Dyson Hot Sculpture Heater

Despite my commitment to the slow food movement, I'm a big fan of instant gratification. So on a frigid morning in early January, I took a lingering look at the ashes in the woodstove that heats our house and went looking for a quicker way to get warm.

Last year at this time, I managed to convince my minimalist husband that we needed a wall-mounted electric fireplace to boost the heat at one end of our open-concept living space. As an architect who understands the ins and outs of heating and cooling, he ought to have recognized this as a slippery slope, yet last week he seemed genuinely surprised when I arrived home with something to heat the other end of the room: a stylish electric space heater.

Electric space heaters have come a long way since the detachable, light-up log set that I dragged from room to room in my first apartment to set the stage for romance. Newer models range from tiny cubes to tall towers, and most manage to warm the air without making it smell like burning dust.

I splurged on the Dyson Hot, a sculptural, 1,500-watt portable heater with innovative "air multiplier" technology that substitutes cool-looking loop amplifiers for fast-spinning blades and dust-catching grilles.

Weighing in at just over 2.3 kilograms, the Dyson Hot channels a wide jet of hot air, warming an entire room faster than you can say "mulled wine." And if that's not enough, if it ever gets hot outside, the Hot will do double duty as a powerful fan.

Discrete buttons on the heater control temperature (from 0-37 C) and oscillation, but I prefer using the unit's remote control, an aluminum-coloured bar the size of a business card. Tiny and tasteful, the remote gets added points for attaching magnetically to the top of the heater. Not only does it complement the modern styling of the machine, it should also be harder to lose than our last two phones.

Dyson's innovative engineering and sleek styling have earned the company a reputation as the Apple of the home appliance world, and the company's products a place in museums from Sydney to New York -and not tucked away in maintenance closets but displayed as icons of industrial design.

Safety-minded individuals will swoon over the Dyson Hot's absence of spinning blades and visible heating elements, but it's the designophiles among us who will really fall for this machine. Designed by 22 experts in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics - yup, rocket scientists - it's made of ABS, the same tough thermoplastic used to manufacture car bumpers and crash helmets.

The downside of all this performance and high design is the price tag. At Canadian Tire, the regular price of the Dyson Hot AM04 model is $449.99, although occasional sales may bring the cost down by about $50.

Bargain hunters will be sorry to hear that Dyson's prices are typically the same from one store to another, so there's little to be gained by shopping around. Admittedly, it's a lot to pay for a heater, but I think of it as a sculpture that keeps my toes warm.

Nova Scotia Power has an online energy calculator that lets you enter the wattage of an item and calculate how much it will cost to run. The good news, according to this calculator, is that running the Dyson Hot costs about 20 cents an hour, which for three hours of operation per day would amount to about $18 a month.

(Nova Scotia Power's energy calculator uses a residential rate of 13.336 cents per kilowatt hour and does not include monthly charges. You can find the calculator under the Energy Savings section at nspower.ca.)

Some people might factor in the heater's purchase price and make projections over time, but these are likely people who didn't drop math in Grade 9. For me, it's enough to know that I have a well-designed product that will keep me warm on cold mornings while I eat my breakfast.