SONOFF S31 WiFi Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, 15A Smart Outlet Socket ETL Certified, Work with Alexa & Google Home Assistant, IFTTT Supporting, 2.4 Ghz WiFi Only (2-Pack)

Using them with Alexa, very reliable, never had a failure/need of reset. Easy setup and Alexa integration with the ewlink app. In the ewlink app you can turn on some features that Alexa do not have but still works with Alexa, additional bonus. E.g automatically turn off the device after xxx time has lapsed since power on, power on state, timers and loop timers. Very useful for my setup, controlling a water pump for my house remotely.

Update: It appears that I have spoken too soon. Out of the 6 total units that I have now, 2 of them will not power on or pair (I am 7 days in the dark with their customer service with this so far) and 3 of them randomly read as Unavailable. Looks like Ill be sticking with Wyze outlets for the future. Disclaimer: I ordered these to run on my Home Assistant (HA); I have not tried using them with any other system or integration. This review is for the S40 Wifi Plugs. TLDR; I liked the 2 pack of S40 plugs enough to buy another 4 pack and also suggest them to my brother. For anyone running Home Assistant, the setup isnt that horrible, but you are going to have to use the eWeLink app for the initial setup to your network. Additionally, you can get them to be on a local LAN (and not on the cloud) but it will involve some Googling, reading, and some work to get it done. The initial (app) setup was smooth and getting things to work on HA only took a couple of more minutes after doing a little Googling. The energy monitoring seems to be fairly accurate in the sense that a 60-watt LED light was reading approximately 58 watts in HA, but I wasnt proactive enough to verify with the Fluke or Kill-A-Watt yet. (Ill do that and update this review at a later date) At this juncture, Im more concerned about reading energy draw vs no energy draw in order to act as a trigger instead of monitoring energy usage (I monitor consumption at the breaker panel, so I dont really need to do it at the component level yet). The only drawback that I have encountered thus far; if you wish to remove a plug from one network and use it with another, you MUST first go into the eWeLink app and remove it while it is still in the original network before trying to move it to another location (with a different network). In my experience, if you do not perform this step first (and attempt to remove it from the app when the plug is at a different location), the plug WILL NOT turn on nor will you be able to re-enter pairing mode. Im not sure why it was acting like this, but when I returned it to the original wifi network, I was able to get it working without any problems. My original experience with Sonoff was with an S40 Lite Zigbee model and it frustrated me to the point of wanting to chuck it out the window and steered clear of their products for a good while. Thankfully, these (S40 wifi variant) was much easier to play with and my gamble paid off; resulting in me ordering a 4 pack to use within my HA ecosystem as well.

Like many other reviewers, I have purchased this particular switch to install Tasmota on. I use them for energy monitoring, and in some cases their original intent - outlet switching, in my home. I buy whatever pack is cheapest per unit at the time, be it 1, 2 or 4 pack versions. Theyre all the same in my experience. To get them installed with Tasmota, I first tried to solder leads to them. Then I tried to solder pin headers and that was a little bit easier. Im slightly beyond entry level skill with soldering, but I destroyed at least three units in this learning process. I finally graduated to micro-grabber electrical test clips and have ripped through over two dozen conversions now without incident. Lets be frank. Id rather Sonoff just offered Tasmota OS from the get-go, or made these over-the-air flashable. I will settle for nothing less than local control and Im definitely not itching for a new and different cloud solution or app. Id prefer not to hack these devices in the first place and if Sonoff works towards preventing this from a hardware or software standpoint, I will buy no more of them. At the time of this writing (March 2022), this is probably one of the cheapest way to get local energy monitoring and basic 15 amp capable on/off outlet switching. I use Home Assistant for my home automation platform. These are fully compatible with their new energy monitoring dashboard. This provides me with significant insight into my homes energy use, especially now that theyre widely distributed to the overwhelming majority of my outlets. I usually capture between 13-18 kilowatt hours per day, the bulk of my usage. To be clear, I use higher grade energy monitoring switches in mission critical applications (furnace, fridge, etc.), but these are great even for non-mission critical high amp usage scenarios up to 15 amps. Ive pushed some of mine well up to the limits and havent had any major problems or sparks fly. Out of a couple dozen, Ive had one actual device failure. Oddly enough, even with different firmware, different units operate differently on my WiFi. Some stay connected to Wifi 100% of the time, others intermittently connect throughout the day. I dont lose any granular Home Assistant data because of this, nor are they ever inaccessible and fail to turn on/off. I dont have a good answer as to why different units behave differently with the same software. Odd behavior, but it doesnt result in problems. I really cant complain anyway, Im using them well outside of the manufacturers intended use. Build quality is good enough but I wish there was a bit more consistency. Since the majority of buyers are intending to hack these, I really wish they wouldnt cinch down some of the poor-quality screws like they are Shee-Ra or the Hulk. Ive destroyed way more screws than Ive wanted, and thats with the perfect screw removal tool which Ive determined to be a 2.0mm flathead screwdriver. Again, I just wish I could buy a decent quality, super cheap, 15 amp capable smart switch product with the OS of my choice out of the gate. Ive used these to solve VERY REAL problems in my home. From triggering outlets based on other inputs to making serious dents in energy conservation, I believe the $200ish dollars Ive put into these Sonoff S31 units will eventually pay for themselves. Its fairly easy for me when Im paying almost $0.25 per kilowatt hour, others might not have as good of an ROI. If anything, Ive achieved some level of energy usage consciousness. Ive killed and/or automated quite a few parasitic energy draws I wasnt even aware of, and have easily increased my automation abilities at the same time. Its important to know that these utilize about 2 watts each, just to function. This might not seem like much, but with two+ dozen of them running 24 hours a day - were talking about a ~50 watt constant load just to monitor outlet energy. For me, Ive killed and automated much more than that, so Im in the black as it were. Its important, at least for me, to keep tabs on the cost and value of energy monitoring. Im hoping I can continue to use these to save at least $500 in energy in the next 5 years, and so far, that seems to be a reasonable goal based on how I use them. Lastly, I dont want to get too much into minutia, but you need a fairly robust WiFi network to support the internet of things over WiFi. Personally, I utilize multiple networks, including Lutron, Z-Wave, Zigbee and WiFi to get there. Put simply, I dont use these cheap and ubiquitous hacked WiFi devices to service mission critical applications in any way. If a failure would cost me a fair bit of money, I spend more than $10 to capture energy usage and (sometimes) provide switching capabilities. +4 stars for being a hackable and very useful device overall. You can debate about that last star, even I waver between 4 and 5 stars. They provide much value for not much dollar and a reasonable +/-2 year path to return on investment for many people that are trying to optimize energy consumption or provide local, automated switching controls.

I first bought SwitchBot smart plugs thinking they would work with the Core SwitchBot integration with Home-Assistant, extremely disappointed in not only the broken integration, but also the terms of service from a company that has had a lot of recent YouTube praise. Unfortunately, it just shows the known ignorance and total abandonment of values in the name of convenience... Enter HACS and Sonoff; While Sonoff is also doing some data mining it is possible to run the S31 Smart Plugs completely local without the app or the cloud using HACS on Home-Assistant with no fooling with jumpers or fussing with flashing. Several recent HA forum posts and YouTube videos cover the procedure, just look for the most current so you can follow along more easily since the recent changes. Also, Stay away from the S40 if you use Home-Assistant. S31 is the way to go. Deducted a star for the shady terms of service that are getting all too common with IoT products. Otherwise, it would be 5 stars.

These plugs still have the ability to work with TASMOTA. They have to be opened and flashed via serial connections. Theres a few how-tos that show the process. Flashing TASMOTA helps me avoid relying on the cloud since I use Home Assistant on a RPi3.

I use for dehumidifier, Steamer, Online media box. I use for coffee maker to start 8 am. Surprised it made coffee 12pm lunch time. Too many ads in the app. For 4$ each. And Wi-Fi. CAnt beat the price but not perfect.

The S40 brings a new elegant and a little design to the previous one. It is amazing what you can do with the power consumption capabilities. And the best of all is the automatic turn off when there is an overload to protect the connected device. All of its smart options are as expected, they are even better when you have other Sonoff products. For example, I can turn on my wall plug when I turn on my light switch and more, just with the app. Overall, it is an incredible product and a must have in your smart house.

Sturdy plugs with energy monitoring. As a bonus, they can be very easily reflashed with tasmota or esphome firmware in case you dont trust the cloud and want to control plugs from your local network.

Q: Why would my firewall block a well known Ch___ government monitoring site? I guess Im a suspicious person by nature, but while setting up my Sonoff Type B wifi Smart Plug (S40TPB) I got enough red flags to make me return it. A), the instructions ask me to turn on my phones location settings and share my phones location with the Smart Plug. OK, yellow flag, but I suppose that makes sense - sorta. B) Be sure that the MAC address of the device is not on the BLACKLIST of your MAC management [I presume they mean my network firewall. Blacklisted equals a huge RED FLAG for me. C) Please contact your ISP [Internet Service Provider] and confirm our server address is not shielded [I presume they mean blocked]. cn-disp.coolkit.cc and other coolkit.cc hostnames are basically in C___a, right? Quick question for anyone reading this far; why does a blacklisted server in C___a needs to know when I turn your lights on and off? After a few minutes of digging around to see where my turn the light on requests were being routed to, I quickly unplugged this little monster and promptly brought them to my nearest UPS store for a full refund.

Best thing about this device is the ability to reflash with Tasmota firmware which then works with both HomeAssistant and MQTT based home control and automation systems. You can utilize one system for power monitoring and the other for control once the unit has been flashed. Very good support by the community for using the part.