Sunkos Portable Electric Space Heater Review: Silent Heat!
Retail price: $299.99
Disclaimer: Sunkos sent us a unit free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
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I use a lot of personal space heaters in my office as I can’t adjust the temperature of the building and the airflow just blasts nonstop onto my head. It’s essentially winter year round for me. When Sunkos reached out to us and asked us to review their space heater, I naturally knew it would be a perfect fit into my daily life routine. What I didn’t expect was the uniqueness in which I quickly felt warm thanks to the Sunkos. So what kind of technology does it exactly utilize to heat up a room? Let’s dig into it.
Far Infrared Heater
Sunkos doesn’t use forced air, so no blowing up dog hair everywhere!
Sunkos has a patent for this far infrared heating film that is flexible to configure into this platform. From my limited knowledge of infrared, far infrared helps the human skin from overheating or being irritated by the heat rays. The Sunkos heater emits warmth extremely quickly. In about 3 seconds you can feel a noticeable depth of warmth coming off the screen. Sunkos says the temperature jumps up to 200°C in just 3 seconds.
You can adjust the thermostat between 60° to 90°F through various means which I’ll discuss next. While I did place the heater in a larger square footage area like my kitchen and living room, you’ll notice the heater is most effective in a room under 300 sq. ft. My master bedroom’s temperature is easily dictated by whatever the Sunkos is set to in a matter of minutes. You can noticeably feel it just being in the presence of the unit. The same goes for that freezer I call an office space. Unlike my small, forced air fan heaters I’ve been using up to this point, I don’t feel stuffy after a certain amount of time with the Sunkos like I do with those types of products. I used to turn them off and have to turn them back on whenever my body would adjust and feel uncomfortable with what the heater was doing. I never felt that way at all during my time with the Sunkos. That’s when I realized that whatever this heater was doing (which I won’t pretend to fully understand), it was doing something different than I’m used to.
Design
It looks like something that would fit right into an Ikea catalogue to me and that is a compliment as I find their products to be versatile for just about any space.
Sunkos uses an Aramid mesh that you can kind of see the pattern from the outside. While you can feel the warmth emitting out of the paper, it’s still safe enough to touch without burning your skin. This material has additional benefits as this aerospace graded material is flame retardant. That to me is a beneficial peace of mind for something that heats up in your home. People are constantly worried about their electronics starting a house fire in this modern era of technology and Sunkos address safety as a priority through various means. There’s built-in tilt protection features that will shut the heater off if it's tilting or falling.
This space heater is quite simple in design. It’s a big square that is propped up by a touch panel resting on parallel feet. It’s not too heavy at about 7 pounds and I’ve found the unit to be quite stable when set into position anywhere. There’s a solid balance due to the symmetrical shape. The designers attempted a minimalistic approach with this boxy form factor. It has a hip leather handle that matches the white aesthetics. If I had to put a description to the look, I’d categorize it as Swedish-looking. It looks like something that would fit right into an Ikea catalogue to me and that is a compliment as I find their products to be versatile for just about any space.
Controlling The Heat
All of the controls are located at the very bottom of the unit. While the unit is off, the panel no longer illuminates information and you can’t even tell that the heater has a touch panel at all. There are only a few things to toggle through for adjustments with the temperature adjustment being the main function.
The included remote is one of three ways to operate the heater
The second most important thing to control is what mode the heater is set to. Focused Heat Mode utilizes the far-infrared rays to heat up a bubble in front of it. There are three levels of varying heat ranging from P1, P2, to P3. The second mode is the Space Heat Mode which is essentially the eco setting that will regulate the temperature where the heater is located automatically between 60 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. As the names of the modes would suggest, Focused Heat will get you feeling warm in obvious manners. You’ll almost instantly feel warmth on the P3 setting. It’s amazing how quickly I can feel the heat emitting off the unit without forced air pushing into my body. Speaking of the eco mode, Sunkos consumes 1500W to power the unit through a 110V outlet. Rounding out the rest of the touch controls, the power button turns the unit on and off, while a lock button will keep the settings from changing once pressed.
Aside from the touch controls on the unit, the heater comes with a small remote control. That battery does not come with the controller, but my controller was a lemon. After spending a lot of time swapping through different brands of batteries and it still not working, I finally came to the conclusion that I just had a lemon. Unfortunately, Sunkos was not able to get me a new controller to test.
However, I was able to remotely control the heater using the app. Utilizing the Smart Life app, I was able to control all of the settings I mentioned earlier, as well as turning on the timers and Sleep Mode. The app isn’t perfect every time as it requires refreshing to connect here and there, but I did find it reliable enough to not be a detractor during my testing period.
Nearly Silent
When you first fire up the unit, you’ll hear a crinkling sound coming out of the Sunkos. It sounds as if someone was rustling foil or wrapping paper. It spooked me the first few times I booted the unit on as I thought something was loose inside and that the heater wasn’t working properly. That sound quickly goes away after a handful of seconds and the product operates almost silently thereafter. When I say silently, I’m not exaggerating. Sometimes I forget that the unit is even on while it’s making my room 75 degrees Fahrenheit. This is great during sleep mode time as there’s no air blowing noise coming out of the Sunkos to keep you awake if you’re a light sleeper. Sleep mode turns off all the lights on the panel of the unit to keep the heater hidden in the dark. I set a timer on the app for the heater to automatically turn off after a few hours and I don’t even notice it. The app can also pair with Amazon Alexa to operate through voice control.
Final Thoughts
I’ve had an extremely pleasant time using the Sunkos portable heater during this winter season. I get cold easily and having forced air heaters blowing up dust and dog hair always triggers my allergies. It was surprisingly noticeable for me how much better I felt using the Sunkos heater in my room as an alternative. The space heater is non-intrusive, light weight, and gets my spaces warmed up efficiently. I personally see this as a product that could perform really well in a household with children and pets thanks to just how quiet and easy it is to transport from spot to spot. Like I said before, I won’t pretend to fully understand everything that Sunkos does differently, but this heater certainly does the job for me.
Alex
Caught in between the conundrum of his fascination with retro and the future, Alex has a very unique taste in technology. Never one to follow trends like his millennial peers yet constantly desiring to get ahead of the curve, he sees technology like he does his other love: comic books. Always looking for the best value or a hidden gem, his collector mindset reflects on some of his favorite gadgets: the Moto X (2015), HTC U11 and the Google Pixelbook. If there’s a good tech deal out there, Alex is on the hunt!