Kasa Smart HS100 WiFi Smart Plug, Classic 1-Pack, White

I purchased the Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug (not the mini) to power a hot water recirculating pump in my basement. I received it in one day with Amazon Prime in a very sturdy box. The Kasa smart plug came with a quick start guide card with very clear, straightforward instructions. I downloaded the Kasa iPhone app (which has outstanding reviews) and I set up the smart plug in my office only a few feet away from my Verizon 2.4 GHz router. The app walks you thought the set-up process quickly and without a hitch. During set-up you will name the smart plug for future identification. I used a night light plugged into the smart plug to test it out. There is a button in the app that you touch to turn the smart plug on or off and it worked the first time. Then I moved the smart plug to the basement where I was going to use it. The new location was one level down and approximately 50 feet away from the router. After plugging in the smart plug into the basement outlet, the smart plug blinked several time and then turned green and worked the first time. Next, I launched my Google Home app on my iPhone. In the upper left hand corner of the home page there are three horizontal lines. Tapping those lines bring up a menu. Tap on the Devices in the menu and follow the directions to add a new device. Google Home identifies this smart plug as TP-Link Kasa so scroll down until you see this device. Once set-up I simply said Hey Google turn on <smart plug name given during set-up> Google Home turned on the smart plug and confirmed that it was turned on. There are other nice features on the TP-link app that allows you to set-up a schedule for on-off and a timer that will turn off the smart plug after the count down. So far, I am extremely happy with my new smart plug on my first day of use. Should anything change, I will update my review.

I bought this since I liked the idea of automating my home using the existing Wi-Fi network without the need to set up some expensive hub or system. We did not start out on the right foot, however. The electronic outlets in my apartment are placed two in a row, i.e. horizontally instead of vertically - the Smart Plug is so bulky that I can only use one Smart Plug per plate, and I can only squeeze in a smaller plug for the second outlet. Not great at all, particularly since I am already using outlet taps to maximize the number of electric equipment I can use for each outlet. I ended up using these Smart Plugs on extension cords to get around the issue. Another problem I then have is that the Smart Plugs cannot connect to hidden networks. I have one known (password protected) network, and a second hidden network. The hidden network is intended for my equipment, whereas the known network is for friends and visitors. I have to use the known network for the Smart Plugs, and put my phone onto the known network as well for this to work. I can live with it, but not cool. Having said that, once I got past these issues (and I actually started a return before I decided to try it one more time), the Smart Plugs are great. I like the fact that I can switch on a number of lights at once that I would otherwise have to switch on individually. I also like the fact that I can set this to a schedule especially when I am traveling. Already I am thinking that I can link this up to the fan, more lights in other rooms of the apartment and perhaps even my humidifier. Theres a lot of potential in this and overall, Im glad I got these! I got these when they went on sale for around $19.99 each (they are currently $29.99 each), and Ill get more when theres a sale again!

* Edit: updated to add extra stars because TP-Link support has been very helpful and I resolved the issue with them Ive had the same exact problem as Tom happen with mine, it consistently drops off the network. See Toms comment on the link below: http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-Amazon-Electronics-Anywhere-HS100/product-reviews/B0178IC734/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&showViewpoints=0 I can watch it on the Kasa app, it will drop off from availability in Kasa something like 70% of the time Im looking at it. Going to try to reinstall the Kasa app like customer support has suggested, but if this doesnt work Id really like to get this working instead of returning it and waiting for another. Here is my situation: - Smart Plug is connected to my 2.4GHz connection. - SSID is hidden but I got Kasa to connect by temporarily showing the network SSID, connecting, then re-hiding the SSID. - This connection is secured by WPA2-AES and is using 802.11 b, g, and n protocols (all of which are supposedly supported by the HS100). - DHCP has more than enough IP address allocation for this device to join the network. - HS100 is plugged in directly below the shelf where the router sits. This means it is about a foot away from the router and rules out any chance that out of range errors are valid. Possible issues: - If any ports need to be opened to allow this traffic through the router, I have not been informed about them (there shouldnt be anyway). - Are the TP-Link servers experiencing connectivity issues on their end? If the plug is unable to reach them because their servers are having problems, that would explain why I keep seeing Local only when I want to use the Remote services. - The app seems to be not quite 100% polished, could there be some flawed logic in it? I did notice a spelling mistake of youre instead of youre, are there other things that need to be fixed in the app? I will continue working with customer support on this, and will change my review if we get it working.

I have several of the HS100, with the oldest now having been in use for over 14 months. They work well with my Amazon Echo units, although there are the occasional hiccups, the most frequent I expect are on the Amazon side. In order of frequency, the most common problem is telling the Echo to turn on or off a switch, and it responds with OK, but the switch doesnt take the appropriate action. Given my experience with the Echo and a couple of other smart devices, it seems the Echo simply sends the command without confirming it was received at the other end. As the app for the product gives clear feedback on the status of a switch, it is clear this should be possible, but either the Alexa API doesnt implement such a function or 3 different vendors have chosen not to utilize it. A less frequent, but perhaps more annoying problem Ive encountered lately is that when going from the living room the the bathroom, I tell my Echo, turn on bathroom (which is using a TP-Link wall switch) followed by turn off lamp as I approach the bathroom. For some reason it sometimes turns off the bathroom instead of the lamp in the living room, despite lamp and bathroom not sounding similar. While that issue is clearly on the Amazon Alexa side, it bears mentioned, as many buyers of this product will be using it with an Echo. The least frequent issue is the dreaded TP-Link is not responding. Thankfully, this happens rarely, although Ive noticed the single HS110 seems to be more prone to it than the other units, despite being only 8 feet from my router. I suspect that unit might have a defect, however, as it also sometimes has an issue with a device Ive just turned off coming back on (and sometimes then switching back off again after a bit, and sometimes repeating the cycle for a while). Although I have limited experience with it, the app seems to be quite reliable for control. As noted earlier, it gives feedback as to the current status of a switch. I also confirmed that unlike some apps (like the one for a couple of Voltson smart switches sold on Amazon by Etekcity), the Kasa app for the TP-Link switches works even without an internet connection. If you have an outlet in a location that is inconvenient to access, this benefit is not to be underestimated. On the matter of accessing the outlet, that highlights one of the benefits of the TP-Link vs. many other smart outlets: The manual switch is easy to see and access. In comparison to the other type smart switch I use (mentioned in the previous paragraph) which has a small unlighted button the same color as the body of the switch and located below the plug, the TP-Links lighted switch placed above is easy to find even in the dark and easy to access. The biggest downside of the TP-Link is its size. In standard outlet, even when placed in the upper socket, plugging anything into the lower one is problematic. I found I could plug in some standard plugs, but only if I pulled the TP-Link out at least slightly while doing so, and again while removing the plug. (The TP-Link could be fully plugged in while the plug was in place). I strongly suggest anyone using a TP-Link HS100 or HS110 consider investing in either of these outlet expanders:

These things are great- Ive got 3 of them, and will probably get more once I can get my hands on an amazon dot for the other rooms in my house. I have them set to different names, and you can group them as well- for example, my three lights are all in the living room, but sometimes I just want to have the corner light on when watching a movie. I can say turn on the living room lights and all 3 will turn on- or I can specify which light to turn on or off via my Amazon Echo (the corner light, the hall light, etc) Even guests have no problem getting it, as its fairly intuitive as long as your labels make sense. Its simple to set up, and I havent had any connectivity issues and have even lost power a few times (just for a few minutes at a time) and havent had to reset anything. The Kasa app works wonderfully- as sometimes Ive forgotten to turn off a light, and while in bed I can grab my phone and turn off the lights without yelling and hoping that Alexa will hear me. (Please, Amazon Dot, come back!) The one drawback to these plugs is their size- they will take up both slots on your outlets, so it might not be entirely suitable for all areas, given the aesthetics of the bulky device. I have mine hooked up with 1 foot extensions to get around this. I considered taking a star off for having to use these extra cords to make this work for me, but given that these devices have worked so flawlessly otherwise, theyre keeping the star.

Sometimes we clearly invest in tech that does NOT make our lives easier. Im in the 1% demo for tech savvy - in short 2 comp sci degrees, Crestron Smart Home - 1 full GHz broadband - you get the picture. If your home has more than (1) SSID - i.e. guest network or any private networks for anything from a NAS, Print Server, Airplay - and so on - this may not be the right choice. 1st only 2.4ghz - know that up front. So if youre using a 5 ghz network solely (or as much as possible) - no dice. Plus what do you get with a device that is typically place very low on the wall and has the most picky reception ever - connectivity issues. If I spent one more minute configuring or reconfiguring these plugs - I will throw them in the lake! Not saying only 2.4ghz is a new thing - many devices such as smart thermostats and more will only use it due to range - 2.4 flat out goes through walls better - I get it! But many of us have dual band (or beyond) routers right - so if sitting here wasting time on a Friday Night messing with these plugs is not your idea of fun - skip this one! Oh wait instead of getting up to turn something off I will jump from my preferred iPhone Network (5ghz) cause its f a s t e r - and skip over to the 2.4ghz and to make sitting on my butt for 4 minutes monkeying around with these plugs my preference over getting up! One solution is to find the brand of old school A/C on and off plug adapters here on Amazon (best seller starting with E) with the simple white remote with number 1-5. Guess what when you kill power to them - #1 they kill the nominal drain to your appliance super well and #2 I read they had a 100 line of sight range.... But it wasnt until I purchased it that I realized they are low cost RF Remotes. That means radio-frequency - or dont have to point like a sharpshooter or worry if the plug adapter is low on your wall or behind a piece of furniture - imagine that! Basically if you are in the largest room (and beyond) of your home and the plug is hidden - no problem! Further the plugs (bought the 5 plug adapter kit for $29 here - yes (5) of them for the cost of one TP-Link - and some person whose actually done customer service actually printed numbers 1-5 on them and the small convenient remote (they gave 2 with purchase) has one vertical row 1-5 for ON and beside it one vertical row of OFF numbered 1-5. No configuring - no jumping wifi networks - and no muttering four letter words to yourself because youre gonna have to sit through the TP-Link app wizard or find your phone to reconfigure these. If youve read this far - Im amazed - so for you - YES they are Amazon Echo Compatible - oh joy! got me with that too - in for three of them for about $100. So when youre sitting there repeating the name of the device to Echo or you hear it tell you one more time that I cant find the device wrong name that Echo reiterates like it need to spell or have Ivy League Phonetics on Adams Network or Sorry Im having trouble right now, what is the name of the device youre looking for - and ps - Echo was still at volume 8 - because its best as your alarm clock - or youre scrambling for another remote so Echo can understand you which interrupts your game or movie. Ugggggh - honestly Im writing this narrative to save you the pain of spending your money to have these oversized disasters not work consistently or easily. PS - its not joy to maybe find a 2nd plug that can squeeze to the point of breaking something just to share a 2-outlet space for this near baseball sized adapter. If its not ungrounded (2-prong) or takes any liberties deviating from the smallest footprint possible - this big guy is the only thing that your 2-outlet space is gonna host! Ive wasted 15 minute chunks regularly over a few months before I spent $29 bucks for the 5 adapter E-brand with 100 radio frequency remote with zero programming, zero wifi and zero BS....... I submit this knowing I sound like a serious hater - but I know that some Amazonions will thank me!

**UPDATE** Sorry, I didnt know this review had gotten this much attention, but I will clear a few of my points up. I have been using the smart home devices for over 2 years now. I started with the Wemo (now have 4 outlets 3 this size and 1 insight and 2 wall switches) 3 TP-Link outlets, and 10 Philips Hue bulbs. All controlled with My Echo and 2 Dots. For the first year or so the Wemo outlets were a pain every time the power went out. Through firmware updates this is no longer the case and they work just fine now. I also was not using IFTTT at the time so it not having IFTTT support wasnt an issue for me. I have since been using IFTTT which is why Ive personally gone back to using Wemos over these, but still use these on devices I dont use IFTTT triggers with. Ill also clear up the intergrated questions. Before February or March of 2016, when using these you had to say Alexa, tell KASA to turn on XXXX you still technically have to use a skill, just it only now needs to be enabled and linked and Alexa will recognize these devices individually when searching for devices like Wemo and other integrated devices. Sorry I didnt reply to questions/issues earlier, I didnt know anyone had replied to my review. Any questions my email is in my profile. **Original review** I have been using Wemo outlets and switches for over a year now and love the ability to have Alexa turn things on and off by voice. I decided to order a few more smart home devices when Amazon released the Dot since between my Echo, its remote, and now the Dot I have voice control throughout most of my apartment. It just so happened these were on sale as a deal of the day at the right time, so I ordered 2. You will see some reviews that state these only work with Echo using a skill, that changed in February or March and they are now fully integrated with Alexa. Over the past year Ive had issues with my Wemo outlets dropping connection, and anytime I lose power Id have to set them up again. This isnt the issue with these outlets. They were very easy to setup and link to Alexa, the app walks you easily through step by step in setting them up, renaming them for Alexa and getting them online if youd like remote access. After setting mine up I decided to move them to another room. With the Wemo outlets one I unplugged them Id have to set them up again, not with these. One I plugged them in at their new location they reconnected with no issue. I highly recommend these over the more expensive Wemo outlets. I saw another reviewer complain these cover both plugs on an outlet, this is true of all of the smart outlets currently on the market, if this is an issue for you I recommend doing what I did in a couple locations and get a cheap pack of 1 extension cords. Most of my outlets are hidden from view anyway so using the extension cords wasnt an issue for me. Now off to bed Alexa, turn off lights (yeah, its been over a year and I still giggle like a little schoolboy once in awhile over this)

What did I do without these? I bought one to try on Prime Day. Thats all it took. Pretty soon I was thinking of all the places it would be convenient to use them. The first one went on the bedroom lamp, because I hated trying to fumble in the dark to try to get light. I was always worried Id tip the lamp over. It became indispensable when my arms were full of baby and I didnt have a free hand to turn the lamp on or off as I carried him to bed. The next one I needed was for the tall living room lamp behind the bookcase, followed by the overhead lamp in the office. Now Im pretty sure I need a few more - one for the nursery lamp, one for the garage ... Id even sort of like one for the Christmas tree. The thing we like the most about these smart plugs is not only can I turn them on and off just by talking to Alexa, I can also use my phone to turn them on and off if Im not home. That means when it gets dark at 5 pm and Im lugging groceries up to a dark house ... I can turn the light on before I even get there. I dont have to open the door and wake the baby to go downstairs if someone is coming home late. I can just turn the light on from my bed. I really, REALLY love these plugs. Ill definitely be buying more in the future.

I have been using this product after experiencing a lot of difficulty with a competitors product. I started with one basic, over sized switch and was impressed with its ease of setup and use as well as the features for the price. I then added a wall switch (great price for a similarity easy to use and function product), and then a mini switch. The mini was where I had issues, but I think they are easily resolved. More on that in a moment. I also tried the over sized energy monitoring switch and it worked great as well. Easy setup and easy to use, with a basic set of features I would expect for the price. So for the minis. I tried one and had the same 24 hour reset issue several people are noting. I thought maybe it was a bad switch, so I tried two more since I have been automating my home anyway. Same issue. I contacted customer support and they provided me a quick tool to upgrade the firmware. After completing that step (and upgrading my router, which was a separate issue that most will not experience if you only have a couple devices on your network), the issue appears to be resolved. I would recommend that if you have an issue with the switch dropping off the network, get the tool to upgrade the firmware to at least 1.0.0 or higher (all my switches that were working originally were 1.0.0 or higher, all the minis were less than 1.0.0). Now I have no issues. I think if you have more than say 15-20 devices on your network and your relying on the standard cable company modem/router, you may need to look into upgrading. I started having a lot of issues with devices on my network with my cable company provided equipment past about 20 devices (cable company said really 16 is the max), but now that I have upgraded (in addition to the firmware fix), everything is running very smoothly. Four stars because I think this switch should have some sort of energy monitoring for the price, but the ease of use and functionality still makes it worth purchasing. I have purchases several more.

In my opinion, critical thing here is these are UL certified which is important if you dont want to burn your house down if trying to use with high-current device. I have a space heater in my home office which is in a kinda remote place in my house and I wanted to control it from google home. The heater has 1500 watt capacity which at 120 volts is in the neighborhood of ~12 amps (more to that calculation than I know) so theres not a tremendous amount of wiggle room in order to stay a decent amount below capacity, which I prefer. The UL certification gives me a substantial amount of peace of mind over not being certified and that is why I chose to buy this socket over other ones. On top of all of that, TP-Link has been doing a tremendously good job at integrating all of their devices and improving their user interfaces in ways I havent seen their competitors do in my anecdotal experience. I just coincidentally have a TP-Link mesh wifi network for my house. If TP-Link didnt have a UL certified plug and a competitor did, I would have bought that. But it happened to be TP-Link too. If or when my TP-Link account becomes relevant, I already have it set up. 1 account, all devices, and they are for the (arguably) best consumer (vs prosumer) devices available for sale. Bought to go buy some stock...