I got one of them convection based ones , it looks like a cylinder , takes in air through the bottom and I'm quite disappointed in it's performance.
Here in Romania we still have huge flat buildings and due to the way the heating system is built it breaks down , and they don't turn it on unless it's this cold for this many days.
Anyway that means I'm freezing my ass off for a few weeks each winter.Sometimes you'll see me filling the tub with hot water just so i can get a bit of radiating heat going on , and using the gas stove at full blast even with the electric heater i mentioned.
Now a friend of mine who lives in a student dorm has one of them tiny fan based heaters. With that one the room is nice and cozy in a few minutes.
What I'm trying to say is even if you do heat the entire room , it's going to me much more efficient to heat up the bottom of the room , rather than the entire volume (unless you're spiderman by any chance :) )
Having said all that i think I'm going to get one of those oil filled heaters you speak of , my current one seems to smell funny when turned on.
It's still rather safe , there's no visible glowing parts , no touchable hot parts and it has a sensor to turn off it it gets tipped over , but the smell kills it , you can't open the window because it gets cold again either :) .
>> One time this happened I was able to explain that didn't exist, heaters turn electricity into heat at 100% efficiency, and at least one other time I was never able to get that concept across.
Do tell , do tell , I've met of few of those and quickly ended the conversation as it got frustrating :)