Beautyrest Heated Blanket King, Micro Fleece Electric Blanket, Ivory

Why it's worth it

The Beautyrest is a micro-fleece bed blanket with 20 heat settings, dual controllers on queen and king, and a one-hour preheat. It's the rare electric blanket where owners describe the warmth as even from shoulders to feet, not concentrated in the middle.

The heat is spread out, and that's the whole ballgame. The heating element runs in an evenly spaced pattern rather than a few widely spaced runs, and that shows up in owner feedback: people who returned other blankets over dead spots at the foot of the bed describe this one as warm end to end. If you sleep with cold feet, that's the difference between a blanket that works and one you send back.

Twenty settings sounds like marketing until you actually live with a blanket. Most people find a sweet spot somewhere in the lower third and never move it. With ten settings you're often stuck picking between slightly too cool and slightly too warm. Here you can land in between. The one-hour preheat is the feature owners mention most — you turn it on before you brush your teeth and get into a bed that's already warm.

From our review of 6 electric blankets and heated throws, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +The heat is spread out, and that's the whole ballgame
• +Twenty settings sounds like marketing until you actually live with a blanket
• +On queen and king, you get two controllers and two zones
• +The fabric is low-profile ribbed micro-fleece on one side and solid micro-fleece on the other, both treated to resist pilling

What to know

• –The controller doesn't light up
• –The other complaint that shows up is the one that haunts this whole category: a side that heats fine at first, then weakens or…
• –There's also an unheated margin around the edges — the warm zone is smaller than the blanket's overall footprint