Attractive and Useful
Anyway the product works well and i used my Kill-A-Watt and it did not draw anything to the level the Kill-A-Watt would have detected the light on the toggle switch so it’s fair to say the draw won’t cost you much but I still don’t see the purpose of the light since it is not bright enough to tell it is on in daylight. Overall a good product and the price is right.
The unit is functional and is being used to power a coffee maker (Krups Model 197, Thermal-Carafe version). The coffee maker operates as normal and is running at its normal power input of 1100 watts (120V AC). Because the coffee maker uses a thermal carafe there is no hot plate so the power drawn after the coffee is made is very low but the boiler is energized for about 30 seconds every five minutes as it tests to see if any water is there to be boiled.
We set the timer for the “½ hour” selection. So after the initial 10 minutes the brewing is completed and thereafter the coffee maker goes into its test cycling. It would be expected that the timer would shut off the power to the coffee maker at the 30 minute point. Unfortunately our timer always fails to shut off at the 30 minute point but instead continues on for an additional 10 to 30 minutes (so the total timer ON time with our coffee maker connected varies randomly between 40 to 60 minutes).
Testing the unit with a much lighter load (100 watts incandescent) it works perfectly, it cuts off in 30 minutes accurate right to the second. So our Socket Power Timer works well with light loads but becomes erratic with loads over 1000 watts (but still well under the maximum rated level of 1800 watts).
Based on its specifications this product should work easily in our application. I would like to receive a replacement unit that would work properly in this application or if there is an inherent problem, receive information from Amazon as to the suitability of the product to this application.
There is a distinct advantage in using a timed socket such as this when charging devices and I honestly believe it can preserve a batteries lifetime. Plus you have the whole electricity and cost savings advantage built into it. If there was anything to improve it would be additional 8 and 12 hour timer settings. Also, some sort of on off switch would be nice. In the end they are minor gripes and I love this device.
This allows me to be confident that whether or not I remember to turn an appliance off, this socket will shut it off for me. I highly recommend this product. y average and cumulative power use, and not just “cost-per-month” and “cost-per-year.” I cannot understand why the power-use figures are not available for display, since they clearly have to be tracked and recorded in order to compute the “cost.” It’s easy enough to do the math and derive the numbers I’m looking for, but it’s silly that that step is necessary.
I guess it was trying to make this into a device to “wake up” lazy consumers, but it’s still geeky enough that it should be able to display the raw data, and the CO2 function is just somebody at stroking their ego. My electricity is generated with a shifting mix of natural gas, wind, and nuclear. At no two times during the week does a single watt of electricity create the same amount of CO2. That particular display on the outlet is going to be such a poorly educated guess that I doubt I’ll ever even look at it, and the real estate on the device and in the software could have been better spent.
It’s functional and good enough that the above gripes are certainly not a deal breaker. You won’t regret buying this, even if you’re looking for raw numbers. It just seems like they should acknowledge that control-and-information-freak nerds are using this.