Review · Metal fan-forced
A cool-touch metal cabinet that holds a temperature and stops on its own. The catch is how little Vornado will tell you in numbers.
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The Vornado VMHi500 is a metal-cabinet heater with two heat settings plus fan-only, Auto-Climate Control, a remote, a 1-12 hour timer, two LED displays, tip-over protection and a 2-stage auto shutoff, backed by a five-year guarantee. Vornado publishes no wattage; retail listings put it at 1,500 W.
Vornado is unusual in this category, and not in a good way: its product pages describe behavior rather than specifications. For the VMHi500 its own page gives you two heat settings plus fan-only, Auto-Climate Control, a remote, a 1-12 hour timer, two LED displays, a cool-touch powder-coated metal cabinet with cord storage, tip-over protection, a 2-stage auto shutoff and a five-year satisfaction guarantee.
What it does not give you is a wattage, a coverage figure in square feet, or a named safety listing. Those three absences matter, because they are exactly the numbers a buyer needs to size the heater, cost it and satisfy a lease that requires a listed appliance.
Top pick · A metal cabinet that stops on its own
The current top of Vornado's metal line: auto-climate control, two LED displays and a 1-12 hour timer in a cool-touch metal box, backed by five years.
| Published specification | |
|---|---|
| Rated power | 1,500 W at 120 V (retail listings; Vornado publishes settings, not watts) |
| Heat settings | 2, plus fan-only |
| Thermostat | Auto-Climate Control, digital |
| Timer | 1–12 hours |
| Display | Two LED displays, for reading it from across the room |
| Housing | Cool-touch, powder-coated gloss metal cabinet with cord storage |
| Safety | Tip-over protection and a 2-stage auto shutoff |
| Warranty | 5-year satisfaction guarantee |
| Heat type | Fan-forced |
| Maker’s coverage claim | None published — the coverage figure above is ours |
| Safety listing | Vornado publishes tip-over protection and a 2-stage auto shutoff but does not name a listing mark; check the rating plate. |
Who it is for
A living room or bedroom where the heater is permanent and visible, and where a real thermostat, a timer and a cool metal shell are worth paying for over a plastic tower.
What it is not for
A nursery, because no child lock is published; and not silence, which means an oil-filled radiator instead.
Sources for this entry
The VMHi300, one step down the same line, has a mechanical dial. This one has Auto-Climate Control and two LED displays, and that difference is worth more than it sounds — not because it produces more heat, but because it decides how many hours the element actually runs.
A heater that holds a set temperature cycles off when the room reaches it. A heater with an unmarked dial gets turned up until it is warm and left there. Across an eight-hour evening the second one runs a great deal longer, and since every electric heater costs the same per hour at the same wattage, running hours are the only variable there is. The full argument is on the thermostat roundup.
| Wattage | Per hour | 1 h | 4 h | 8 h |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,500 W | 27.5¢ | $0.28 | $1.10 | $2.20 |
Computed at 18.34¢/kWh — the U.S. residential average for June 2026 (EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, released August 26, 2026). Your rate is on your own bill; substitute it and the arithmetic still holds. Figures assume full output for the whole period.
At full output this is 27.5 cents an hour — the same as every other 1,500 W heater on this site, and the same as the plastic tower that costs half as much. The metal cabinet, the displays and the guarantee are what you are paying for. Cycling is what gets the bill down.
The rate behind every figure on this site
18.34¢per kilowatt-hour
U.S. residential average for June 2026. EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, released August 26, 2026.
This is the most recent month EIA has published. Residential rates move seasonally and vary enormously by state — from roughly a dime per kilowatt-hour in parts of the South to more than 40¢ in Hawaii — so treat it as a national reference point, not as your rate.
Powder-coated metal, published as cool-touch, with cord storage. Metal does not become brittle the way heater-grade plastic does after a few seasons of thermal cycling, and a cool-touch metal shell is a genuine engineering result rather than a marketing line — most metal heaters are emphatically not cool to the touch.
The five-year satisfaction guarantee is the strongest signal here. A warranty is the one claim a manufacturer cannot make cheaply: it is a costed commitment. Five years on a heater in this price bracket says more about expected build quality than any spec sheet would.
| Room size | Watts needed | BTU/h | Plug-in heaters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150 sq ft | 1,500 W | 5,118 | 1 |
| 200 sq ft | 2,000 W | 6,824 | 2 (different circuits) |
| 300 sq ft | 3,000 W | 10,236 | 2 (different circuits) |
Computed as square feet x 10 W x insulation factor x (ceiling / 8 ft), for an average heated room — 10 W/sq ft, 8 ft ceiling. Heater count assumes the 1,500 W plug-in ceiling.
At our standard 10 watts per square foot with average insulation and an 8-foot ceiling, 1,500 W covers about 150 sq ft. Vornado publishes no coverage claim of its own for this model, so if you see one attached to it on a retailer's filter, that number did not come from Vornado. Use the wattage.
Vortex circulation is a distribution claim, not an output one, and the distinction decides whether this heater fixes your problem. If the complaint is *“one end of the room is warm and the other is cold,”* circulation is the fix. If the complaint is *“the room never gets warm,”* it changes nothing — the room is bigger than 1,500 W can hold, and the sizing calculator will say by how much.
| Heater | Draw at 120 V | 15 A circuit (12 A limit) | 20 A circuit (16 A limit) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1,500 W | 12.5 A | Over the limit | Fits |
| Maximum continuous | — | 12 A = 1,440 W | 16 A = 1,920 W |
Draw computed as watts / 120 V. The continuous limit is 80% of the breaker rating, which follows from the NEC's requirement to size a circuit at 125% of a continuous load (NFPA 70, 210.19(A)(1) and 210.20(A)).
12.5 A against a 15 A circuit's 12 A continuous allowance — over the limit on its own, exactly like every other 1,500 W heater. One per circuit, nothing else significant sharing it, and never on an extension cord. The arithmetic in full.
And what we did not do: we have not tested these units, owned them, measured them or run them in a room. Everything above is compiled from published manufacturer specifications and live retail listings, with the electrical load, room coverage and running cost computed by us from the published wattage. The full method.
Vornado does not publish a wattage for it. Retail listings put it at 1,500 W, which is the ceiling for any U.S. plug-in heater and is consistent with the rest of the range. Every current and cost figure we compute for this unit rests on that retail figure rather than a manufacturer one.
Control, mainly. The VMHi300 has a mechanical dial; the VMHi500 has Auto-Climate Control, two LED displays, a remote and a 1-12 hour timer. Both are cool-touch metal cabinets with vortex circulation and a five-year guarantee, and both produce the same heat at the same cost per hour.
About 150 sq ft at the standard 10 watts per square foot, assuming average insulation and an 8-foot ceiling. That figure is ours — Vornado publishes no coverage claim for this model. Vortex circulation spreads that heat more evenly but does not create more of it.
Vornado does not name a listing mark on its product page. It does publish tip-over protection and a 2-stage auto shutoff. Check the rating plate on the unit before buying if your lease or insurer requires a listed heater.
None is published. That is the main reason we do not recommend it for a nursery, despite the cool-touch cabinet and both cutoffs being exactly what that room otherwise wants.
Cool-touch metal cabinet, both cutoffs published, digital thermostat and a 1-12 hour timer.
Published numbers against a five-year warranty. Two philosophies of selling a heater, compared honestly.
The only feature that actually cuts the bill, because it is the only one that turns the heater off.
The four units that get closest to a 300 sq ft room — and the two-heater arithmetic nobody publishes.
Tip-over, overheat, child lock, cool-touch, wall mounting — what each mechanism actually prevents.
Cool-touch, tip-over cutoff and a 5-year warranty — plus a maker that publishes settings, not specs.