Wemo Insight WiFi Enabled Smart Plug, with Energy Monitoring, Works with Alexa (Discontinued by Manufacturer - Newer Version Available)

There are some things that are excellent about this product -- once the setup is complete -- its really easy to hookup numerous iphones/ipads/itouches to register the wemo app (allowing you to control the outlet). The cons include not receiving notifications that the outlet is on/off, unless you separately set the usage/watts on EACH itouch/iphone/ipad product. Im pretty sure that this is only due to the fact that I have an extremely low-power consuming miniature toy pump that Im using on this outlet. Initial setting is somewhere around 8 (?) watts or something. I received zero notification that the pump was on/off. Once I adjusted the watts? to below 2, it started notifying me that the outlet was being used. I do believe that theres an automatic watt/power detection during the setup process -- but since the device wanted to update the firmware ? while I was initially setting this up -- I did not want to bother myself doing the automatic power detection setup step. Now, the good news is that notwithstanding all of this -- its always, without failed, allowed me to turn the device on/off. OH! And even if your main cable is down (no internet, no cable, no TV), as long as the router is physically working, it seems like the Wemo device works. I read somewhere that it creates is own wifi network (or something) so maybe our cable companys wifi system doesnt even have to be on -- not sure -- but at least it works even if the cable/internet/wifi is down.

Had a few problems getting it to set up. Had to go in my iPhone settings and forget all the wifi connections i already had cause it kept choosing the wrong one during setup for some reason. After that there was a problem with the firmware update. Had to do it over and over again till it final took. Then everything worked fine. I like how it shows me how much money the appliance or whatever you have plugged into it is using. I am using it for a ac window unit. The unit i have remembers the settings when there is a power outage so it turns right back on to the same temp as it shut off at. Works perfect for that.

I didnt even try the device, for which I had such high hopes. Belkin appears to have no regard whatsoever to privacy and security. The Android app to control this-- without which the devices are useless-- demands access to ones contact list and-- get this-- your ROUTERS PASSCODE! With this information, Belkin or whoever gets hold of this information (by hacking Belkin? Hacking your phone?), can then access your LAN behind its firewall, and/or SPAM everyone in your contact list. It also demands your Device & app history, so they know ALL your apps, your identiy, your location, access to your phone, your photos, your media files, your camer(!?!?!?), and more. Seriously? Belkin employees could surreptitiously access your phone and eavesdrop on your private conversations or watch you as you do private things, as well as send this info to everyone in your contact list. While I dont doubt that this is not their intentions, there is NO JUSTIFIABLE REASON for such privacy invasion, because a rogue employee could wreak havoc with ones life if appropriate information was disseminated. I know that younger people seem to not understand the consequences of privacy loss or identity theft, so they readily accept such access demands from the apps they enjoy, but I certainly will not, and I recommend everyone else reading this takes a similar stand. iOS devices allow individual blocking of an apps permissions, but Android does not-- its an all/nothing deal. Until enough Android users complain, Android systems will lack this individual feature control. And, while Belkin may give reasons like we need your access list IN CASE you want to share settings with friends, or other sanitized reasons, there is NO VALID REASON to demand access to your personal data like that. So, I am sadly sending these back. It could have been a great product but I will never know, because I refuse unnecessary invasions of my privacy. I have similarly uninstalled any app that makes unreasonable demands. Many want access to ones contact list, so they can sell the data to telemarketers or spam your friends themselves. I will not participate in this. FIGHT BACK! There are other apps/products that allow remote control via the Internet, that do NOT ask for ANY special permissions. Shame on Belkin!

The following review deals with this switch, an Apple Airport Extreme (2013 model) a Nexus 7 tablet and/or a Motorola Moto X. One of the most attractive features of this and the associated WeMo devices (and the touted WeMo android app) is a theoretical set of rules that supposedly allow you to program the devices to work together. So for instance, you can get a WeMo camera which has motion sensing and you can theoretically program this light switch to turn on and off for a specified period of time when there is motion sensed by the camera sensor. On a less complicated level, you are theoretically able to set up a rule to turn the switch on at sunset for your specific geographic location. Each component works i.e. the motion sensing feature of the camera works and the turn the light on and off feature works with the switch but......the rules part does not work. Unfortunately, you go through a whole Wizard of Oz bunch of people who really seem to be honestly intent on resolving your issue with the product until you learn that your issue is actually the manufacturers issue. The advertised features simply do not work when it comes to the rules category. If you have a plethora of time and patience, you may eventually be connected to an apparently very well meaning or at least well meaning sounding person who will tell you that your case is being forwarded to the developers........Upon further research, you will find that this has been the case for some time and there is a third party Android app that you can buy which theoretically will make the devices and the rules work together. I have not tried that. As an expensive timer or an expensive remote that you can use your phone to control, it works. And it works well. If you have an android phone and use that as your alarm clock or your bedside clock, you can use the app to turn a light on and off remotely with ease and consistency. For the simple on at sunset rule, you can use IFTTT.com. That works most of the time. Maybe it works with the iPhone. Dont know but the app is supposed to communicate with some Belkin server somewhere to coordinate the rules and so there should be zero difference whether you use an android device or an IOS device to do that. There was an update to the WeMo Android App a couple of weeks ago and it made zero difference in the disfunction of the rules business. Android users (kitcat specifically)....Caveat Emptor

I use this to remotely turn on and off a mining rig. For the first few weeks, the android app and the wemo would have frequent problems connecting, often to the point where I would spend at least 10 minutes pressing the power button on the app to get it to turn back on. Additionally, a power outage caused the wemo to refuse connection to my wifi and I ended up resetting the entire device. On to the good part of the story. I updated the wemo and the android app, and now it has performed exactly as I expected. The connection between the app and the insight switch is perfect, connects on the first time, every time now. I no longer have to fight the app to make the switch turn on, it does it on the first button press.

This is a great alternative to a remotely managed PSU for my home computer. I leave my computer running 24/7 as I remotely access it during the day. Sometimes my desktop will become frozen or blue screen and cannot be rebooted remotely, only by physically depressing the power button. This device will allow me to remotely reboot my computer with ease. Also, I can really see how much my 24/7 computer is costing for electricity per month. One issue that was finally resolved with the newest firmware, is that the device will have intermittent wireless connectivity issues. At first I thought it was my wireless router, until that was replaced and a support ticket was opened with the company. The most recent firmware appears to have resolved the issue!

UPDATE December 2014. Several more software and firmware updates (10.1.1 latest) and the product is now working as expected and deserves 5 stars. 99%+ the phone app works to connect (quickly) to devices and control. Insight is still a tad slower. We now have 7 different WeMo products and all are working very well. I wish I didnt have to go through the months of agony when we first got them. The current functionality is excellent. Working very well on both iPhone 5 and 6. UPDATE September 2014. In the last two weeks, Belkin has provided two iOS updates (1.8.X) and one or two firmware updates. The connectivity issues are nearly gone now. As I suspected, the issue was with the iPhone app that couldnt connect 8 times out of ten. With the new updates, connectivity is very fast and pretty reliable. Im still only giving the product 4 starts out of five for the months and months of issues I had with the product. The software is still not perfect with the Insight switches in terms of getting the update of data used, time on etc, but turning on and off all switches is now nearly instant as it should have been back in May of 2014 when I first purchased the products. Hopefully this new behavior will remain and I can now be happy with the product. ORIGINAL REVIEW: This generous 1 star is for the WeMo Insight switch. I also have two of the Light switches and one of the older plug-in units which would rate maybe 3.5 to four stars. The Insight is pretty much a piece of junk. I purchased two in May of 2014 and have had nothing but problems with them. In fact, Ive had to send both back to WeMo for replacement, one is due to arrive tomorrow. In a nutshell, the WiFi connectively with this product is simply awful. More than half the time, the silly device doesnt show up on the iPhone or iPad. Quit the app, reboot the phone, try using the Airport utility as recommended, no amount of fuzing around gets the unit to show up. Its just easier to walk to the device and manually turn the unit on and off. Belkin support has ranged from just awful to decent. Getting the last unit replaced due to its inability to be reset and then send out a signal was pretty bad. I had to keep calling and calling to finally get an RMA. The other two light switches and the one original switch work pretty well but not perfectly. At first I blamed their app which is pretty awful at updating itself. Then two Insight switches just flat out failed. Do not buy one! Try the other lesser expensive switch first and understand that the WeMo app is not very good. My wife and I have a good wireless network, weve got Airport Expresses (newer units) to extend the range, that didnt do a thing to fix the issues with the phone app and the Insights from communicating. The time Ive wasted with Belkin support, frustration trying to get the switch to operate isnt worth it, Ill just get up and do this myself with far less issues. Too bad because when the unit works, it is pretty slick. If it actuall worked 50% of the time, Id be in better shape than I am now, the Insight fails far more often than it works.

Purchased and returned. Both the app and the device are buggy. Generally speaking its fine if you dont need to rely on rules. Turn on the device from the app...it works. Use Amazon echo integration to turn it on/off... its great. When it came to rules it completely failed. If you setup anything more advanced than once on a day on once off it seems to falter. It would miss rules completely, turn on a device a minute or two before it was scheduled to turn off. The simple fact is you cant rely that it will turn on when you want it to. Support has no interest in actually communicating what the issue is or work-around. They will just tell you to reset the device and try again. Ive had it in states where it was executing rules that the app said it didnt have. Until they solve their firmware issues it comes to a situation where each time you edit/change the rules (including disable/enable) you will need to test that the rules function and possibly reset the device and add the rules all over again and then test again. Every time you use it for away mode... That is just poor product and not reliable. I tested on the firmware that shipped and on the latest downloadable. After two weeks of frustration I returned. I will not pursue seeing how it matures down the road because. It says something about the company and their willingness to fix issues. Its in both firmware version I tried and appears to be a problem that has been around for some time from the research I did. Its good concept held back by poor execution and the company does not value a solid product as much as market timing.

I use this to control a tower fan in my bedroom. I use the iPhone app to set a timer (to turn it on around bedtime and to turn if off in the AM just before my alarm clock goes off). I used to use an old school timer (the one with a dial where you had to pull out plastic notches whenever you wanted the outlet to turn on and off) but if we had a power outage, it would lose track of time. This one solves that problem. Also, you can manually turn on and off using the app or touching the power button on top, so you arent beholden to the scheduler. It was fairly easy to set up, easy to update the firmware when needed. Lastly, it tracks usage (watts), which is interesting to look at. The iphone app is a bit slow to load on my 4S and if you leave the app to go do something else and come back to it, it has to open from scratch, but all in all Im real happy with how it works. Then again, my phone device is a few years outdated, so that may be cause. If they could get the cost down, Id buy more of them for my home, but in the meantime this is really the only device I need on a timer so...

Be aware that the MAC address printed on the WeMo Insight Switch is one less than the MAC address the device uses to connect to your Wifi network. This caused me a few minutes of head scratching, wondering why the device couldnt join my network. If you have MAC address access list security enabled on your wifi network, to only permit configured/expected MAC addresses to join, and enter the MAC address printed on the back of the device... it will not be able to connect. I temporarily disabled MAC address filtering on my wifi network, and the device was then able to connect without issue. Once it had connected, I checked my wifi routers list of connected devices and discovered that the MAC address used by the unit was the printed MAC address, +1. e.g. Printed MAC Address: 94:10:3E:CF:3A:22 MAC address used by the device when connecting to my wifi network: 94:10:3E:CF:3A:23 So, if you add one to the MAC address and use this value for the access list on your wifi network, it will be able to join an access list secured network. This may be why some reviewers have had issues getting the device to work on their networks. I edited the Access List entry Id added originally for the WeMo Insight Switch, added one to the last octet, saved the updated entry, re-enabled MAC Address Access List Security, and it was able to join my network with no issues at all. The MAC address printed on the unit is only used by the device when its running its own wifi network for initial device/app configuration (you have to configure your iPhone/mobile device to connect to this temporary wifi network during setup, but once the WeMo Insight Switch is configured in the app to connect to your own home wifi network, the MAC address its uses is one higher than this. Confusing, but easily solved if youre aware of it. Once connected, its been working well. Id purchased the device because Im trying to pinpoint the main reason my monthly electricity bills are so much higher than the average for my home. Thought my garage fridge might be to blame. With the Insight Switch Im now able to exclude that (only draws an average of 75 Watts)... so the hunt continues. I think this will be very useful, and also gives me an additional smart switch for home automation once Ive located the energy hogs.