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)

The Sonoff isnt the smallest, but I needed an outlet with local control and power monitoring. I was able to flash Tasmota onto the outlet in about 5 minutes, as the Sonoff is easily disassembled. With Tasmota firmware running on the outlet, all control is local with Home Assistant. There is no need to pair the device with a server in a far away country and there is no communication going on outside of my house. In fact, I put all of my IoT devices on a VLAN that does not have any access to the internet or my normal household network. Keep everything local with local control and keep spyware out of your home.

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.

These are easy to use. As Im getting older, I love telling Alexa to do stuff and she does it. Obeys better than my kids did, lol.

Was a little difficult to pair with Alexa, had to upgrade eWelink. So far happy with it.

The appeal to this model is the ability to open them and hack them - great for automation. They didnt play nice with my router. 2 of the 4 kept going offline and I had to reset them to get them back.

I needed a method to measure electricity usage on my solar water heater backflush system. It has 1 small pump that moves the heated fluid from the rooftop solar panel to a heat exchanger tank, then another pump draws cold water from the bottom of water tank thru the heat exchanger and dumps the heated water into the top of my tank. The pumps run only when the temperature sensor on the roof senses the temp is warmer than the cold water in the bottom of my tank, so it happens sporadically as the weather changes. This device lets you put in the cost per kWh so it shows the actually cost of energy. Works perfectly for me. Also, these pumps only use about $5 of electricity per month.

We live in an older home that doesnt have overhead lighting in the ceiling. In stead, every room has to be lit with lamps and it was such a pain to turn everything on an off when you entered a room. So, we decided smart plugs and they have been a game changer. Very easy to set up with the eWeLink app and then integrate with the Alexa app. We group the switches together in each room and then set up the on/off schedules and routines in the Alexa app, rather than eWeLink, but you can do it either way. Lots of options. So much easier to just say Alexa, turn on the living room than switching on three lamps! Love these.

Adding new devices can be daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes a breeze. The ability to monitor appliance energy consumption is a definite plus, and being able to schedule the ON/OFF times is only second to being able to remotely power on, or turn off anything plugged into the unit.

Very easy to set up and use. They all work flawlessly. Im very happy with them.

Works great right out of the box. Using the Ewelink software, you are presented with all the parameters and easily connects to Alexa. Just change the name during the configuration to prevent Alexa from getting her tung tied up in a knot. The only downside is that unlike other Sonoff boards, the serial connection points on the board does not have through hole pads. Several flashers have damaged the pads trying to hook up the connections for flashing alternative software. Very good value for money