WarmlyYours PowerMat Snow Melting Mat, 3 x 15 ft, 45 sqft

Why it's worth it

This 3-by-15-foot mat isn't portable at all. It installs under concrete, asphalt, or pavers at a depth of three to four inches, then melts snow across 45 square feet at 50 watts per square foot with nothing visible on the surface.

If you're already redoing the driveway, buy this instead of a portable mat. Embedding the element solves every problem a surface mat has. Nothing to unroll, nothing to trip over, no cord snaking across the walk, and nothing to haul into the garage when the snow stops. Angi puts a full embedded heated driveway at a steep cost per square foot, and one PowerMat gets you a useful slice of that for far less.

Forty-five square feet is genuinely enough to matter. Three feet by fifteen feet covers one tire track the length of a car, or a whole walkway from the sidewalk to your steps. WarmlyYours says the mats can be combined for full coverage or aimed at tire tracks specifically, and the company offers a free system design if you send in your layout.

From our review of 6 driveway heating mats

What we like

• +If you're already redoing the driveway, buy this instead of a portable mat
• +Forty-five square feet is genuinely enough to matter
• +The electrical side is serious
• +The ten-year warranty is the tell

What to know

• –You can't try this one
• –The 18.75-amp draw rules out sharing a circuit, and running 2250 watts across a whole winter is where electricity stops being…