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

This is a horrible product. Clearly it has not been tested for everyday use. Save yourself lots of trouble in setting it up, using it or burning up your living space and DO NOT BUY IT. The device itself is well packaged and is a good sized plug point. To use it, you put the device on a plug point, see it turn on and show green on WIFI. Then you change the wifi on your phone to the Belkin Insight Wifi and download the app. The app acts as a relay and it asks for your home wifi password. All this was okay. However within a few minutes I got really annoyed using it. After you provide your wifi connection settings, the device is activated. But the response is not instantaneous. Once I press the switch it takes ~1-5s to act on the device making it a horrible experience. After a few times hitting it on and off thinking it wasnt working, my lamp then suddenly started switching on and off as late responses! Annoying! The insight plug also gives misleading information about usage. For a single lamp it estimated after ~5mins that Id be spending $150/month for it. The usage in Watts was also incorrect for the lamp. Third, I put the plug between my stereo, lamp and PS3 and it it simply started switching green and yellow on wifi. Then after a few attempts the device started getting quite hot and would reboot continuously. I think the plug cannot be used for large voltage or units drawing high current. Now the icing on the cake: all the time the device was rebooting or trying to connect to wifi (or burning up internally!), it does not allow activity on the plug or manually controlling the relay inside it, rendering the entire plug point unusable. This is really bad design and execution. Finally, the plug itself occupies a good amount of space on a twin plug wall unit and hence if you put it on the top plug, the bottom one cannot be used. This is annoying because often the top switch can be controlled by wall switches and I would like to use it on the top plug, but it makes the bottom unusable. The app on iphone and android takes a while to update (and annoys you if you do not update firmware) and after updating gets stuck multiple times on various pages. It has minimal functionality and often takes a long time to connect to the plug when opened. The only good thing in this whole ordeal is that the shipping was pretty quick (1business day) by Amazon and returning it was equally convenient.

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.

Update! After doing some research on the web and reading through lots of forums, I found a fix that worked for me using an Airport Extreme: 1. Updated settings in AirPort Utility to WPA/WPA2 personal, rather than WPA2 personal. Waited for Airport Express to restart. 2. Verified that iPhone connected to airport network. 3. Opened WEMO app and connected to WEMO network. 4. Selected AirPort network. This time WEMO connected fine, and was able to work. 5. Followed the WEMO instructions, and it works. Still annoyed that WEMO couldnt tell me the fix, but hey Ill take it Absolute Crap! Worked well until we had to change the router, now it will not connect no matter what we do. The app will not recognize it, and I cant return it for a refund. Before you buy this, think.....do you want to waste money on technology that sucks???

I bought my Insight switch used but it was practically brand new. Accurately charts your electricity usage from ONE port. Im guessing you could connect an extension cord to it but I just use it with my main lamp that illuminates my whole room. Im currently using a Cree LED bulb and its gauging my electricity bills for the bulb at $0.16 for a whole year. Not only that, I can turn on/off my lamp with my phone and by pressing the black button on the actual switch. The WeMo app is decent, a lot of people complain that there should be additional widgets. For example, there should just be an app button that looks like a lamp on my home screen, instead of me having to open up the WeMo app, connect to internet, wait for it to load and find devices, then I need to click the power icon next to the device. Its all very time consuming and should be remedied. Comparing this to the standard WeMo switch, I prefer the Insight, but its loads more expensive. If you dont need to track the electricity usage, just get the standard switch. Its a nice feature to have, but I rarely check it. I mainly bought this so I could turn off my lights when Im in bed, and turn on the lights before I walk in the door. Performs as advertised.

I have 2 switches and then bought this when it was on sale. I like it. Put a heater on it but I made sure the amp and watt draw is within the Belkin Limits. Easy to set up just like my two switches. One thing is that it blocks another plug hole on my power strip so now I have to move things around when I want to use it. I wanted to use it with a heater but the heater has a stay off function after power loss, which is good. Ill just have to use it with a dumb fan for the summer. Im moving to a place with better cold insulation anyways. This will be useful in the summer though when I can run the fan while I sleep so I dont bake overnight.

To give you an idea of my technical expertise... I was a young Network Admin during the dark ages of Novell 3.11. For those of you confused this would be around 1994 - 1999 give or take a year or two... If you could configure Novell you could configure the Space Shuttle... and I could. Fast forward 20 years, I have a home-based Internet company - I personally built 10 gaming computers not for gaming but for business... I do things like port forward into my home network to view my security cameras and connect to an internal web-server... In other words, I know what Im doing... Now about this Belkin WeMo INSIGHT SWITCH... When I plugged it in the first thing IT DID was lock down my router without me touching ANY thing! - I was more than offended when all my PCs were instantly kicked off the web... all I could think about was losing my Router configuration, because I havent backed up the Router config file in a long time .. After rebooting everything, I resigned myself to give this setup 30 minutes of my time, because I really didnt feel like returning and reordering something else... 1hour and 30 minutes later of trouble shooting, which included multiple reboots of my router to get my PCs back online (yes you read that correctly) Android was still searching for this device... For the record my router has been rock solid for 3 years under my command... Note: no direct PC config allowed - must be done on your phone - extremely lame - but not before holding my entire network hostage yet again... the thought of throwing this thing as far back to China as possible seems tempting and worth losing the $99 refund value/hassle... Ive always had a professional hatred for all things Belkin - the company slogan should be were the Jacks of all things- and the master of NOTHING... (I think they make bicycle helmets too) but this last experience has made my love personal... In addition they expect you to connect this device that sits 2 feet away through a third party, third world web server a million cable wires miles away. Oh and the WeMo App couldnt blow worse chunks either - what I saw of it - I really didnt get that far into the configuration I do not think this plastic paper weight shipped to me broken - I think it is working exactly the way Belkin designed it to... the only thing wrong with it is the logo on the side that reads B e l k i n P.S. - Ah yes – my window to return this plastic headache ended yesterday… I guess thats part of the Belkin business strategy... If I could throw it, or launch it back to China now I would...

After a few false starts (firmware updates and resets) I got the switch finally running, When it works, it works well. I have been trying it out around the house with various devices to monitor energy usage. Some times on re-plugging it in it will not see my WiFi network and must be reset from scratch, frustrating. The unit also will NOT work with IFTTT or show up in the WeMo application (iOS) outside my home network. Period. So I cant control it remotely, while my light switches work just fine. I have tried contacting Belkin support several times, to be blunt. Its just a waste of time and an exercise in frustration. They seem to only be available by email (I tried calling only to end up in voice menu/hold/voice mail hell) and respond with useless canned scripts that dont even address the questions Ive asked. If youre a technical person and dont mind diagnosing your own issues, get one or two of these devices and decide if they are for you. If you are not technical, stick with a more traditional time type switch, Belkin support is absolutely useless. *** 01/20/14 Update *** I left my response comment to Belkin here, and did reply to the ticket email again. I have yet to receive any response from them. So much for their being eager to help. I have dropped my review down to one star because of this. Again, if youre the tinkering type and dont mind spending the money, these devices are neat, but if you require any assistance from Belkin for their use Id save my money. They do NOT stand by their products.

I use my WeMo Insight Switch to control my space heater and its also paired with my Amazon Echo. Very simple set up process, anyone over the age of 8 could probably set this up and pair it with the Echo. At $50 each, I cant afford too many of them, but the one I do have is worth the $50, in my opinion. If youre considering the regular switch verses the insight switch, Id recommend to go with the insight switch, as it gives you great detail on your energy usage and allows you to set up rules. I personally have my space heater turn off after 15 minutes (so I dont burn the house down) and since its paired with my echo, if its cold at night Ill tell Alexa to turn on the space heater and I know it turns off after 15 minutes. Only complaint I would have is the switch takes up a lot of space, which causes me to lose one outlet off the power strip. But overall this is a great product and I would buy again.

Bought this to use for my space heater in my apartment with my Amazon Echo. it works flawlessly. The wemo app is a little clunky but thats expected with Belkin. I give this four stars because there is no way to show your usage as a trend chart. It only shows your daily usage and monthly est. cost. Wish it had more features. Update (12/04/15) There is a setting inside the wemo app which allows you to have wemo email you daily weekly or monthly with a .csv file (Exel document) showing you all of your usage details (up to the last 30 days). Still leaving it at four stars since it will not show trends on the app, even though i can find the trends myself i shouldnt have to build it into the app).