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Ready to turn your home into a smart home, with named outlets that you can turn on and off with only your voice? Teckin has great products in this area and tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ tests out both the Teckin Smart Power Strip and the Teckin Smart Outlet 4-pack. With a little help from an Amazon Echo Dot. The result? It's an instant smart home in a box.
Teckin Smart Power Strip: https://amzn.to/3bF0Rjp
Teckin Smart Outlet: https://amzn.to/2S7AzyB
Amazon Echo Dot: https://amzn.to/2S7me56
Google Nest Home Mini (formerly Spot): https://store.google.com/us/config/google_nest_mini
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0:00
Smart sockets and a smart power strip. Let's check all of this out
0:11
Dave Taylor here, and I'm looking at smart power looking at two different kinds of devices
0:15
One is a smart power outlet and the other one is and this is very cool a smart power strip
0:22
So we'll start with the smart power outlet. It's a little easier to sort of understand and see how it works
0:27
It is a small little device and basically you plug this into your wall or wherever you have power
0:33
And then you plug a device into the front and then this controls whether that particular
0:38
Plugged in device gets power or not easy right now You can use the little tiny switch on the side and that's really important if your Wi-Fi goes down
0:47
You want to have a backup to be able to turn things off without having to unplug them
0:51
But where this gets really fun is you can pair it with something called the smart life app
0:56
And there's a lot of smart home companies that are moving into this smart life app
1:00
Pretty darn easy to work with first time you plug it in. It's automatically
1:05
Excuse me It's automatically in pairing mode and then from there all you have to do is open up the app
1:14
It sees this device boom You're paired and then supposedly it works with Alexa and Google Home and you're supposed to go into that app to actually pair it
1:24
But it turns out that it automatically saw it for me so my ecosystem automatically saw this once I powered it up, so let's plug it in and
1:34
When you plug it in it takes a couple of seconds to come back on to the Wi-Fi network
1:39
So you have to just sort of roll with that not a big deal, but eventually and take just a couple seconds
1:45
It's not flashing. I think we're good so I can go into the smart life app and
1:51
In you can see in this close-up that I have both the socket and the power strip already connected
1:57
But I can turn it on and off Which of course you can't see so I have my little aid
2:03
I'm gonna plug in this little string of lights and turn them on and
2:08
Then what do I have here? I have an echo dot and I have called this one computer to avoid confusion. So
2:15
computer turn off Tekken socket How cool is that and of course you can name it anything you want
2:26
Generally what I find with a lot of smart sockets in my house is name it for the appliance or device that's plugged in
2:33
So you can say something like turn on fan or turn off kitchen light something like that, right
2:40
Really great. I really love these things. And what's nice is it's actually a four-pack. So for the price of
2:48
Generally like two from other companies you get four of these and they're nice and small and you can see in this close-up that
2:55
Using it in one outlet does not preclude you from using the other outlet to another important criteria
3:01
so these are Like I said the Tekken smart outlets and I'm gonna get to the prices at the end because I want to now talk about
3:10
The power strip and to demonstrate that I'm going to not only leave this thing plugged in and we'll just go ahead and
3:17
Turn the lights on but I'm gonna use a USB device too because as you can see in this close-up
3:24
There's four grounded power plugs and four USB Now be aware that only the right most of the USB plugs is controllable via the smart system
3:36
The other three are just always hot So whether that's something that you'd kind of wish all four of them are controllable or whether you're fine with that at least now
3:44
You know now this one's a little more complicated because it has a built-in surge protector
3:49
It's a UL approved has a 3-foot cord cord could probably be a little longer
3:54
But it's a 3-foot pretty heavy-duty cord and it can take anything from a hundred and ten to two hundred and forty volts ten amp
4:02
Maximum load built-in circuit breaker if it starts to overheat it will power down and just turn everything off
4:09
So, you know, there's a lot of safety mechanisms built into this and again, it works with the smart life app
4:16
But in this case the smart life apps a little more complicated because each of these plugs
4:22
Actually gets its own control so I can control this. I've named them one two, three four
4:28
so computer turn off t4 Okay, now this is actually not a recommended strategy because I've also powered down my smart socket
4:38
Which will then have to reconnect. Oops wasn't even plugged in properly. Alright, so it's gonna again have to reconnect so
4:46
Computer turn on Tekken power strip So one of the other things you can do is you can control all of them at once
4:52
So instead of having to unplug this you can literally turn everything off and again
4:57
Literally turn everything off and again, just like with these little guys. There is a power override. So if I turn this light on
5:05
Let's turn the light on Maybe you don't have that on let's see
5:11
There we go. Okay, so Turn that on and what I'm also doing is I have my phone plugged in
5:17
So a little hard for you to tell but my phone is charging because it's on this right I can turn everything off with a button
5:24
Boom so now it's not charging this lights off. Everything's powered down
5:28
Turn everything back on and now it's charging again, right handy But what if I want to turn off that USB
5:35
So that was a little tricky because again, you know, you got to come up with unique names for all these individual things
5:41
so I have computer turn off TUSB And let's see if that works
5:50
And No, apparently, oh no, that's that's correct It turned it off and we'll be able to see because when I turn it back on you should see the phone
6:01
Wake up and show me it's charging. So let's give that a try computer turn on TUSB
6:09
There we go Pretty cool, isn't that so, you know, the power strip is really really cool. And what I really like about this
6:18
You can plug in all sorts of stuff like your AV system or something, right it is a surge protection system
6:24
It has all the USB right there for whatever devices you need that actually have that sort of power and then all of its controllable
6:32
So you can give things different names You can run extension cords off of here if you really want to though a four pack of these is going to be a whole
6:39
Lot more flexible in terms of arrangement, but between them you really have right here
6:45
The start of a really nice smart home system Probably you want to have some sort of a voice system like this echo dot which is super inexpensive or the Google Home spot
6:56
Same sort of size and format also super inexpensive or you can just use the app and you can just do that
7:04
That's fine, too. Right so you can also you know, there's there's it's so flexible
7:09
I already have a bunch of Amazon echo devices So for me walking in and saying turn on power strip or something is totally normal and having everything power up
7:19
Sounds pretty nice So all this left to do is to really talk about the price because that's really all we haven't talked about right
7:26
Everything else really really a fan, but let's talk about the price
7:30
But before we get there, I'm gonna ask if you can subscribe to my channel
7:34
Really do appreciate when you do that and it helps us stay in touch I get access to a ton of products and devices often before they're even on the market
7:42
Which means I can give you a lot of insight into the best things to purchase and I'm always a straight shooter
7:48
I'll tell you what's wrong. I'll tell you what's annoying and I'll tell you what's great about a product and sometimes like these products
7:54
This is pretty much a commodity at this point. So these are really nice. They work. They're easy
7:59
Once you pair them, you'll never have to mess around with them ever again Because they work on your Wi-Fi network and there's no hub needed
8:06
So you don't need to buy something else to be the centerpiece of your smart home
8:10
These are ready to roll if you have Wi-Fi and honestly if you're watching this video, you've got Wi-Fi
8:17
So let's just talk price now these Tekken smart outlets and we try not to drop them
8:23
So it's a four pack. I'm holding three because the fourth one's here It's a four pack Tekken smart outlet for
8:31
$29.99 at amazon.com and this will instantly get you up and rolling and you can give each of them their own names
8:37
Depending on what you're gonna plug in or how you want to name them, right? And then let me just unplug this and unplug this and show you I really like this power strip
8:47
I like smart power strips actually very helpful. So this Tekken smart power strip is
8:53
$39.99 at amazon.com Now I have links in the description for this video for both of those products if you don't want to hunt for them on Amazon
9:03
So just go into the description and click on those short little Amazon links and that's all I got
9:08
I'm gonna plug everything back in and I'm gonna enjoy my yes Halloween lights in the spring
9:15
How it goes, which means I'll catch you in my next video
#Home Appliances
#Home Safety & Security
#Small Kitchen Appliances
#Gadgets & Portable Electronics
#Home Automation
#Intelligent Personal Assistants
#Home Alarm & Security Systems