Best Smart Plugs for Home Assistant (WATCH before you BUY!)

what's up smart homers my name is aaron in today's video i'm going to do the ultimate smart plug comparison press start often people first get into smart home tech when they find a need to operate a dumb light or an appliance remotely or on a schedule they pick up a smart plug have a bunch of fun and this kind of opens them up to new ideas for what they can automate and pretty soon they're out of money when you start looking online for a smart plug there are a wide range of devices and a wide range of prices but which one do you choose i'm here to answer that question in this video i've been doing a series of videos comparing different types of smart home devices and you guys seem to like it so i'm doing the same thing as i did in the past but with smart plugs if you haven't seen my video on motion sensors contact sensors and smart buttons i'll leave links in the description if you want to check those out anyway i bought a bunch of different spark plugs from a few different brands and i'm going to compare their prices and features and let you know which ones i'd recommend and which ones i wouldn't i'll also give you some ideas for how you could use them in your smart home the requirements for my smart plug selection are pretty simple first they have to be compatible with home assistant second they can't require any other hub than a zigbee or z-wave dongle and thirdly they can't be dependent on cloud services if you look on amazon for smart plugs many of them are wi-fi based devices that depend on cloud services while dependency on a cloud service in your smart home is definitely a risk you need to decide how much of a risk it is for you obviously the more critical the role of that smart device the more stable you want it to be and stability is not always something you can count on when it comes to cloud dependent devices anyway for these reasons i won't be showing you any devices that are cloud dependent but i will show you some alternatives for the non-wifi devices that i'll cover i'm going to be adding them to home assistant using z-wave js and zha special note about the no hub requirement because i've been getting a lot of questions about that in the past it assumes that you have home assistant set up that it's accessible via wi-fi that you have a zigbee radio and a z-wave radio set up and working with it as well okay so let's start by looking at the wi-fi smart plugs as i mentioned many wi-fi devices are cloud-dependent but some of them can actually be flashed with custom firmware that removes the cloud dependency and makes them a whole lot better to use with home assistant in your smart home the first one is the sonoff s31 wi-fi smart plug this smart plug is a big favorite in the diy smart home community and for good reason just a quick browse through the reviews on amazon will show you that most of the people it seems are buying this plug in order to flash it with a custom firmware called tasmota i'm not going to show you how to do this but i did this for the first time ever and it took me about 20-25 minutes if you'd like to watch a thorough guide on how to set it up i'm gonna link a two-part video series by mostly chris on how to do this because he did a pretty good job at explaining it the sonoff plug doesn't actually need to be flashed though because you can actually use a custom hacks integration that will allow you to use the sonoff device in local mode without any flashing how it works is that you would connect the device to your e-link app then you would add the custom integration in hacks and then set it to local mode every time home assistant would restart it would access the cloud just to get the list of devices from e-link but then it goes into local mode and only controls your sonoff devices locally aesthetically this plug isn't the greatest looking but it has the typical sonoff look to it the square boxy shape with the white and gray colors and the chamfered edge the edge has two led indicators on it and there's a single button on the side that you can use to manually control the on off state of the plug it also is shaped in such a way that two of these plugs can fit into one standard outlet very nice this plug has a current limit of 16 amps at 110 volts another great feature of this device is that it has power monitoring capabilities if you flash the device with tasmona you get 10 different power related entities that show up at home assistant not only that but you can also calibrate the energy usage so you can match it with another smart plug with a known load if you add it with a sonoff integration you actually only get one entity and the entity has a bunch of attributes that contain the power monitoring information i definitely prefer the tasmoto method i use this device in my smart home to monitor the power usage of the little space heater that's in my kids room if you don't feel comfortable flashing a device with tasmota or if you just don't have the time to do it there is another option atom is a supplier of pre-flash devices offering a variety of smart plugs and led controllers things like that pre-flash with custom firmwares like tasmota esp home wled etc i chose the us version of one of their smart plugs that's running tasmota firmware looks wise the device is very plain and minimalist it's got a white body that's accented by a thin stripe around the border of the face it also has a button on the side to turn the relay on and off and this device supports a max current of 16 amps and can be used with either a 110 or 220 volts the device can be added to home assistant just like you would with any other taz motor device configuring your mqtt settings and then adding it via the tasmota integration and home assistant the device would work perfectly for a freezer or other large appliance and the plain white look makes it blend in if you have white trim and you want to use it somewhere that's visible all right so that's all for the wi-fi devices now let's look at some zigbee smart plugs on amazon there are a ton of different zigbee smart plugs and they all look the same in my opinion and i'm not going to take a bunch of them that are pretty much the same and just compare them and try to find little differences between them because that makes for a pretty boring video i'm just gonna review a single basic zigbee device and you can kind of consider that as representative of all the other ones out there this one is the third reality zigbee smart plug it has a solid white body which is pretty nondescript with a tiny hole on the face with an led behind it what stands out to me with this device is the price it's tied with the sonoff for the cheapest of all the plugs in this video you can even get it cheaper if you buy a four pack this plug can act as a zigbee repeater meaning that it helps expand your zigbee network and another thing that's pretty cool about it is that it works directly with amazon if you have the newer echo that works as a zigbee hub again like i mentioned there are a lot of other zigbee plugs on amazon that are similar to this from brands like inner and seg-led and also a ton of knockoff brand smart plugs that seem to be all exactly the same there's even a sonoff s31 light which looks exactly the same as a sonoffs 31 but it's a zigbee device instead of wi-fi and it doesn't have energy monitoring the next spark plug i want to show you is the seng-led zigbee smart plug which looks like a basic smart plug but it actually has energy monitoring this isn't even mentioned in the title on amazon which i think they're selling themselves short with this one aesthetically this device is pretty blah it has a solid white body with an led indicator and a button on the front that has a fingerprint pattern on it i really wish they would have put the button on the side because there's always the chance that when you plug something in it's covering that button this plug can handle 15 amps at 110 volts which is plenty in most cases and it also works as a zigbee repeater in home assistant the device shows up with a switch entity energy used entity and a power entity my testing showed that this device consistently read lower power usage than the other devices if that means anything to you there's no way to calibrate this device but most people aren't looking for extremely accurate power monitoring plugs anyway okay now let's look at some z-wave smart plugs the first smart plug is the neo smart mini plug this one has mini in its name for good reason it's actually the smallest of all the plugs we're going to look at today being small really helps when you're trying to fit multiple plugs into one receptacle but even with a small size i couldn't fit any of the other plugs into the socket above it although i could fit one below it if it was in the top socket on the wall outlet this plug is unique because it's not just white it's accented with green gray or blue depending on which version you buy it's a bit of a step up in price from the previous plugs but that's no surprise because it's a z-wave device the plug has a button on its face that allows manual control and is also used to put into pairing mode there's also an led behind the button that's illuminated green when the plug is on flash is yellow when the appliance or whatever is plugged into it uses more than 10 amps and it flashes red if it's using more than 13 amps in home assistant it shows up with the switch entity as well as voltage current power and energy usage sensors and also has an overload sensor the configuration options allow you to set the state of the switch after a power failure occurs in your home it also allows you to turn on or off local control via the button turn on and off the led indicator set how much of a current change is required for it to be reported and a few other things one thing that i noticed i didn't really like was that when i turned the plug on using the button on the front of the device the state of the switch was not reflected in the switch entity in home assistant i had to turn on the switch using that virtual switch in home assistant in order to get that data to start showing very weird okay the next z-wave plug is the fibaro wall plug to me this is the best looking of all the smart plugs but it's also one of the more pricey ones it has the same futuristic design that we saw with the favaro contact sensor and motion sensor it has a rounded look to it with an led ring around the edge and has the brand name written on the face right above the plug slots which is kind of annoying to me but fabarro does that on everything on the top side there's a round button that can be pressed to manually control the plug this button can also be used to put the device into inclusion mode this plug acts as a range extender for your z-wave network which is pretty cool too on the left side there's a usb port which is not a smart port so it can't be individually controlled and it's only capable of putting out one amp of current this means it won't be able to charge your phone very quickly but it is suitable for five volt lights or other devices that don't require a lot of current the device has power monitoring capability and has an advertised accuracy of plus or minus one percent for lows greater than five watts the power used by the usb port is captured in the overall power usage and the led ring around the face of the plug actually changes color based on how much power is being used when it's plugged in the led ring will turn green if it's already been added to a hub and red if it hasn't to put the device into inclusion mode triple press that button on the top right corner in home assistant you get the switch entity a power sensor and an energy used sensor you also get over current overload and system hardware failure sensors there are a lot of configuration options with this plug as usual with fibaro devices you can restore the previous state of the plug after power failure set an overload level at which point the plug would turn off that's between 1 and 1800 watts you can set that you can set the percentage change of power at which it should send an update to home assistant set the energy reporting threshold how often power and energy should be reported regardless of change in value so at time and much more the next z-wave device is the smart switch 6. in this video i broke my rule for a maximum of 50 dollars for a device because everyone kept mentioning the aotek sensor in my last video so i decided i pick up the aotx 6 and the reason i didn't choose the 7 is because the 6 had a cool led ring on the face kind of like the fibaro this plug is the most expensive of all the devices in this video it's about the same size as the fibaro but it has a sharper edge that's probably a quarter of an inch thicker the led ring is green when the power is used less than 900 watts yellow from 900 to 1600 watts and red from 16 to 2000 it also has a little dimple in the bottom right corner of the face which can be depressed to manually turn the plug on and off this plug is also a z-wave range extender the first thing that i noticed when i plugged this device in was that it emitted a high-pitched sound that was just barely audible i guess i'm still young enough to be able to hear it but it's that high pitched noise and it did not go away turning the switch on and off did nothing that was a serious pain to add the device to home assistant you plug it in and the led ring will fade between red green and blue then press the dimple on the face three times quickly and the ring will flash green indicating it's in inclusion mode in home assistant you get two switch entities one controls the power state of the switch and the other is supposed to control the led ring the second switch for the led ring doesn't seem to do anything and even the first switch for the power state has issues when you manually turn the plug off the state of the plug is not reflected in the switch entity other than the switches there are current voltage power and energy usage sensors in order for the power monitoring to work you need to go to the configuration and turn on parameter 90 send automatic reports when exceeding thresholds for power monitoring once i did that i noticed that the power voltage and energy were being reported but current was not i never actually got the current to be reported which isn't exactly necessary but it's annoying i want the data some of these issues with this plug may be solved by updating the firmware but i'm not doing that because smart plugs are simple and the setup process should be just the same other configuration options include the ability to set the state after power failure set when the led ring is on including night light mode set the rgb values and brightness of the led ring when set to night light mode and set the power change threshold for sending reports okay next we have the evalogic outlet this one has a unique look compared to the rest we've looked at it's quite a bit larger and features two receptacles one on each side of the device it has a white led indicator on the front that also acts as a button for manual control even though it has two receptacles only one of them is smart the one on the right side this allows you to add a smart receptacle while still maintaining an always-on receptacle this plug doesn't have any power monitoring capability and it's a bit large for having only a single smart outlet i mean compare it to the neo which is tiny and has one smart outlet tab to home assistant just plug it in and the led indicator on the front will begin flashing white indicating it's in inclusion mode in home assistant there is only the switch entity for the single plug if this device wasn't already underwhelming it also doesn't have any configuration options like none that's literally all there is to this plug the only other thing is that it does act as a z-wave range extender the next one is the zeus double plug also known as the zen 25 this plug has two receptacles like the last one one on each side but in this case both are smart it also has a usb port on the front that is not a smart port but it puts out 2.1 amps at 5 volts this plug has a wide rectangular look to it that i think looks really good and since they chose to make it wide instead of tall two of these plugs can fit into a single wall receptacle which is cool because that actually doubles the number of receptacles in that spot but makes them all smart outlets and gives you two usb ports on top of it there's a button on the face of the plug that can be used for manual control a single press toggles the left receptacle and a double press toggles the right the two receptacles have led rings around them that illuminate blue and the receptacles are on and they also change color based on how much power is being used this leads me to that next point which is that this plug has power monitoring and that includes the power used by the usb port to top it all off this plug also works as a z-wave range extender to add this device to home assistant triple press the button on the front of the plug in home assistant it shows up with quite a few different entities there are switch entities for the left socket right socket and both at once and there's also a switch entity for the usb port however this switch energy doesn't actually do anything when you press it the point of this one is to tell you when something is done charging in other words if the port is no longer charging your phone or whatever is connected to it it's no longer drawing current and the switch is going to change state this acts as a way of giving you a report that your phone is no longer charging this device also has current voltage power and energy usage sensors for both the left and right sockets as well as for the entire plug it also has an overload detection sensor the configuration page in home assistant allows you to set the state of the plug after power outage and the reporting threshold and frequency for power energy voltage and current it also allows you to set overload protection disable manual control the plug and change when the led rings come on this was actually one of the first z-wave devices i ever purchased back when i was using smart things i actually got this and tried to use it with my clothes washer machine and my gas dryer to monitor them so i could send notifications when the washer or dryer was done its cycle however i guess i didn't read the information very carefully because this plug can only handle 10 amps total that means from both left and right total can only be 10 amps of current what happened was when my washer and dryer came out at the same time it tripped the plug out and stopped the cycles i currently use this plug to monitor the energy usage of my entire workstation desk setup just because but i did run into an issue where my two-year-old kept pressing the button and shutting off my pc and all my lights in my workstation to fix this i went into configuration disabled that manual control and boom no more problems okay so the last one we're going to look at is the zooz power switch also known as the zen 15. this z-wave switch is very unique because it isn't your typical plug style instead it's like a short extension cord with a switch module in the middle the prong end of the device is angled at 45 degrees so it won't interfere with the outlet receptacle below or above it the device isn't small so it's pretty obvious when it's plugged into a wall outlet but if it's hidden behind a large appliance like a refrigerator or chest freezer that won't matter the device also has a physical button on the switch that allows for manual control and like with the previous device the manual control can be disabled in the configuration this plug is also a z-wave range extender actually use this plug once just to extend my range when i was trying to test out the sensor on my mailbox adding the device to home assistant is easy you just need to triple press the button on the switch to put it into inclusion mode in home assistant you get the switch entity as well as current voltage power and energy usage sensors after the washer machine debacle with the previous zoo switch that i covered i decided to use these ones and i bought two of them used one for the washer one for the dryer and they have been great i actually had got another one for the chest freezer and another one for the refrigerator in my kitchen i love these okay so i did a little testing with the power monitoring plugs using some high wattage light bulbs to kind of show you guys the differences between them and how they compare with each other for each load i measured the current being used and the voltage and use that to calculate the power the apparent power that is used by the light bulbs i then compare this to what each plug was reading as you can see by the chart the variation in power measured between these plugs increased the higher power i measured also note that what i'm measuring is apparent power using a multimeter so you would expect to see a little bit lower power actually used by the light bulb i also did a test with my space heater up at around 1440 watts since the space heater doesn't require a constant load i did something pretty goofy and plugged them all into each other since the power used by those plugs is pretty negligible compared to the 1440 watts used by a space heater it's actually not a bad way of comparing them all at the same time reading the exact same load pretty much one thing to note is that the sonoff and athen plugs need to be calibrated or can be calibrated but i did not calibrate them for any of these tests this was right out the box anyway that's all the testing i did thanks for sticking around to the end now let's talk about my favorites and least favorites if you're looking to stick with wi-fi and you're looking to go as cheap as possible you can't go wrong with the sonoff s31 what is not to love about this plug it's tied for first at cheapest plug it has power monitoring capabilities it can be used with the e-link app or flash with tasmona its capabilities are huge for the price of all the devices i reviewed this one impressed me the most i would say just because price versus performance i think the only thing more impressive than that would be if you'd hit the subscribe button seriously though this device was great i'd highly recommend that you get it and try flashing with tasmota it seems way more simple than some of the other devices out there and flashing them doing that can allow you to calibrate it and give you a lot more information than you would normally if you want to use tasmona but you don't want to flash a device the athun plug has been pretty solid since i got it and you get all the same information from that that you do from the sauna fest 31 so it's a pretty good choice as well if you want a zigbee plug with power monitoring then the sang lid is the way to go it does consistently seem to read power a little bit lower than the rest of the plugs but that little bit is really insignificant you're looking for overall energy usage it's not a big deal i'm not exactly a fan of how it looks but it does perform well it's been pretty solid for me so i would recommend it looking at z-wave plugs my absolute favorite is the zeus double plug this thing is super consistent and offering two smart receptacles each with their own power monitoring makes it well worth the price think is a really good looking design and they made up for how wide it is by making it thin and allowing for two to be plugged into one wall outlet this is actually the only smart plug that i've seen out there on amazon or anywhere else that has two smart receptacles it's awesome that has that and on top of that they added the led rings to indicate power usage just adds that touch of cool the icing on the cake is the usb port which provides enough current to easily charge a phone overnight the only other thing i wish they could have had on this plug was the ability for it to handle up to 15 amps for a 15 amp capable z-wave plug i would highly recommend the zooz zen 15. it's an awesome choice especially considering the fact that you could fit two of these into one wall outlet okay here are the ones i would not recommend the first one is the aotek smart switch 6. this device was just not worth the price the most expensive of all the plugs you expect some standout features but you get nothing special the fibaro is everything the aotek plug wants to be but better and it has a usb port the lack of current reporting the broken led switch and that awful buzzing makes this plug a no-go for me go with the vibro instead next the evalogic outlet this one has two receptacles but that's pretty much it one of them is not even smart it's way too big to have only one smart outlet and to not have any kind of energy monitoring it's honestly pretty featureless and doesn't have any configuration options in z-wave js spend a little more and go with the zeus double plug anyway i hope this video gives you guys a good sense of what smart plugs are out there and what features they have if you enjoyed it please like the video and let me know in the comments what ways you use smart plugs and also if you have any smart plugs that you feel like i missed i'd still like to look at them even if i missed them in this review also i'll be doing more product comparisons like this as well as guides and reviews and home automation idea videos so if you're interested please hit subscribe and if you press that bell you'll be notified when my next video comes out i promise it's not very often anyway thanks for watching we'll see press start [Music]

Channel: Make It Work

Views: 37,073

Keywords: home assistant, smart home, automation, tech, security, trigger, cooldown time, sonoff, zooz, fibaro, thirdreality, smart plug, plug, smart outlet, outlet, power monitoring, energy monitoring, power control, switch, smart switch, aeotec, athom, sengled, neo, eva logik, power switch, double plug, zen15, zen25, wall plug, zigbee, z-wave, wifi, flash, tasmota, esphome, wled, s31, pre-flashed, current, power, voltage, energy

Id: O7pC1oI86gg

Length: 26min 11sec (1571 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 26 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Normal-Reception-909]

Little or no mention of Smartthings, focus is on Home Assistant. Misleading, especially with the amount of info presented.