Dreo Smart Space Heater review: The cure for the common cold (room)
Tired of your chilly bedroom or home office? This smart, wall-mounted unit will help keep you toasty.
I won't say the Dreo WH719S wall-mount space heater saved my marriage, but it did thaw out my poor wife. See, our master bedroom has always been drafty — and in the winter, it's downright cold. This is despite relatively new windows and added insulation in the attic. Right now, for example, it's 59 degrees in there, versus 72 in the rest of the house.
For a long time, I considered a space heater, but I didn't want something that sat on the floor (tripping hazard), required yet another remote and probably wouldn't do much anyway. Meanwhile, my wife took to wearing a hat to bed and shivering under multiple blankets. Something had to be done.
When Dreo introduced the WH719S late last year, it seemed to tick all the important boxes: a wall-mount design, smart controls via app and voice assistant, and an oscillating fan to help push and distribute heat throughout the room. But was it as good in reality as it was on paper? Here's my Dreo space heater review.
VERDICT: Smart in both design and operation, this space heater is superb in small rooms and pretty good in medium ones.
- Effectively heats small rooms
- Attractive design
- Easy to install
- Works with voice assistants
- Runs quiet
- Supports scheduling and timed operation
- Some confusing controls
- Struggles in larger rooms
The nicely styled WH719S measures roughly 20 inches wide, 13.4 inches high and 4.7 inches deep. Along with detailed, easy-to-read instructions, an included drill guide and wall anchors make installation quick and simple: Just four holes in the drywall (and/or studs) and you're ready to hang it.
There's an electrical cord, of course, but you can wrap the excess in the rear to minimize unsightly cord dangling. I mounted the unit reasonably close to an AC outlet to help with that as well.
You can operate the heater using four different methods. There's a row of buttons on the front and a remote with more or less the same controls. There's also the Dreo app, which requires you to connect the unit to your home Wi-Fi network. From there, you have the option of linking Alexa or Google Assistant, allowing for spoken commands.
Because a few of the controls on the unit and remote are a bit cryptic, I'm partial to the app for most operations. For example, I use it to turn the heater on shortly before bed, which I can do manually or by setting up a schedule. I can also set a timer so it goes off after a set period.
You'll also need the app to tweak various preferences, such as enabling a child-lock (which disables the heater's buttons) and open-window detection.
On the voice front, it's nice to be able to say, "Alexa, turn on the heater" without even touching my phone. And you can use voice commands to adjust various modes and settings as well, not just turn the unit on and off.
The heater has three power settings, or you can switch to eco mode and set a desired temperature for it to maintain. The fan's three angle options — up, down and straight — might be useful depending on where you mount the unit. If it's up high, for example, you might want it angled down. There's also an oscillate mode to better distribute warm air throughout the room. And if you just want to circulate air without heat, switch to fan-only mode.
Like nearly all space heaters, this one tops out at 1,500 watts. And, also like nearly all space heaters, it performs better in smaller rooms than larger ones. In a 12-by-10-foot office, for example, it can work wonders. But in my aforementioned bedroom, which I'd describe as medium-sized, it merely works.
For testing purposes, I set the WH719S to maximum (aka "H3") and turned on oscillation. In the span of 15 minutes, my bedroom went from a chilly 59 degrees to a more comfortable 67. (I know this because the Dreo has its own ambient-temperature sensor built in.)
However, with an outdoor temperature in the single digits, that was about as warm as it could go. I left it running for another 30 minutes, and the temp never made it above 68. Was the room much more comfortable? Absolutely. But it did show the unit's limitations.
Even so, I find the Dreo vastly superior to fan-less heaters, which don't do much beyond the immediate area. And I especially appreciate how quiet it is: At the H1 setting, it's almost silent, and even at H3 it produces just a low whoosh — making it a pretty good white-noise machine for sleepers who like that sort of thing.
There are plenty of space heaters that oscillate and have fans, and a floor-standing tower model has the advantage of moving easily from one room to another. But if you want something a bit more permanent, the Dreo WH719S mounts easily to any wall, blows plenty of hot air and bakes in plenty of smarts. I'm quite happy having this in my bedroom — and my wife is even happier.
