Always a dilemma for me. I don't want to see the heater but I believe it is better to keep the dial-end out of the water. Do you hide your heater? How?
I just got the aqueon pro heater and it's all black. With my black background it camouflages itself pretty well.
I had one of the black Aqueon Pros on my 75g for a few years. It stopped working. I plugged it in on my workbench. No heat, but I felt a tingle, as it had water in it and a leak on a seam of the black plastic housing. I still had the box and receipt. I emailed Central Garden and Pet and they sent me a brand-new one. While waiting I bought a standard glass Aqueon to replace it. Still running the glass one and have the Pro on a shelf!
Well that's very encouraging since I just bought the Aqueon Pro last night haha. I've tried three different glass heaters and I've had problems with each of them, so I figured I'd try the pro since it it's supposed to be nearly indestructible. So hopefully I don't run into the same problem you had. I originally ordered another Aquatop glass heater to replace the one I was concerned about in this thread, but when I received it in the mail yesterday it had shards of loose glass on the inside so I didn't want to risk using that one either. So I ran to Petco and picked up the Aqueon Pro because I was sick of going the cheap route haha.
