Arlo Heater US
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The Craftsman’s Review
American Home & Trade · Reports from the working floor
Families on oil heat will spend about $2,115 keeping warm this winter. An Ohio furnace tech says much of it heats rooms nobody is sitting in, and he designed a $60 heater to fix it.
On Tuesday it was 75 degrees in Dayton, Ohio. By the weekend, nights were dropping into the upper 30s. By December, Ohio nights are in the 20s.
This is the week thermostats across the Midwest go up to 72 and stay there until April. And it’s the week a lot of people start doing the same quiet math in their heads: Can I really afford to be warm in my own house this year?
The thing almost every house does wrong
Ask people how they get through winter and you hear the same tricks again and again. Doors to the spare rooms shut. A sweatshirt over a sweater indoors. A blanket on the couch that never gets folded up. The thermostat nudged down when nobody’s looking, and nudged right back up at 7 p.m.
The reason is simple. Central heating heats the whole house: every bedroom, the guest room, the hallway, the basement. It doesn’t know that everybody is sitting in the living room. You’re paying to heat empty rooms, and the only alternative most people know is being cold.
Arlo Kessler has a different idea. “Stop heating the house,” he says. “Heat the person.”
31 years in other people’s basements
For 31 years, Kessler drove a service van around Montgomery and Greene County, Ohio. Furnaces that wouldn’t light, frozen heat pumps, thermostats wired backwards. Most winter calls ended the same way. “People would hand me the heating bill like it was evidence,” he says. “Then I’d walk through the house and see it in two minutes. Thermostat at 72 around the clock. Bedrooms empty until ten. And the whole family in one room.”
One call he still mentions: a widow outside Xenia heating her whole four-bedroom house with propane, just to stay warm in one armchair. He told her to turn the thermostat down to 64 and put a small heater by her chair. Her thank-you card is still pinned above his test bench.
The heater he designed for that armchair
The trouble was the heater itself. Most store-bought ones are big, sit on the floor with a cord across the room, and have a fan loud enough to end up in the closet by January. So at 59, instead of retiring, Kessler and Renata Okafor, who had run his old company’s office for eleven years, started their own small company in a warehouse in Moraine, just south of Dayton.
Arlo designed the heater himself, from the ceramic element to the rotating plug and the thermostat, and commissioned a manufacturing partner to build it to his exact specifications. His goal: a heater he would hand to every customer he’d ever had. Small enough to forget about. No cord on the floor. Warm in about a minute. Cheap to run. Every single one goes across his test bench in Moraine before it ships.
How it turns a cold room into a warm one in about a minute
From the outside, Arlo’s heater doesn’t look like much. It’s about the size of a thick paperback and plugs straight into the wall. Inside, three things do the work:
A ceramic heating element. Ceramic (PTC) elements heat up within seconds and regulate themselves as they get hot. Within about a minute you feel warm air.
A quiet fan. It pulls in cool air, pushes it across the hot ceramic and spreads it through the room, so the warmth doesn’t just sit in front of the heater.
A thermostat that holds your number. You set the temperature on the display. Instead of blasting at full power and then shutting off, the heater cycles to hold it.
Arlo’s heater at a glance
The result in practice: warm air in about a minute, a noticeably warmer small room within minutes, and about 7¢ an hour on the low setting at this winter’s U.S. average electricity price.
7 reasons it’s the smart heater for this winter
1. It lets you turn the whole house down. That’s where the money is. The heater keeps you comfortable while the thermostat sits 8 degrees lower.
2. About 7¢ an hour on low. At 18.2¢ per kWh, this winter’s U.S. average, low costs about 7¢ an hour and high about 15¢. Six hours a day on low is roughly $13 a month.
3. No cord, nothing on the floor. It plugs straight into the wall and the plug rotates, so it sits upright on vertical and horizontal outlets, away from pets, kids’ toys and blankets.
4. Two power levels. 800 W to take the chill off fast, 400 W to keep a room cozy on half the power.
5. 12-hour timer and remote control. Warm bedroom at 10 p.m., off by itself at 11. Adjust it from the couch without getting up.
6. Overheat protection. It switches itself off automatically if it ever gets too hot inside.
7. Quiet and portable. Quiet enough to sleep next to or take a video call with. Office in the morning, den in the evening, bedroom at night.
Arlo’s Plug-In Heater · final batch
$59.99
Designed in Ohio · Ships in 1–2 business days · 90-day returns
Check availability & orderOnly 317 left · no new batch after this one
How much can you really save this winter?
Kessler doesn’t like the miracle numbers in heater ads, so he did the math the way he’d do it for a customer. The rule of thumb from the U.S. Department of Energy: every degree you turn the thermostat down for eight hours saves roughly 1% on heating. His recommendation is 8 degrees lower for evenings and nights, about 16 hours a day, while his heater keeps the room you’re in comfortable.
What one hour of heat costs
At this winter’s U.S. average electricity price of 18.2¢ per kWh
Typical 1,500 W space heater
Arlo’s heater on high (800 W)
Arlo’s heater on low (400 W)
| Typical U.S. space heater | Arlo’s heater | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it sits | On the floor, cord across the room | Straight on the wall outlet |
| Power | 1,500 W | 400 W or 800 W |
| Remote and timer | Often not | Yes, 12-hour timer |
| Price | $25 to $100 | $59.99 |
Cost per hour = watts × hours × 18.2¢/kWh (EIA Winter Fuels Outlook 2026–27). Most box and oil-filled heaters sold in U.S. stores run at 1,500 W on high.
Here is what that looks like for three typical households, November through March, after paying for the heater’s own electricity:
You keep: about $250.
You keep: about $90.
You keep: about $160.
Estimates based on the EIA Winter Fuels Outlook 2026–27 (average household, November–March, 18.2¢/kWh) and the DOE rule of thumb of roughly 1% per degree over 8 hours, applied conservatively. Your results depend on your rates, home, climate and habits.
“On oil, propane or electric heat, it pays for itself in the first winter,” Kessler says. “And from the first evening on, you’re warm where you actually sit.”
Where people put theirs
The den or living room. Next to the recliner or the couch, so the evening TV hour stays warm while the rest of the house sits at 64.
The home office. Under or beside the desk. Warm feet all day, and quiet enough that nobody on a video call hears it.
The bedroom. On for an hour before bed, then the timer switches it off after you fall asleep.
The bathroom on cold mornings. A few minutes of warmth before the shower, on an outlet away from the sink.
Because it weighs about as much as a coffee mug and plugs into any standard U.S. outlet, many customers simply move it with them through the day.
$59.99 · Ships from Ohio in 1–2 business days · 90-day returns
How to make sure you get the real one
Look-alike wall heaters sell online for less. Some are made for 230-volt outlets abroad, and some ship without a thermostat or timer. Arlo’s Plug-In Heater is made for standard U.S. 120 V outlets, comes with thermostat, 12-hour timer, remote and overheat protection, is tested in Moraine before it ships and is only sold through Arlo’s official website.
★★★★★
“Read about Arlo in the paper and ordered two. One is in the den, one in my sewing room. The thermostat sits at 64 now and I'm honestly warmer than I was at 70, because the heat is where I'm sitting.”
Gloria T., Springfield, Ohio · Verified buyer
★★★★★
“I'm on oil, so I watch every gallon. Plugged it in next to my recliner and turned the house down 8 degrees like he says. It showed up in two days, well packed. No complaints.”
Hank W., Bowling Green, Kentucky · Verified buyer
★★★★★
“I was worried it would be loud because I work from home and I'm on video calls all day. It's not. Low is plenty for my little office and nobody has ever heard it.”
Denise M., Fort Wayne, Indiana · Verified buyer
★★★★★
“Bought one for my mother so she'd stop running the furnace all day in a big empty house. She works the remote from her chair and sets the timer at night. She calls it her little furnace.”
Lorraine K., Erie, Pennsylvania · Verified buyer
Why this winter’s batch is the last one
This spring, the owner of the building in Moraine sold it to a logistics company, and the lease ends on December 31. Kessler and Okafor looked for new space for months. In the end, they decided not to start over.
“I’m 62,” Kessler says, without much drama in it. “If I were 45, I’d find another warehouse and do it all again. I’m not. I’d rather finish this properly.”
Finishing it properly, to him, means one thing. A liquidator offered to take the remaining heaters off his hands and sell them on without his name. He said no. “I’d rather pack them myself and know they end up on somebody’s wall this winter,” he says. “That’s what I built them for.”
Of this winter’s batch, 317 heaters are left. Orders placed by December 12 arrive before Christmas. The last orders ship on December 19, when the warehouse closes. Your 90-day guarantee and email support continue after that.
$59.99 · Order by December 12 for delivery before Christmas
Renata Okafor, co-founder
The questions everyone asks
Is it complicated to install?
No. Take it out of the box, plug it into the wall, press the power button. No tools, no electrician.
How big a room does it heat?
Rooms up to about 150 sq ft, like a bedroom, home office or den, or the area right around you in a larger room.
Is it safe?
Yes. Overheat protection switches it off automatically, and it plugs straight into the wall with no cord to trip over.
What if I don’t like it?
Send it back within 90 days for a full refund.
Ninety days to decide
“Use it through a few cold weeks,” Kessler says. “Turn the thermostat down. Look at your next bill. If it didn’t make your winter better, send it back.”
For a few cents an hour you get warm evenings in the den, a warm desk on cold mornings and a warm bedroom at night, without paying to heat the guest room, the hallway and the basement all winter.
Last chance this winter · 317 left
$59.99
Remote included · Ships in 1–2 business days · 90-day returns
Order Arlo’s Plug-In Heater2 heaters $109.98 · 3 heaters $149.97 · no new batch after this one
DISCLOSURE: This is a paid advertisement for Arlo’s Plug-In Heater. The owner of this site has a material connection to the product shown on this page. Cost and savings figures are estimates based on the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Winter Fuels Outlook 2026–27 (average residential electricity price about 18.2¢/kWh; average household winter heating expenditures by fuel) and U.S. Department of Energy thermostat guidance. Actual costs and savings depend on your rates, home, climate and usage. Images are for illustration.