Winter Fuel Payment: Tiny £12.99 heater costs pennies to run and keeps me warm all day without central heating

There's no escaping the cold weather now we're in those winter months.

But keeping warm can come at a cost, especially for those households no longer qualifying for the Winter Fuel Payment.

With energy costs rising people are trying all sorts of products to avoid having to turn the central heating on - and there are plenty of them on the market right now.

Some are more effective than others however and we've been trying out one gadget that does a great job of heating up the whole room.

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The Swan Plug-in Fan Heater has been reduced to just £12.99, so it's not a huge outlay given the amount you can save by avoiding turning those radiators on.

It's only quite small - a 5" by 5" cube shape - and you simply plug it in and turn it on for the heat to blast out.

And it really does blast out too. You wouldn't think something this small would be that effective, but this works really well at heating the room you're in and has two fan speeds for you to choose how powerful you want it.

The heat ranges from 15 to 30 degrees - which you can clearly see on the digital display - and you can easily alter that with the plus and minus buttons on the top of it. It takes just minutes to reach the higher temperatures and will only produce heat if the set temperature is higher than the room temperature, so you won't be having it on unnecessarily.

It costs very little to use it. Having it on for 30 minutes to take the chill off my room cost me just nine pence, so even if you wanted to keep it in for three hours, it amounts to just 54p.

When you consider that, on average, central heating costs around £1.70 an hour, that's a pretty big saving, or at least it will be over the autumn and winter months ahead.

The 90 degree swivel plug means you can change the direction of the heat to where you need it most and the fact that it's so small and can be plugged into any socket means it's super portable to take from room to room.

It comes with a timer too, so you can pick a desired number of hours, up to a maximum of 12 and it will turn off automatically if it overheats

The Plug-in Fan Heater is available on the Swan website here. Delivery costs £3.99.

There are similar plug-in fan heaters available at a number of retailers including Amazon, where this Russell Hobbs compact heater has been reduced to £19.99 and Currys, where you can get a similar device for the same price.