OHS Electric Heated Under-Blanket Review: Low cost bed warming

Verdict

If saving money is a must for your electric blanket, OHS Electric Heated Under-Blanket could be a great fit. Affordable to both buy and run, there are no bells and whistles here, but it does the basics well enough: it’s easy to use and maintain, simple to add to your bed and remove, and quick to heat up.

Introduction

For those not familiar with OHS (Online Home Shop), its cheap and cheerful products are a good go-to for thrifty buyers and those keen to trim costs where possible. Its Electric Heated Under-Blanket is no exception: affordable and durable, it’s a great way to make your bed toasty and not splash the cash. Available only as a double size, its single control is 70W, meaning that running it at maximum for an hour (based on a 30p per kWh), will cost around 2p.

Design and features

• Quick to fit elasticated straps
• Single control
• Smaller than comparable blankets

Unlike electric blankets that are designed to be on all night, ONS’s Electric Heated Under-Blanket aims to take the chill off your bed, so must be turned off before slipping between the sheets.

It offers three heats across the whole blanket, controlled by a simple slider switch. The heat selected is shown by a small illuminated number but also by bumps next to the slider, which is handy if you’re turning it off or down in low light.

There’s only one control, which detaches for cleaning: handily, the blanket is washable at 30°C.

Two elasticated straps make it easy to fit – but they’re thinner than most so can be prone to twisting.

The double size measures 135 x 120cm: covering the average dimensions of a mattress from edge to edge (4ft 6in x 6ft 3in or 135 x 190cm) but not the pillow area, yet still coming up a little short at the bottom.

Performance

• Need to remember to turn it off
• Could use more padding
• Quick to warm up

ONS’s Electric Heated Under-Blanket is easy enough to fit but the fact that it doesn’t have a timer – and isn’t suitable for use with a timer plug – means that you’ll have to remember to turn it off before getting into bed. It’s a minor quibble, but for anyone who’s previously used a blanket that can be on low all night, it could prove to be an annoyance. It does, however, heat up pretty quickly when switched to the highest setting. On average, I could feel heat start to come through in the first five minutes, with 15-20 minutes usually adequate to take the chill off the bed.

As with similarly designed blankets, the hard control connector tended to collide with my shoulder, and in general, I found it wasn’t terribly comfy to sleep on.

The wires are quite prominent, and while after a few nights, I grew used to them, I welcomed the return of my usual electric blanket.

What I did like was the control. It was easy to set, even if I couldn’t see the illuminated figures showing which heat had been selected, thanks to the raised bumps.

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