting.

Is the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater good for heating a room?

My home office is around four square metres, and at 2,100W this heater quickly warmed the space up. 

It doesn’t have an oscillating function, so I did wonder whether it would feel like it was taking longer to be effective than some other fan heaters, but using the rapid heating function it warmed the room in a few minutes.

You probably wouldn’t want it to be the sole heat source and it won’t replace central heating, but it gives a good blast of warmth when you need it.

The eco function provided steady warmth, which was also good for a small room like mine. The heat didn’t feel too overpowering or stifling, which can be the case with some fan heaters.

I tested the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater in my home office.

What safety features does the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater have?

Sorry to hark back to the instruction manual, but the booklet covers two different versions of the fan heater, so you have to know which one you’ve got to work out which features your model has.

Mine was Type S0103, which didn’t include the automatic shut-off function. I have been known to work evenings in my little garden shed and forget to switch my heater off, so I think this feature would have been useful.

The heater also doesn’t have tip-over protection to switch it off if it’s knocked over. The design is quite solid, so I think that’s unlikely to happen very often, but in a family household with kids and pets, never say never. 

One safety feature the heater does have is the cover over the controls. This protective lid is designed to stop drips getting on it if it’s placed in a humid environment. Dreamland says the heater is suitable for humid environments (although I didn’t test it in the bathroom), so the cover could be a useful safety feature in a room with a lot of moisture.

How portable is the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater?

At 22 × 32 × 21cm, the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater is a bit chunkier than other portable fan heaters, and although it can sit on desks or worktops, I found it performed best placed on the floor.

The heater feels sturdy but isn’t too heavy, so it’s pretty easy to move around. 

There’s space underneath it where you can coil the power cord back in, so it’s easy to tidy away when not in use as long as you have enough cupboard space to store it.

While I was testing it, I left it out and moved it when needed. It has a lip on the back you can lift it by, but a handle would have been better.

Dreamland Eco Fan Heater vs Devola 1500W Portable Heater vs Morphy Richards HeatFlux 2kW Upright Fan Heater

Final verdict: is the Dreamland Eco Fan Heater worth it?

The Dreamland Eco Fan Heater is good value, looks stylish, is easily portable and does a great job at heating small rooms.

Throughout testing, I was impressed with this appliance’s output, noise levels and quality, and for under £100 you can’t go far wrong. 

With a few small tweaks, such as a better protective lid and clearer instructions, I think it could be a winter must-have. It’s certainly one of the better fan heaters I’ve tried, but I think to make it really stand out, it needs to be able to back up and explain why it’s more economical, more efficient and quieter than other models on the market.

About the tester and author

Charlie Bond is a freelance journalist and a mum of two (slightly wild) boys. As a lifestyle and shopping editor, she’s got more than 15 years’ experience testing everything from family holiday hotspots to mum-friendly makeup.

She’s always on the lookout for the best products to make parents’ lives easier, whether that’s a super-duper coffee machine (she’s usually had three espressos by the morning school run) or a cleaning solution that really does get pen off the walls...

About Mumsnet reviews

All Mumsnet product reviews are written by real parents after extensive research and testing. We work hard to provide honest, independent advice you can trust. We sometimes earn revenue through affiliate links, but this never influences our coverage.

All prices are correct at time of publication.