Dr Infrared Heater DR-968 Review

Infrared heaters get marketed with a lot of nonsense — 'heats 1,000 square feet for pennies' — so it's worth being precise about why the DR-968 is good. It makes the same 1,500 watts as every other plug-in heater. The difference is delivery: quartz tubes radiate heat that warms your skin, the sofa, and the floor directly, and a slow, high-static-pressure blower pushes warmed air across the room at low velocity instead of blasting a hot stream at one spot. In a drafty room with tall ceilings, where a ceramic heater's warm air goes straight up, that combination feels markedly more effective for the same electricity.

The control package is complete and has been refined over years of production: a digital thermostat with 1° steps, auto mode that cycles between high, low, and off, a 12-hour timer, and a remote that actually has all the functions on it. The cabinet stays cool to the touch on every surface but the front grille, and there's no exposed glowing element — good news in a house with kids or a curious dog. It's also quiet; the blower is rated around 39 dB, which is a whisper next to a tower heater on high.

It's not a bedroom heater unless the room is large — the fan, while quiet, is audible, and the 19-lb cabinet isn't something you carry around. Put it in the room you live in, point it at where people sit, plug it straight into a wall outlet (never a power strip — it pulls 12.5 amps), and give it three feet of clearance. For a living room or a den that the furnace never quite reaches, it's the best money in this category.