I Bought a $168 Standing Patio Heater. Here’s What It Did to My Electric Bill.
I Bought a $168 Standing Patio Heater. Here’s What It Did to My Electric Bill.
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The first frost warning of the season landed on a Tuesday, and my back deck — the one we’d lived on all summer — went dark. Not officially, of course. The string lights were still up, the cushions were still out. But nobody sat out there anymore, because 48 degrees at 8 p.m. is not a temperature, it’s a negotiation. My wife looked at me over dinner and said the thing that starts every questionable purchase in this house: “What if we could get one more month out of the patio?”
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Two days later a box showed up from FLNORW MALL. Inside: the Simple Deluxe standing patio heater, $168, electric, with two heat settings and overheat protection. Six weeks later, here is the full honest accounting — what it is, what it actually warms, and the electricity math nobody puts on the box.
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What a $168 standing patio heater actually is
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It is a tall black metal tower heater — the kind you see outside restaurants in October, scaled for a backyard. Simple Deluxe makes it in a Large size, and the spec sheet is refreshingly short: two heat settings, 750W and 1500W, overheat protection that shuts it down if things get too hot, and a body meant for patios, balconies, and courtyards. That is the whole pitch. No app, no remote, no Bluetooth speaker pretending to be a feature.
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It weighs about 27.6 pounds, which surprised me — I expected something flimsy, and it is not. Assembly took me twenty minutes with the included hardware: base, pole sections, the heating head on top. One honest note from setup day: the heating element is the obvious fragile part, so I assembled it on the grass rather than the concrete, in case I dropped anything. I did not drop anything. My track record with flat-pack furniture suggested otherwise.
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The first cold night: does an outdoor patio heater really warm you?
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The test conditions were not kind: 47°F, light breeze, my wife and I in hoodies with a blanket we refused to admit we needed. I set the standing patio heater about four feet from our chairs, flipped it to 1500W, and waited.
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Here is the heat-radius truth, and I want to be precise because this is where patio heater reviews usually get slippery. Within about four to six feet, directly in the heater’s line of sight, you feel real warmth — the kind that lets you drop the blanket. Beyond eight feet it is ambience, not heat. The breeze steals everything; a windless night versus a breezy one is the difference between “cozy” and “is this thing on?”
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That sounds like a knock, and it is not. It is physics. Every electric patio heater in this price class works the same way: radiant heat, warming objects and people in its path rather than the air. Once I stopped expecting a furnace and started treating it like a warm zone — chairs pulled in close, heater angled at the seating — it did exactly what we bought it for.
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The electricity math I ran (all estimates, flagged as such)
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This was the question my brother asked before I’d even plugged it in: “What’s that going to do to your power bill?” Fair. So I did the math the boring way.
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The U.S. Energy Information Administration put the average residential electricity price at roughly $0.17 per kilowatt-hour in 2024. At 1500W, the heater draws 1.5 kWh per hour — about $0.26 per hour. At 750W, half that: roughly $0.13 per hour. These are estimates, but the arithmetic is simple enough that “roughly” is doing honest work here.
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My actual usage pattern over six weeks: three evenings a week, about two and a half hours each, mostly on the 1500W setting when it was properly cold. That is roughly 11 kWh a week, or about $1.90 a week — under $8 a month. For context, that is less than one delivery pizza. Heating the whole house an extra degree all winter would cost many times that. The heater lets me keep the thermostat where it is and only warm the six square feet I am actually sitting in.
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Two heat settings and an overheat switch: the safety question
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The 750W/1500W toggle is the feature I use most and thought about least before buying. Mild October evening? 750W is plenty and sips power. Proper November cold? 1500W, no regrets. I have never once wished for a middle setting, which tells me two was the right number of choices.
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The overheat protection is the spec that mattered most to my wife, and honestly to me too. We have a dog with no concept of personal space and a habit of leaning against warm things. The heater shuts itself down if it overheats, which is the minimum I would accept for anything with a glowing element running unattended-ish on a wooden deck. Practical rules I follow anyway: a few feet of clearance from cushions and the umbrella, never draped with a towel to “dry it faster” (a neighbor did this with a different heater; the story ends with a melted towel), and I unplug it when we are done rather than trusting the switch alone.
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Where it earned its keep: three real scenarios
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1. Balcony coffee, minus the shivering. My Saturday ritual is coffee and a laptop on the deck, and it had died with the warm weather. With the heater on 750W a few feet away, the ritual is back. This is the balcony heater use case nobody advertises: not entertaining, just one person refusing to surrender their morning spot.
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2. The November dinner party. We had six people over in early November — 45°F, the kind of night that usually moves everyone inside by 9. The heater went beside the table at 1500W, and people stayed out until nearly 11. Two guests asked where we got it. If you own a decent all-weather cast aluminum patio dining set like ours, a heater is the missing piece that turns “summer furniture” into “three-season furniture.” That evening alone justified the $168 to me.
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3. The garage workshop. This one I did not plan. I do small woodworking projects in the garage on Saturdays, and November turned it into a walk-in refrigerator. The heater is light enough to carry out there, and at 1500W it takes the edge off a two-car garage enough to work in a flannel instead of a parka. Check your outlet situation first — see the notes below.
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Electric vs propane: my back-of-the-envelope comparison
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The obvious alternative is a propane patio heater, so let us do the rough math. A standard 20-pound propane tank refill runs about $20 where I live (prices vary; flagging this as a rough number). A typical 50,000-BTU propane patio heater burns through that tank in roughly 9 to 10 hours. That is a little over $2 per hour — nearly ten times the electric heater’s ~$0.26 per hour at full power.
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Propane wins on raw heat output and works anywhere, no outlet needed. Electric wins on running cost, on convenience (no tank swaps, no storing a spare tank in the garage), and — this mattered to us — on simplicity. There is no flame to blow out, no tank to remember to refill before guests arrive. For a suburban deck with an outdoor outlet, electric was the clear call. If your patio has no power and you are heating a crowd of twenty, propane still has a case.
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What I would tell a neighbor before they buy
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- Use an outdoor-rated extension cord, or better, no extension cord. 1500W pulls real current. A thin indoor cord on a heater is how you learn about voltage drop the exciting way. Plug it as close to the outlet as you can.
- Give it its own outlet. Do not run the heater on the same circuit as a string of power tools or a second heater. If your breaker trips once, that is the house telling you something.
- Expect a warm zone, not a warm yard. Plan your seating inside a six-foot radius and you will be happy. Plan to heat the whole backyard and you will write a one-star review that is really about physics.
- Wind is the enemy. A windbreak, a fence, even positioning the heater on the leeward side of the seating makes a bigger difference than the wattage setting.
- Bring it under cover in real rain. It is built for outdoor use, but I keep mine under the eave during storms. Twenty-seven pounds is light enough to move without it becoming a chore.
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Specs worth knowing before you buy
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- $168 — electric, no fuel costs beyond electricity
- 750W / 1500W two heat settings for mild vs properly cold nights
- Overheat protection — automatic shutoff for safety
- Black metal body, Large size, about 27.6 lbs
- Designed for patios, balconies, and courtyards
- Item code GLHTODSTAND2IN1B on the FLNORW MALL listing
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The verdict
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Six weeks in, the standing patio heater has done the one thing I asked of it: it gave us our deck back. We have eaten outside eleven times since the frost warning, had the November dinner party that would not have happened, and my Saturday coffee ritual survived. The running cost is under $8 a month — I have spent more on the citronella candles sitting next to it.
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Is $168 worth it? If you have an outdoor space you already like and a power outlet within reach, yes, without hesitation. It will not heat your yard, it will not replace a fire pit’s theater, and it will not make January feel like June. What it does is stretch your outdoor season by six to eight weeks a year, every year, for the price of a nice dinner out. That is the best dollars-per-evening deal in my house this fall.
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If you want the full spec sheet, it is on the standing patio heater product page at FLNORW MALL. And if you are building out the whole outdoor setup, browse the furniture collection — the heater pairs embarrassingly well with a proper dining set, and your future November self will thank you.
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Ready to reclaim your patio? Get the $168 Simple Deluxe standing patio heater at FLNORW MALL — and check the FLNORW MALL homepage for this season’s outdoor picks.
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