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- Powerful heat
- Secure fitted skirt
- Breathable design
- Wiring can be felt at the top of the blanket
Beurer’s Indulgence Heated Underblanket replaces its highly popular Monogram Komfort Heated Mattress cover. Like its predecessor, it uses a mattress protector-style fitted skirt to ensure the blanket is kept firmly in place, while differing in colour and the arrangement of its controls.
In terms of its performance, this is one of the best electric blankets I’ve ever tested, with only a couple of small niggles that won’t necessarily bother everyone. Read on to find out more…
Beurer Indulgence Heated Underblanket: What do you get for the money?
The Indulgence Heated Underblanket is available in four sizes, with a single costing £65. This rises to £84 for a double with a single controller and £100 for a double with dual controllers. Both king and super king options are only available with dual controllers, and cost £110 and £125 respectively.
These are similar prices to the Dreamland Hunker Down Scandi Sherpa underblanket, which also costs £100 for a double, and the Snuggledown Intelligent Warmth electric blanket, which is slightly cheaper at £82 (and also didn’t perform quite as well in our heat tests). Of course, there are much cheaper options on the market, such as the Silentnight Comfort Control electric blanket at £35 for a double – the compromise here being that the blanket doesn’t cover the whole mattress surface.
The Indulgence Heated Underblanket is 100% polyester, made with a ‘Teddy Bear’ style fabric on top and a fleecy underside. The fitted skirt is a brilliant addition, with plenty of stretch that even fits around my current 33cm deep mattress. Once you’ve got the blanket in place, it doesn’t shift at all, something that can be an issue with blankets that rely on elasticated straps. It also means that every part of the mattress is covered by the blanket. Having said this, the blanket is designed so that there’s a heat-free section where your pillow sits. You’ll also find extra heating wires at the bottom to help keep your feet warm.
There are six heat settings to choose from: the highest of these (six) is designed to heat the blanket up quickly to its warmest temperatures. Oddly, Beurer doesn’t quote any figures for this on its own website, but Next – where the blanket is also sold – suggests that the blanket will warm up in eight minutes.
You’ll also get four timer settings of two, six, nine and 12 hours, with overheat protection should anything fail in the wiring. Temperature is set via buttons on the sleek black controller, while a slider on its side is used to set the timer.
Comfort, performance and test results
Despite its polyester construction, the Indulgence Heated Underblanket feels soft to the touch and comfortable to lie on, even underneath a fitted sheet. You can’t feel the wires in the main body of the blanket when you’re lying on it and, strange as this might sound as a description of a heated blanket, the fabric actually feels pretty breathable: while I felt warm, the blanket didn’t make me feel clammy.
I ran some tests to see how quickly the blanket heated up and what temperatures it reached. I taped a temperature probe to the surface of the blanket near one of the heating wires and recorded the temperature increase. After 10 minutes on full power, the Indulgence Heated Underblanket warmed up to 32.5°C and, retesting this with a duvet on top, the temperature reached 40.4°C. I was particularly impressed with the temperatures on half power (heat setting three) too, with the blanket reaching 29.8°C after 10 minutes. In fact, in real life testing, I found that I only needed to leave the blanket on level one or two overnight as level three was simply too warm.
The Indulgence Heated Underblanket also holds heat very well and you can feel that it’s slightly warmer at the foot end, a fact that was backed up by my readings. Using an infrared thermometer gun, I measured how different sections of the blanket had warmed up after an hour. At the bottom of the blanket, the temperatures reached 52°C, compared to around 41°C in the centre and top half.
Finally, I also ran power consumption tests to see how energy efficient the Indulgence He ated Underblanket is. On full power the blanket used 63W to heat up and an accumulated 0.008kWh after 30 minutes, which is among the lowest readings we’ve recorded for an electric blanket. On half power, these readings were 48W and 0.010kWh respectively.
What could be improved?
I had a few minor issues with the Indulgence Heated Underblanket, starting with the setup of the blanket. The cable connects to the blanket at the bottom end, and is tucked through a hole on the outside of the blanket (there are two of these for the dual controller sizes, one on both corners). You can then run the cable alongside the mattress, or under the bed, to wherever you want the controller, and plug into a power outlet. I personally found this process fiddly, but it does mean you don’t feel any connectors at the top of the bed when lying down.
The other issue I had was with the blanket’s heating elements. When I lay on my back, I could feel the wiring that runs horizontally through the blanket just below the pillow area. That being said, not everyone will have this issue: for instance, my husband couldn’t feel it at all. I am rather lightweight, while he is of a more average build, so this may be an issue that predominantly affects lighter people.
Should you buy the Beurer Indulgence Heated Underblanket?
Despite these relatively small concerns, the Beurer Indulgence Heated Underblanket definitely earns its five stars – if not quite a Best Buy Award – and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to most people. It’s comfortable, well-designed (particularly its mattress coverage and fitted skirt) and the heat is impressive.
Of course, it’s not the cheapest option, especially for an electric underblanket. But on the balance of things, I think it’s well worth the investment.
