Vonhaus 1500W 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator review: “This simple but effective radiator will be a staple in my office all winter”

RRP at time of testing: £55 | Check price at Amazon, Argos or Vonhaus

My verdict

In my house, we don’t have central heating. That’s not to say we all sit around a fire darning our socks by evening candlelight, huddling for warmth, but it does mean that we’ve had to get creative about how we warm the house.

We don’t have mains gas, so instead we’ve installed oil-filled electric heaters in most rooms. They’re quite sleek and connect via WIFI, but having them on during the winter means I’ve become well-versed in the nuances (and noises) of oil-filled radiators.

I work out of a garden office, and I’ve recently been trying out some fan heaters to see how they fare in keeping me warm while working. Generally, fan heaters are great for a quick blast of heat but they’re not designed for all-day use, and as the weather gets cooler I’ve been looking for a better long-term solution. 

At only £55, and costing just 16p per hour to run, the Vonhaus 1500W 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator is a definite contender to keep me cosy this winter. It’s fairly basic - there’s no remote, digital display or timer - but for an office appliance that doesn’t matter too much.

I didn’t love how it looked - it’s quite basic in appearance and I think white appliances always tend to look quite obvious, no matter how hard you try to conceal them. I also wasn’t keen on how you coil the cable around the front of the radiator rather than the back. I felt it made it look a bit untidy - but having looked at others on the market, it seems most are designed the same way.

This radiator might be simple, but it’s effective. Even on the lowest output, it quickly heats a room, and it’s a nice, steady warmth rather than a quick blast of heat. It’s also very quiet. After saying I’ve become accustomed to the noises of an oil-filled radiator, this one actually barely made a sound.

I struggled a bit with getting the wheels on (which was probably part user error too), but once they were in situ, the radiator was easy to move round the room. I didn’t need to move it much though, because it did a good job of heating the whole room evenly.

At £55 I thought it was great value for money - a simple but very effective heating option for small spaces that doesn’t do anything fancy, but that doesn't really need to.

How I tested the Vonhaus oil filled radiator

I work from a glorified garden shed, which at 4m² fits this radiator’s ‘suitable for small rooms’ specification. I tested this radiator out over a few weeks, using it on days when it was colder outside to see how it fared at keeping me warm at my desk throughout the day.

My office does get quite warm on sunny days, and because we hadn’t plummeted into frosty mornings and freezing temperatures yet, I usually used this radiator in the mornings when I first started work, and then switched it on again later once the sun had set.

I moved it around to different places in the room, but to be honest it didn’t need much moving because it heated the room quite evenly. 

I did test different temperatures and settings, but on the temperature dial there’s no way of knowing what temperature you’re setting it to, so I mostly twisted the knob all the way to ‘max’ and then reduced the temperature down once I was warm enough, or I set it somewhere in the middle and hoped for the best.

What’s in the box? 

Inside the box there’s:

• The Vonhaus 1500W 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator and power cable

• Instruction manual

• U-shaped bars and wing nuts

• Castor wheels

• Wheel mounting brackets

How easy is the Vonhaus radiator to set up and use?

The radiator does require a bit of wheel assembly admin before you can get cracking with the warmth side of things.

You need to attach four wheels, which involves turning the radiator upside down and screwing them on, using U-shaped bars and wheel mounting brackets.

As a strong independent woman, I was sure I could do this alone and it would only take me a matter of minutes to do so.

Reader - it took me TWENTY FIVE minutes.

I should point out that it’s not complicated to get the wheels on, and the instructions are plenty clear enough. But, it is fiddly and having an extra pair of hands to hold things in place would have been useful.

I could have asked my husband (who is a handyman and literally gets paid to do stuff like this) but I opted to struggle by myself instead.

The issue I found was getting the U-bar in place and holding it straight while trying to line up the wheel mounting bracket. I always found one side was longer than the other and had to unscrew everything and start again.

Anyway, after a few choice swear words, the wheels were on and I could turn the radiator back upright.

You then need to leave it an hour before turning it on to use it - so I used this time to read the rest of the instructions and familiarise myself with how the radiator works. As it turns out, it’s pretty straightforward.

It has two dials - one to set your temperature and one to control the power output. No digital display, no remote, and no app which all felt refreshing. Confusingly, the instructions refer to the ‘temperature dial’, ‘thermostat knob’ and the ‘power switch’, which baffled me at first because there are only two dials on this radiator.

But, once you switch it on, you realise that the top dial controls the temperature and the bottom one controls the energy output. Setting one is 600W, two is 900W and three is 1500W.

The radiator took me longer to set up than I'd like to admit!

How easy are the controls to use?

To operate this radiator, you just turn the top dial clockwise to set the temperature, and then choose which energy output you want to set, using the dial below.

The first time you use the radiator you set the top dial to ‘max’ to burn off any manufacturing residue, but you don’t need to do this every time. Frustratingly, there’s no indication of what the different temperature settings are, so you just have to guess and go by the feel of the room. 

Related: Best heated throws 

How does the Vonhaus 1500W 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator work?

This radiator works by heating the oil inside it until it reaches an ambient temperature. 

It has a built-in thermostat that detects the room temperature, and once the desired temperature has been reached, it cuts out. (Which it’s supposed to do!) It then comes back on when the room temperature drops again.

How quiet is the Vonhaus 1500W 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator?

I was really impressed with how quiet this radiator was when it was in use.

I’ve had oil-filled radiators before that gurgled constantly and you’re very aware that they’re in the room with you, but the Vonhaus was pretty much silent, especially on the lower wattage settings.

Although I didn’t use this overnight, I think I would be happy to. Inside my house we have oil-filled electric radiators mounted to the walls in place of central heating, and those radiators make quite a lot of noise when they’re heating up and cooling down but the Vonhaus was much more subtle.

The radiator heated my home office quickly.

How quickly does it warm a room?

This radiator is designed to be used in small spaces rather than in large family rooms, so testing it in my 4m² garden office gave me a pretty good indication of how effectively this radiator warmed a small (not very well insulated) room.

As mentioned earlier, there’s no real indication of the different temperature settings on the dial, so I usually set it to ‘max’ until the room felt warm enough for me, and then reduced it down or turned the radiator off.

The radiator has three output settings, 600W, 900W and 1500W, and I tested to see how long each setting would take to heat the room.

On ‘max’ temperature and setting one (600W) my office went from an already quite comfortable 20.5°C to 21.5°C in 15 minutes.

Using max temperature but on the 900W setting, the room temperature rose by two degrees in 15 minutes.

The 1500W setting made the room warm pretty fast. Within five minutes the temperature had risen a degree, and after 15 minutes I actually had to open my office doors and turn the radiator off because the room had reached a very balmy 25°C and I was starting to sweat a bit.

Related: Best foot warmers and heated slippers

How safe is the Vonhaus 1500W 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator?

The radiator is fitted with a couple of safety features. Firstly, it has a ‘thermostatic safety device’ which cuts out the power once a certain temperature is reached. The instructions don’t specify what this temperature actually is, but it’s good to know that the radiator won’t let things get too toasty.

The second safety feature is a tip switch, which cuts off the power if the radiator gets knocked over. At 6.9kg it’s a fairly heavy bit of kit so I don’t think it would be easy to knock it over, but again, it’s good to know the safety feature is there.

The one safety issue I’d be concerned about with kids and pets is how hot this radiator gets. You wouldn’t want them to touch it while it’s on because the metal fins get very warm, and they do take a while to cool back down again too.

For me it wasn’t too much of an issue because the radiator stayed in my office, but if I was using this in the house I’d need to think carefully about placing it somewhere it wouldn’t get touched by little hands or paws.

How much does the Vonhaus 1500W 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator cost to run?

Ofgem’s current electricity unit rate from 1 October 2026 to 31 December 2026 is 26.32p per kWh. Based on that, the Vonhaus 7 Fin Oil-Filled Radiator costs:

• 600W setting: approximately 16p per hour

• 900W setting: approximately 24p per hour

• 1500W setting: approximately 40p per hour

Compare oil filled radiators: Vonhaus vs Morphy Richards vs Russell Hobbs

Final verdict: is the Vonhaus 1500W 7 Fin Oil Filled Radiator worth it?

If you’re looking for a no-frills oil filled radiator that heats a small space fast then I don’t think you can go far wrong with the Vonhaus.

Sure, there are prettier models out there, and yes, some have a bit more tech, but sometimes I find you can overcomplicate an appliance that doesn’t need to be complicated.

This does the job of heating a room quickly and effectively, which is all you really need it to do. 

If I was going to be really fussy, I’d change the colour of it and add a temperature gauge to the top dial so you know what you’re working towards, but I’d take something that’s silent and sturdy over a noisier, shinier model any day.

This will be a staple in my office this winter and hopefully for many winters to come.

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...

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