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Smartplugs that work with Alexa and Google Assistant are a commodity so smart buyers look for additional features like how much they hog up a two-plug outlet or what other capabilities they may have. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ checked out two of the latest wifi smartplugs from TopGreener that feature energy monitoring and found them a great addition to any smart home.
Check them out on Amazon:
Round unit: https://amzn.to/2LE7nL5
Rectangular unit: https://amzn.to/2LFELB5
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0:00
Smart plugs that can monitor your energy usage? Let's check it out
0:11
Dave Taylor here and I'm looking at these. These are both from Top Greener
0:14
They're smart Wi-Fi plugs and they include energy monitoring. Now the energy monitoring is the really cool part because let's face it
0:22
Wi-Fi smart plugs that work with Alexa and Google Assistant There's sort of a dime a dozen now. Unfortunately they're not quite that inexpensive but
0:30
there are a lot of different options. It is definitely a commodity
0:34
But add energy monitoring and you have a cool addition. Now as you can see Top Greener has quite a few different choices and these
0:41
there's two very different shapes here. Now let's just plug them in and start
0:46
playing with them. So I've already configured them and I actually found the configuration to be super fast and super easy
0:52
but part of that might be that I've just done this so many times at this point
0:56
But I had no issues. I've read on Amazon some people complained it took them half
1:01
an hour to get their units to be seen. A lot of times in my experience that issue is something to do with actually
1:08
your Wi-Fi network so you've got to use a 2.4 gigahertz so if you have
1:13
only 5 gigahertz running a lot of smart devices have a really hard time with that
1:17
So make sure your Wi-Fi network and your base station are set up for multiple frequencies
1:23
and it should work a lot better. Now let's see I called this one rounder
1:27
ingeniously and this one got it square. I know it's rectangular we're going to run with that. So Alexa
1:34
turn on rounder. Alexa turn on square. So there's that most basic functionality and now if we go into the app
1:47
so as with all of these you have to get a specific app for the brand of smart plug
1:55
and then you actually have a skill that you also integrate into the
1:59
Alexa app on your smartphone and then together those actually give you the information
2:07
and the ability for them to all work together. So now I can see that these
2:11
little holiday lights are drawing a fairly measly 39 watts. That is very very energy efficient
2:19
So to make this more interesting I have a kettle, an electric kettle. These things draw a ton of power
2:26
So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to go ahead and record the screen
2:31
so that you will be able to watch and see what happens in the app when
2:38
I actually plug in the kettle and turn it on. So first off we're going to unplug this
2:45
and we'll just use square for this because why not So let's get the kettle wire
2:53
and these just basically make your water boil quickly by just pushing a whole lot of power into it
3:01
So the outlet is on and I would know that because there's actually a small blue light
3:06
here too. Let me turn it sideways so you can see. So that blue indicates that it is actually on versus off
3:12
and I'm going to go into statistics and in statistics you ready we're gonna
3:17
it's right at 0 now because it's not drawing any power at all
3:21
which is good to know. When it's off it doesn't draw even the minimum amount of power
3:26
but then there's a little flap on the back that I push down
3:29
and now watch what happens to the power usage. So now we're going up to 1200
3:35
watts of power and what is that 11 amps of juice. That's a lot going on here. So this will actually boil the water
3:45
and as it does that this will actually be keeping track of it
3:49
and not only that but I don't have much in the way of today's energy use yet but
3:53
it will actually calculate on a daily basis and then over months it will actually give you that data. So if you have some devices or
4:01
appliances that you suspect eat a lot of your power bill one of these can be a great solution for that
4:08
and I'm going to go ahead and turn this off because I don't actually want to boil water
4:12
right here go figure and then I'm going to turn off the recording so
4:17
we're good there and there's really not much else I can demo
4:21
I like these I like the design here's a couple of inset photos of how they fit
4:26
into a two plug outlet so you can see in both cases you can use the other plug
4:31
though with the round one it requires being on the bottom one for that to be
4:36
the case and in fact we can just unplug it and you'll see why because the prongs are on the top of it
4:43
they're not square in the center which is smart right so it minimizes the
4:47
overlap with the top plug but this is not really a design that's going to let
4:52
you plug two of them in simultaneously whereas if I can unplug it this one
4:59
not lose the power strip this one very much is designed so that you can plug two of them into the same outlet
5:07
which is not a bad idea and the other thing while I'm holding them is that
5:10
they both have on off switches so if for some reason your Wi-Fi goes down or
5:16
something you have that manual override which I think is really important with
5:19
smart plugs otherwise you could really kind of be stuck and let's see what else
5:24
can I tell you so the app that you use for these is Top Greener
5:28
ingeniously enough and the skill that you use for Alexa or for Google
5:32
Assistant is called you guessed it Top Greener and they are fire resistant
5:38
UL listed FCC compliant they have a temperature operating range of 32 to 104
5:45
degrees so they're not at all rated for outdoor use or for in like a super cold
5:50
space but 32 degrees if your house is 32 degrees you have many other bigger much
5:56
bigger issues than whether your smart plugs gonna work so don't use this for
6:00
your space heater and then wait till it gets to 32 degrees to turn it on that
6:03
would be a bad idea and they don't have much in the way of power range so it's
6:10
120 volts 60 Hertz that's what it wants and in terms of the actual maximum amps
6:16
you can pull through this I couldn't find that number so if that's really important to you you might actually email Top Greener before you acquire any
6:23
of these and that's really all I got other than the price but before we get
6:27
to the price if I can ask can you go ahead and subscribe to my channel really
6:31
appreciate it and let me know what are you using for smart plugs and how are
6:35
they working out for you because they're such a commodity that people have very
6:39
mixed experiences some of these really really inexpensive ones work great and
6:44
other ones really hard to pair or they're flaky I find that for the most
6:49
part all the ones in our house and office work really well there's one
6:53
that's a little problematic and I'm suspecting one of these might actually replace it and it's great because in the app in the Top Greener app itself you
7:00
can rename these as many times as you want I like to give them functional
7:04
names so I have for example party lights in my house who wouldn't have party
7:09
lights in their house right and I have couch light and I have bedroom lamp and
7:13
I have floor lamp I just give them nice logical names because to me that makes
7:18
it easier to remember you can do other things my daughter and her room has
7:22
fairy lights how sweet is that it's nice right so she walks in her room and she
7:27
says turn on fairy lights and boom our whole room looks very magical it's very
7:31
nice maybe I should do that hmm well that's a whole nother topic anyway let's
7:36
talk about pricing because unfortunately these are not quite yet released so this
7:42
one is the square unit and it is $15.99 okay it's it's the rectangular unit I
7:49
call it square and it is $15.99 at amazon.com the round one I couldn't find
7:56
a price it's not quite yet on the market but I'm imagining it's the same price so
8:01
we'll also call this $15.99 at amazon.com and go and check out the pricing
8:06
because these are commodity products the price goes up and down so pay attention
8:11
and I gotta say I like these these are perfectly functional Wi-Fi smart plugs
8:17
but their real killer feature is that energy monitoring which is great if you
8:22
want to get a better handle on how your house or your office uses energy these
8:28
are your solution because you don't even have to tell anyone they just run and
8:32
then after a couple of weeks you go into the app and you look and you see of all
8:36
the different smart plugs I have which ones actually using the most energy then
8:40
you can go back to that employee and say you need a different monitor your monitors out of control or you can say holy cow I had no idea our microwave was
8:48
drawing so much power on our house both of those are very common problems anyway
8:53
that's all I got I'm gonna go plug these in so this is Dave Taylor and I will
8:57
catch you in my next video
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