Valor GE4 Electric Fireplace Insert

Quick Facts

• Heating Capacity: 0–500 sq ft
• Viewing Area: 30½" wide
• Fuel: Electric.
• Controls: Programmable remote included; free app runs it from your phone.
• Fan: Included

Who It's For

Plenty of rooms were never going to get a gas line or a chimney—a bedroom, a basement den, a condo living room—so the fire never happens. You need a fire that runs on the wiring the house already has. If that's your room, or you have an old fireplace you'd rather not feed and sweep anymore, the Valor GE4 was built for exactly this. A plain space heater would keep the room warm too; this one gives you something worth looking at while it does.

What Makes It Special

Valor's high-definition logs—birch, driftwood, or splitwood—are crafted for a realistic fire and exclusive to North America, set against a black reflective panel that gives the flames real depth. From the remote or the free app you choose how the fire burns: three flame colors, five flame speeds, five fire-bed brightness levels, an eight-setting ambient light bed, and two crackling-wood sounds when you want the fire heard as well as seen.

The Clean Install Kit is exclusive to the GE4. It lets the fireplace sit in the wall with no front and no backing plate at all—the flush, contemporary built-in look, without the fuss that usually comes with it.

The built-in heater runs at two levels. On the standard setting it plugs into a regular outlet with its own cord; have an electrician hard-wire it to the higher setting and it puts out twice the warmth. A built-in timer can run the heat on a daily or seven-day schedule, so the room is already comfortable when you sit down.

Possible Downsides

• It warms the room it's in, not the house. Electric fireplaces are one-room heaters—figure roughly 500 square feet.
• The higher heat setting must be hard-wired. Only the standard setting plugs into a wall outlet.
• No electricity, no fire. Flames and heat both stop in a power outage; if outages are your worry, a wood or gas unit is the better tool.

If you want a real-looking fire in a room that was never going to get a gas line, the GE4 is the right decision. An ordinary Tuesday evening gets a fire, and the room it's in becomes the room the house lives in.

The GE4 takes birch, driftwood, or splitwood log sets, a three-sided Clearview front in Vintage Iron or a four-sided Edgemont front in Pewter with matching backing plates or a shroud kit, the Clean Install Kit for the frameless look, riser and base trim kits, and an optional LED mood-lighting strip, so it can match the room you already have.