Verdict
A great-looking fan heater, the De’Longhi Capsule Desk is cheap to run because of its low power consumption. It’s no good for heating a room, but the gentle heat that comes out of this appliance is ideal for warming a single person, taking the edge off cold drafts, or even keeping your hands warm while typing.
Pros
- Cheap to run
- Compact
- Gentle individual heat
Cons
- Thermostat not that useful
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TypeThis is a PTC fan heater designed to warm one person at a time. -
Power consumptionI measured the fan at 352W, which costs around 12p per hour to run at 34p per kWh unit charge.
Introduction
Whole room heating will make your general environment feel better, but cold drafts and sitting still for too long can make you feel cold even when the room is technically warm. The De’Longhi Capsule Desk is built to warm the person, not the room, dishing out a gentle cloud of warm air while keeping running costs to a minimum.
It’s nice to look at and simple to use, although the temperature control feels a little superfluous.
Design and Features
- Three colours
- Simple temperature control
- Neat and compact
Designed to sit on a desk, the De’Longhi Capsule Desk is a tiny fan heater. In fact, it looks more like a high-end DAB radio than a fan. It’s available in three colours (pink, sage green and blue), so it’s easy to find one that suits your decor.
It’s also very simple to control: just turn the dial on top to set the analogue thermostat. As there are no temperature markings on the dial, you have to turn it until it clicks and the fan heater springs to life.
A thermostat makes sense on a large fan heater, as it will turn off when your room’s at the right temperature. On a personal device, I found that it makes less sense: when I felt that my hands were cold while sitting at my desk, I turned the fan on; when I was warm enough, I turned it off.
The front grille can be tilted up or down, depending on where you want the warm air to go. Pushed up, I found that the De’Longhi Capsule Desk surrounded me in a bubble of warm air; pushed down, I could warm up my hands on the keyboard. Given my slightly leaky Victorian house, which has lots of drafts, this fan heater was a neat way of fighting back the cold and made it easier to work in this environment.
There’s built-in overheating protection, plus a tip-over switch – if the fan is knocked over, it will cut off power immediately.
Performance
- Cheap to run
- Not enough power to heat a room
I measured the De’Longhi Capsule Desk at 352W, which works out to a running cost of 12p per hour, based on a unit charge of 34p per kWh. That’s significantly cheaper than most fan heaters, which typically cost 65p or more per hour to run.
Of course, the flip side is that this fan doesn’t generate much heat. In fact, without another heating source in my room, the De’Longhi Capsule Desk wasn’t powerful enough to raise the base temperature.
Instead, this is a fan heater that’s designed to work with another heating source, such as central heating, to eliminate those cold spots.
Sat with it on my desk, I found it much more comfortable to work with – this fan heater took the edge off the cold drafts in my home. I did find that I had to be relatively close to the fan to get its effect: 15-30cm seemed ideal.
I measured the fan at just 41.2dB from a 15cm distance. Sure, I could hear this fan heater when it was turned on, but I could have a conversation over it easily enough or listen to music without it being too distracting.
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Should you buy it?
If you feel cold and want to eliminate cold spots in your home, then this is a useful heater that will keep you warm.
If you need to heat an entire space, this heater doesn’t have the power or ability to do so, and you’ll need a more powerful heater.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t a fan heater that can make a room warmer. If you want something that does that, check out my guide to the best electric heaters. Instead, this is a cheap-to-run device that focuses on keeping one person warm and eliminates cold spots in the house. If you feel cold and struggle with relatively stationary activities, such as typing, then this is a useful tool.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every heater we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as our main heater for the review period
We measure the fan speed (if available) using an anemometer so that we can accurately compare performance between models
We measure the heat output of the fan and its effect on our test lab
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FAQs
It has just the one, turning the heater on or off.
Yes, it has an analogue thermostat, and the fan will turn off when it hits the target temperature.
Sustainability
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As part of this mission, whenever we review a product we send the company a series of questions to help us gauge and make transparent the impact the device has on the environment.
We currently haven’t received answers to the questions on this product, but will update this page the moment we do. You can see a detailed breakdown of the questions we ask and why in our sustainability info page.
