What do you do if your apartment or home heating isn’t up to par? Usually, you get an electric plug-in radiator, usually filled with oil, or you pump up the heating via your AC unit. As city-based Europeans, the struggle to keep warm in winter is real – from issues with district heating failures to older home installations that sometimes just stop working.
Now, with the AENO Premium Eco Smart Heater, there’s a more pleasant and eco-friendly way to heat a room of up to 30 sqm. Do you need to make your room a bit more cozy without exploding your electric bill? Read on.
As a note, this is my first encounter with the Aeno brand. Until this unit came in for review, all I knew about it was what the company said in the press release – mainly that the Aeno Smart Heater had received not one but two 2023 Red Dot Design awards.
The AENO Premium Eco Smart Heater received the 2023 Red Dot Award Product Design in two categories – Heating and Air Conditioning Technology and Smart Product for outstanding design.
Does that translate to real life performance?
I don’t like forcing people to read long reviews so I’ll just go ahead and say yes: the AENO Premium Eco Smart Heater works great.
It also looks great, which is something I didn’t know I needed from a heater, but now wouldn’t trade for anything. It’s also completely silent which, after years of various radiators and fans puttering away in the background, really is a blessing for my home.
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AENO Premium Eco Smart Heater Design and unboxing
The Aeno heater comes in an assuming cardboard box but inside you’ll discover a sleek unit ready to be used two ways: on the floor or on the wall.
Since this unit caught me in between moves and furniture was still on the way, it made no sense for me to mount it on the wall just yet, so on the floor it lived.
And near it, my cats thrived, loving the infrared heating on both sides of the device.
In a nutshell, the Aeno smart heater is just a huge, sleek tempered glass panel with infrared for heating. There’s nothing flashy, just a small box on the side containing the electronics and the on/off button, which glows green and blue depending on status.
Used on the floor, it comes with two sleek brushed aluminum legs. Oh yeah, and some lovely details that don’t just suggest “premium” but look like they came straight from the Buster&Punch catalog.
The legs are very sturdy, with rubber pads to prevent sliding, and indeed it’s hard to knock over this heater.
My cats ran into it a couple of times and it didn’t wobble at all. Still, if you do knock over the heater, here comes one smart feature: the Aeno will turn off automatically and notify you on your phone about the issue.
I do wish the Aeno heater would do the same thing if something was propped against it or some clothes fell on it, since it can overheat like crazy in those areas it makes contact with another object. I felt at risk of a fire not once, not twice but three times with it, so you should definitely be careful with this.
In my case, I was fortunately home and noticed the obstruction right away.
Once, a shirt fell from its hook on the device and was there for a few minutes when I noticed it. While most of the heater was ok to the touch (I set mine at a panel temperature of 60°C), the part covered by the shirt was basically the surface of the sun. The other two times the Aeno overheated was when one of the cats dragged a large stuffed animal near it and it made contact with the panel. In none of those cases I received any notification that there’s something wrong with the heater but fortunately it overheated for only a few minutes.
And now, on to the heating part.
Since the Aeno Premium smart heater is an infrared heater, it works by heating the objects around it, not the air, like an AC unit or a blow heater does. This translates to a nicer way of heating, one that does not dry the air. Here’s Aeno’s explanation for it.
In winter, when we usually struggle to maintain a proper humidity level indoors, having a convection heater is the best choice.
Usually, every spring, when district heating gets turned off, you get a couple of weeks of very chilly nights. To cope with that, I used to use an oil radiator and a blow heater combo but that left the indoor air so dry, you’d get static sparks almost on every surface.
This spring, I relied on the Aeno eco smart heater for that transitional period and the results were great – especially on the savings front.
AENO Premium Eco Smart Heater consumption and app
I left the Aeno running day and night in our holiday home for the past 3 weeks or so, in a bedroom that opens to the bathroom and the kitchen, about 50 sqm total. Aeno advertises up to 30sqm coverage for one of these infrared heaters and in my experience it handled the bedroom (about 25 sqm) just fine, keeping the temp there at 22-23°C while the other rooms hovered at about 19-20°C.
There were no other heat sources available and, in this time, it consumed 233.42 kWh to keep temperatures at 23°C. I left the device to optimize itself in Smart Mode instead of Constant Heating.
As you can see, energy consumption varied somewhat, which is explained by the dips in nighttime temperatures. We generally had temperatures of around 13-15°C at night but a few times that dipped to 10-11°C, which translated to Aeno’s smart heater working overtime.
With outdoor temperatures at 10°C and indoor temperature of 16°C, the Aeno couldn’t really cope and only managed to raise room temperature by 2 degrees in about 4 hours. That night, I also brought in an oil radiator to bring indoor temp to a cozy 23°C so no, this doesn’t seem like it could be your only source of heat. With 2 of them, things might be a lot cozier, but in our three-room open space layout one was simply not enough.
The Aeno app is simple and pleasant to use but a bit buggy. When fiddling with settings, sometimes it shows both Fahrenheit and Celsius, which, as an European, can be very confusing.
Still, the Aeno app is one of the nicest smart home apps I’ve tried so far, simply because it doesn’t spam you with notifications. You have the essential information and functionality, plus the ability to set a timer to run it for an hour or as much as you’d like.
You can also integrate your heater in various automations and scenarios, and it’s also compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant.
All in all, it’s really hard to find fault with this smart heater and it’s one device that will probably be a mainstay in my home. For those who don’t like the pure white, Apple-like aesthetics, there’s also a black model that just looks like a high-end TV.
Either on the floor or mounted on the wall, the Aeno smart heater is a discrete appliance that can find its place in any home.
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