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

I bought this TP-link smart plug for a lamp in the corner of my bedroom. I like the location of the soft lighting when I am reading or watching tv in bed but it got annoying to have to get up and switch it off when I got drowsy. I got the TP-link plug before I got the Amazon Echo so I set it up with the Kasa app which I placed on my Android tablets and phone. The app immediately found the device and connected to my wifi network with the option to give the plug a personalized name. When I would log onto the app, I was presented with a power button next to that name, so it was just a tap on that to turn it off or on. I was quite happy with that. Once I got my Echo, I switched over to using the plug with that. Again, the plug was quickly detected and so very simple to use. I was happy using the app but the Echo raised the bar and it is so nice to be able to just voice my request rather than reaching for a phone or tablet app. The plug is large which may be a concern depending on the size of any other plugs that need to be placed next to it. I have it plugged into a surge suppressor where I have outlets that I do not use, so it is not a problem for me. I plan to purchase more TP-Link plugs since I am quickly becoming addicted to having Alexa’s quick response to my requests for turning it on or off.

This item worked well for years with minimal problems. But when my modem died and I had to change the network I found out that you cant change the plug. They advise me to set up the new network with the same network ID and password as the old network. Since Id already set up the network and many many devices in my house I ended up just ordering a different plug. From Amazon of course. I will get it tomorrow

I have a water well and one year the outdoor plumbing from it froze. We had no water pressure when that happened because the part that froze was a 2 inch section of pipe that had the pressure sensor on it. You cant buy heat tape for a 2 pipe! The well tech said to insulate that pipe and place a heat lamp near that pipe, turning it on when it gets close to freezing. That involves clamping a heat lamp near the pipe and running an extension cord from the well head to my house, turning it on when it gets cold. It rarely stays cold enough during the day here, but it could happen. But what would I do if I was not home? This WiFi smart plug will hopefully be the answer. Basically, this is a WiFi relay/switch. You download the app, plug in the device to a wall outlet and the app connects the plug to your home network after you supply your routers WEP code. You next specify when the device will turn on. Generally, accessing the device turns it on. The icon on your smartphone Kasa app will turn green. You can have it turn on and off at a certain time on a specified day of the week but not on a specific date on the calendar. By doing so, it acts like setting a smartphone alarm. It asks for your location for sunrise/sunset information and can turn on the device at sunset, etc. There is an option to turn on the device for a low temperature situation, which I assume means outdoor temperature, but there is no setting for what that temperature is when it will turn the device on or at what subsequent temperature will it then turn it off. What if there are conflicts between the set schedule and the temperature? I will have to ask the company about that. In the meantime, I can check the weather and turn it on an off remotely. How long does it take for the smart plug to turn on or off when using the app? It is almost instantaneous. How far away is the smart plug from my Comcast router? About 80 feet.

My husband and I love these smart plugs. We purchased them right after we purchased our Echo Dot. I thought it might be nice to be able to ask Alexa to turn lights on and off. We have 2 set up in our living room for our two lamps. I did not realize how valuable these were until the first night my daughter would not go to sleep. When she cant sleep, we come sit in the rocking chair in our living room. I asked Alexa to turn on the lights as we came down stairs, we grabbed a blanket, got all settled, then I asked Alexa to turn off the light. It was perfect; no fumbling with covers in the dark. Then we purchased 2 more for our sons room. We have a TV in his room for him to watch Netflix. He has the habit of staying up all night watching TV, so we were looking for a solution to cut the power to his TV at a certain time at night. We had purchased a surge protector that had a timer, but you had to set the on and off for the same time every day. For some reason when the power would be restored to the TV, the TV would turn on. This meant that the TV could be on all day while no one was home. We also have string lights taped to his ceiling that were on a timer. After those solutions didnt work out so well, we purchased 2 smart plugs. I can set it up so his TV turns on early on Saturday - Monday, late afternoon Tuesday - Friday. I can also set it that it turns off earlier during week nights than on weekends. My biggest favorite is that my son has not figured out it is controlled by an app on my phone. The other night, it was past the time that his TV was off, but he wanted to finish watching his show. I was able to grab my phone and set a 30 minute timer so the outlet would turn off in 30 minutes. No crawling behind dressers, just a click on my app. Its also perfect that we have this string lights set up. I have them set to turn on at 8 and off at 10. But with the app, I can turn them on earlier, turn them off later, change the on time or the off time. It has definitely made parenting so much easier. Im looking at getting some of these for my daughters room.

At first, I had a lot of trouble getting it to work. Please note: these things do NOT work with custom firmware routers (DD-WRT, OpenWRT, etc.) I had DD-WRT on my router, and I just couldnt get it to work no matter what. It couldnt connect to the router, and I have no clue why. So I flashed my router back to stock firmware, et voila. It worked just as expected. You download the Kasa app, plug in the plug, and go through the on-screen instructions to set it up! Its very simple. It then gives you the ability to turn on and off things you plug into it remotely (I used mine for a space heater). You can also setup a schedule for it to turn on. For me, I have my heater turn on at 630am so its not cold when its time to get out of bed. This is also good for automated lights and other things. PACKAGING: the packaging it comes in is very good, and very nice looking. The instructions are semi-ambiguous, but they can be. The app walks you step by step through setup. This plug is not compatible with 5GHz WiFi networks...so you need to have a 2.4GHz WiFi network in order to use this. Honestly this part is my own mistake, but I only bought the Smart Plug, and not the model with energy monitoring...DO NOT make this mistake. Its literally 4 cents more to get the one with energy monitoring, and it would be well worth it just for some cool extra information about your plug and monitoring it. Currently, you can only see how long its been on...not that useful for much. Anyways, amazing product, very nice and convenient, and glad I purchased. Giving it 4 stars because the headache I had with DD-WRT and because a model without a feature is the same price* as the model with a feature...very unfortunate as I dont want to wait to send this back and forth.

I got this as part of the Black Friday promo for purchasing an Echo Dot. Like the other TP-Link products I have purchased, the set-up is pretty easy from the TP-Link Kasa app. I think some people might get stuck when they attempt to connect to their own wi-fi network. For what ever reason, I notice that the TP-Link products always list my neighbors network first instead of mine. I solved that by clicking the option below the listed network to find my own. As for the product I have had no problems connecting or loss of signal. My plug is on the second floor of my home about twenty feet in distance from the wi-fi router. Not bad considering all the flooring and walls. My only complaint is that the smart plug covers the entire outlet. Not a problem for the room I am using as it only had one lamp running to that wall outlet. All the same, I cannot plug anything else into that wall outlet. My suggestion is that you might want to use this smart plug for a single appliance like a fan or Christmas lights. If you want to have smart features for a lamp, I would suggest purchasing a smart light bulb (see my review for the TP-Link Smart Wi-Fi Light Switch HS200) which is likely to have more features and allow you to keep full access to your wall outlet.

Awesome! This plug is working swimmingly. I have only just got it since its already been compatible with Amazon Echo. I would have been less thrilled if I was dealing with the extra steps to make them talk. At first, it set up with ease. I assumed I had to install the app first and set up the plug before trying to sync with Echo, but it became a little bit of an issue. I set up the first plug with both, then started adding other plugs. The new plugs had a lot of problems being found by Echo and even the Kasa app would keep renaming them to the first name I chose instead of the changed named when the app would turn on. The old names would flash and then change to the new ones. I noticed that the one plug set up with Echo was also still showing the old name, while the Kasa app kept showing the new name. (Example: Lvn Rm Torch Light versus Torch Light). SO, I forgot all devices on Echo, uninstalled Kasa, reinstalled it, and bam. All plugs showed up, showed up with new names right away, and were all found on Echo first try. I may only have needed to sign out of my account on the app and resign in versus the full uninstall, but Im thorough. My suggestion is to plug all the plugs in where you want them before ever starting up the Kasa app the first time, so they all go in at once and you dont have to do the dance with later pairing. Im sure its only going to get better as time goes on with how newly integrated these are. I am very pleased!

OK, here is the scoop from a non-technical person. This is a great little gizmo although I think it is a bit expensive. The price I pay for being an early adopter of technology I suppose. It arrived packed well from Amazon. The product packaging is mostly recyclable cardboard and easy to open. The instructions are a bit vague, but with a little trial and error I got it working in about 10 minutes. Here are a few helpful bits of information. Yes, you have to download the KASA app to your phone. No, the KASA app is not available in the Amazon app store (shame on you Amazon); you must go to one of those other 2 app stores. Yes you have to create an account with KASA using your e-mail address, but so far I havent gotten any SPAM from them. Yes, you need your Wi-Fi password. Yes, it has to be 2.4 not 5.0. If you have X-finity (Comcast) you probably have both. Getting the outlet to work with my phone was really easy. Getting it to work with Alexa (Amazon Echo) was a bit confusing. There are all kinds of posts saying you no longer needed to enable the KASA skill. That is all wrong, you do. Once I figured out that was the issue, everything was easy. Problem for me was that I pushed the button to try and connect to Alexa and that restarted the discovery in the KASA app. No way out so I had to delete and redo. Not a big deal: hit the button, give it a name, pick an icon, done. HINT: Use a simple name when setting up the outlet. I named mine the lights. Now when I walk onto the room I simply say Alexa, turn on the lights. And like magic, the lights come on. If I had named it the northwest corner outlet then it wouldnt be nearly as much fun. As I get more of these, I may have to be a bit more clever in the names, but since I have just one, it all works out. As an aside, names are not lifelong commitments. If I ever want to change the name I can just push the button and pick a new name. What I thought was really cool was that I never had to tell Alexa the name. I enabled the KASA skill. I opened the Alexa app. From the home screen I opened the menu (the three lines in front of the word HOME) and then tapped Smart Home. It gives 3 choices, I picked discover devices. It asked me for the e-mail and password I created in the KASA app. Alexa took care of the rest. The usage data in the app is interesting, I guess. Like I said, I have a lamp plugged into it. It is kind of interesting to know how long the light was on, but I am having a hard time convincing myself I care. I also have not used any -f the timers or other features in the app. My main goal was to have a fairly cheap, easy way to use Alexa to turn lights on/off. And, although I think it is still a bit expensive, at least I didnt have to invest in any other hardware to make it work..

<Update 6.20.2016> I love these units & cannot wait (though Im going to have to anyway) for the HS200 TP Link Smart Switch (In-wall light switch) to come to the market per their latest software update note under the Whats New. Ive had my first TP Link Smart Plug (see the original post below) for about 6 weeks now, my second for about 4 weeks & they are working flawlessly. As mentioned in my OP, I wanted a unit for my entertainment center & have since received & installed it. Drove my college student (whos home for the summer) nuts as the power was not on in the mornings. For the 4 weeks since having the second unit (I called it the TV power), she could not figure out how to get power to the TV. She finally unplugged the power strip from the smart plug & plugged it directly into the wall below the HS100. So I finally showed the family how to work them (mainly just so they wouldnt keep unplugging & plugging in the power chords). On another note, I finally received my Amazon Echo (just in time for Fathers day, wahoo!) and so I now have the Smart Plugs hooked up to the World Wide Web, the Internet super highway, the Internet of Things, etc., etc. I understand the frustrations some people have posted regarding the connection to the Echo & I believe I have figured out why. Amazons Alexa App is in need of some serious TLC. TP Links Kasa App is doing what its suppose to do. In my original post, I had a small issue with connectivity of the software to the units which still exists but not near as rough since the latest software update. Still, when youre not connected to your LAN (because youve been away or simply have the WiFi / Data off) & want to adjust something in the schedules or simply turn the lamp on, connecting wirelessly sometimes has a hiccup. Each unit has to ping constantly (every 1.5 to 2 seconds as it was explained to me) to your LAN to let the router know the unit is there. When you connect your phone to the LAN, you may just connect in between those pings in which case the software on the phone may come back & say There are no connected devices. It does offer a pre-configured devices ribbon which you can select to initiate the units connectivity through the smart phone (see the uploaded pics). After selecting the ribbon, you have to select the little plus button on the right of each device until you have the no unsaved devices screen, then your units are active for you (5 stars now that I understand the software & realize that most of the frustrations are not the fault of TP Link). After I finally created an account with TP Link (all you need is an email address & a password, no personal information is required) I went back into the Kasa App & set the first unit to remote. In the Alexa App, I had to select the Skills in the menu & do a search for Kasa (there are over 123 PAGES of skills & no file management system in the Alexa App). After getting Kasa as a skill & initiating it, I then had to go to the Smart Home in the menu & select the Kasa skill to find the HS100 Smart Plug. This is where the frustrations started for me. The skill was not there. I know I had found it & selected the skill & initiated it but it was not listed. So I went back to the list & did another search for the Kasa (its on like page 71 & each time you go into the list, it starts on page 1). After the third time & about an hour plus, I discovered a search box where I could type the name Kasa & search & it would find about half a dozen skills to choose from, duh! What an idiot. Lucky we have the skills name otherwise its a page by page search until you find what your looking for. Anyway, I digress. The skill was not showing up in the Alexas Smart Home directory. I was about to put the phone down & walk away before something got seriously injured when I realized I had a couple updates to finish on my phone. One of these updates was a 34 megabyte update. Ive read that if you have a decent size (dont ask me what decent size means, I figured 20 meg or better) update, you should reboot your system after updating. So after my update I rebooted my phone & figured ok, Im cooled down a bit, Ill try the Alexa App one more time. Opening the App, I went straight to the Smart Home directory & whadyaknow, the Kasa skill was there. Finally, a step forward. Opening the skill, I can now (finally) have the Kasa skill find the HS100 Smart Plug. Picking the find devices gave me an immediate you have no internet connection message. Then I walked away! This is a long story but I promise it has a happy ending (well, sort of). A few hours of thinking about it I came back to try again. I figured perhaps because the HS100s connect via 2.4 GHz & the Echo connects to the more active 5 GHz, the two are not communicating. So I purposely connected my phone to the 2.4 GHz, opened the Kasa app & verified I could connect to each of my Smart Plugs. Then while leaving the Kasa app open, I went back into the Amazon Alexa app, into the Smart Home directory, & picked the find devices once again. The you have no internet connection message immediately popped up. So I figured the only way I could find the skill to begin with was to reboot the phone so I rebooted once again. I forgot to connect to the 2.4 GHz & open the Kasa app to verify my units were accessible, I just went straight to the Alexa app and after picking the find devices button it came back with a message, searching for devices. This can take up to 20 seconds. Wahoo! It worked, I found my HS100 named the Lamp. Now there are three ways of turning the Lamp on. I can say Alexa, turn on the lamp and Alexa says, ok and the lamp comes on. I can push the power button on the front of the unit and the lamp comes on. And I can wait for the scheduled time and the lamp comes on. These units are AWESOME!!! Of course I had set only the Lamp to remote in the Kasa app so I had to go back to the Kasa app & change the TV power to remote so I could find it in the Alexa app. I had to go through rebooting the phone a couple more times to get my second unit connected with the Echo but I am now connected & my college kid is happy to say Alexa, turn on the TV power so she can watch a movie instead of getting a summer job, ggrrr! ____Original Post____ This is a true product review & I paid full price for the TP Link Smart Plug (HS100, no Energy Monitoring) unit. So with that said, let me tell you my current thoughts on this product after playing with it a mere four days. I dont yet have an echo (its on order) but am preparing for its arrival. So in the mean time I figured Id try this on my local LAN before submitting my so called Smart house to the wiles of the internet. The unit itself is easy enough to work with. You can use it as a single outlet power switch & simply push the button to turn it on and off, much like a six outlet power strip with a switch, but this would be a single outlet. But I want a timer control switch that will automatically turn on at a certain time & off at a certain time & I want to (in the future) have that timer & simply override it with a phrase, Alexa, turn on the lamp. So I needed to connect it to the LAN for starters. After following the instructions for downloading the software (Kasa for Mobile) from Google play I began my assault. My phone automatically connects to my 5 GHz WiFi so I had to manually change it to the 2.4 GHz as this frequency is the only one this Smart plug will work with currently. Reasons are listed on the website (tp-link.us) Now there are two buttons on this unit; a small button on the very top with a light grey gear icon on it is for its configuration (visibility) when connecting to your phone via the local LAN and the other button in the front just above the outlet is a two tone LED light/power button. This is the button you push to simply turn the power strip on/off. This button flashes orange/green when you first plug it in which tells you its ready to begin the connection phase. The app found the plug pretty quickly & began asking me the questions needed to control this plug like what to call it (important to name it something unique to the situation). I called it the lamp. What, Its the only lamp in my family room & I dont intend on connecting any other lamps in the house to the Echo so ... Alexa, turn on the lamp will work very nicely. I can go back & change the name of the plug if I need to. The app then asked for the password to my LAN so my phone can connect to the plug. This is where I screwed everything up cause I couldnt remember what the password was. After resetting the plug a couple times (I now know the reset button works) I got the unit setup & the lamp was on. The software, while easy enough to understand is a bit too simplistic in its presentation which leads to a little frustration in finding what you are searching for. Lemme esplain. I wanted the plug as a timer so I needed to get a schedule setup. You need to tap on the lamp on the left side of the apps screen as the right side is the power switch for controlling the plug via phone. Then you have to pic the three little dots to open a menu so you can pic the schedule selection button. I suppose this is necessary cause if you have several plugs, you will need to determine which one you are working with and there are a few options in menu as well. So I set the schedule for an early morning on & mid morning off, Monday thru Friday. Then created a second schedule for Sunset on & late evening off, Monday thru Sunday. Now mind you this is connected to the local LAN which means if you want a current Sunset time, you have to have your phone connected to the unit to get it as the current Sunset changes daily & the unit needs a connection to the Internet to get that time. Duh! No wonder the lamp was coming on early, the Sunset time was current when I programmed it but is now later than when the lamp comes on as my phone is not connected to the LAN to feed the unit the current Sunset time. :-P A bit of a frustration is when you have a cloudy or stormy afternoon & it gets dark well before sunset. So I wanted to override the current setting & turn the lamp on. Well low & behold when I opened the app, it said there were no current devices configured, would you like to configure one now? Then a little popup display said You have had a previous unit configured which you can access after setting up a new device. After several minutes of getting out of the app, going back in, getting out, disconnecting the phone from the LAN, reconnecting, disconnecting, rebooting the phone, reconnecting, I was ready to unplug the unit & plug the lamp into the wall socket. I thought, All I want to do is turn on the lamp. How lazy am I that I cant reach up and turn the knob, I have to have a Smart Plug. BUT, I wanted the Smart Plug for the timer function. So I was going to Add Device for the fourth time. After picking the Smart Plug icon & giving it a name (the lamp, how original) the app found my previous device & the schedule I was able to turn on the lamp (losing 1 star for this). Havent had an issue with it since but its been a mere four days. On another note, I want to comment on others posts regarding this unit. There is a question/post about why it will not turn on a TV. Unless you have one of those old tube style TVs with a manual toggle switch that you can keep in the ON position, this will not turn on a TV. This Smart Plug is designed to simply deliver power to the TV. As I mentioned earlier, in its most basic form this unit is a one outlet power strip, that is all. The specifications of this unit are for a 100-120 Volt AC outlet with a 15amp load maximum. I have not overloaded this unit to see what would happen but my current wiring for my entertainment system (TV, DVD Player, Wii, etc) are all on one six outlet power strip on a 15amp breaker & they have not tripped the breaker yet. With that said, there is a lot of residual power being leaked by these devices while in a dormant state. I plan to order another TP-Link Smart Plug and schedule a time for these devices to receive power so they can be used. They will be off during the night & when Im away from the home, powered when I am home so I can use them. Another post or two or four mentions this unit is large & covers both wall outlets. While technically this is true, this is also technically not true. This unit has a lip on the back side where the prongs plug into the wall. A standard two prong plug can fit nicely under this unit & both seat perfectly (see the pics I loaded) while anything larger will not. You just have to plug the two prong plug into the bottom outlet first, then plug this unit into the top outlet. In the pics, I have my iClever 6 port charging station plugged into the bottom outlet (need constant power to a charging station) & the lamp via the Smart Plug in the top outlet.

I love these little plugs! I have two of them set up in my living room, one for each light. I have them tied into Alexa so I can turn on and off my lights with my voice, which I think is the coolest thing. There was only one time where Alexa could not turn on or off the light and she responded by saying TP-Link is not responding when I issued the commands to turn the lights on and off. I think this is because Alexa requires that you enable remote access to be able to use Alexa with the plug, which means any commands Alexa send to the plugs are being sent to TP-Links cloud. This is ok as long as the cloud works, which it does 99% of the time, but my one concern is that if TP-Link ever shuts down their cloud the plug will turn from being a smart device into a dumb device. As far as setup, these were super easy to set up. I added them via the TP-Link Kasa app and gave them each a name, then added them in the Alexa app. I can use the plugs either with Alexa or via the Kasa app on my phone. If you enable remote access for the plugs, you can use the app to turn the plug on or off from away from home, which is nice so that I can turn on my lights before I get home so I never have to come home to a dark house again.