Kasa Smart HS100 WiFi Smart Plug, Classic 1-Pack, White

This review is more about the provider than the Plug. Purchased this item in December 2016 shortly after obtaining my first of 3 Amazon Dots/1 Amazon Flex. Installed the KASA plug shortly after receiving it. It was a little complicated, but then AI in general was new to me. Plug has worked FLAWLESSLY. I upgraded my internet somewhere in between 2106 and now. The gentleman from the internet service helped me update the few AI devices I had at that time. All were a piece of cake for him, except the KASA plug. It took him longer to get that one updated than all the others combined. I recently upgraded my modem and router when increasing my internet speed. The provider installed the new modem/router. I upgraded all of the 12 devices I currently have as peripherals for the Alexa Dots. Absolutely NO PROBLEM with my phone, thermostat, multiple Alexa plugs, Roku, TV, etc. etc. I checked with Amazon/Alexa department if they had any information about how to update the address info on the KASA HS100 plug. Unfortunately they did not, but they did provide an telephone number for the KASA Company. After being disconnected three times following long hold sessions to reach an a representative, I finally was on the phone with someone at KASA. Explained my need for instructions to reconnect the plug so it could be recognized by Alexa. After being given multiple. serially changing directions, 49 minutes on the floor under my desk in order to have plug within less than 1 of the modem, the plug was still not connected. The representative said that since I seemed to be confused he was going to send me an e-mail with written instructions. I asked two questions: If I couldnt follow directions with an expert talking me through the procedure, was it likely I could follow written ones? He ignored that question. I also asked more than once; how, since at no time during your fluid directions did we do ANYTHING that included providing the plug with my new wifi name/password, could we expect this to be a successful effort; which surprisingly he ignored every time I asked. I had successfully added a KASA app on my phone and opened what appeared to be a new KASA account during this time; neither of which helped with my problem. The second sentence of the e-mailed directions told me (without any directions as to how to do so) to create a cloud account. I have successfully avoided having a cloud account for years and years and alas thus didnt have a clue, nor understand the need since the plug has worked for years without the presence of one. I called back to the KASA Company and received a new representative who from direction #1 gave me an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SET OF DIRECTIONS THROUGH THE ENSUING 50 more minutes under my desk. (Did I mention Ill be 79 next month?). One of the directions the 2nd fellow gave me this time was to enter the new WIFI name/password into the plugs memory. Hallelujah! I was optimistic. He also had me touching, pushing, holding etc entirely different parts of the plug this time. Another hopeful indication. He then told me we had added the plug to the KASA list. But what about Amazons list I asked. Not necessary he replied. I asked him to please give me 3 more minutes of his time while I toted the newly updated plug to the room where it was going to be used to see if it would communicate with Alexa. He said we didnt need to do that. It was added to KASA and it was going to work and could he help me in any other way. I am thinking I dont need to tell you that Alexa still could not recognize a link to a foyer lamp, though she dutifully kept asking me did I mean couch light. I quickly received an e-mail Survey regarding my satisfaction. I responded pretty much as above. One question was do I still need to be contacted. YES was the reply. Today I received another e-mail asking why I had not replied to the first one and was I satisfied. They did not receive my Survey response and apparently cant receive my response from today either. They wont let you respond via your regular e-mail, they provided an alternate system which obviously I also havent mastered. Ive only worked at a job for 23 years using a computer 12 hours a day for anywhere from 4-7 days a week. And I have used a home computer, sometimes two at a time, for 39 years more days than I probably should have. So it is understandable I suppose that I dont have a Degree in technology, and apparently only have a passing ability to follow directions that even a child would recognize as not going to be successful as provided. I am going to send the KASA Plug back to the company and buy yet another Alexa plug. To get them connected and working you need about 5 minutes tops and NO PHD in Technology. I recommend if you need workable, easy to use, understand, set up, and connect plugs to for Alexa to communicate with you START from Day 1 with only ALEXA Plugs. I have multiple ones connected to multiple items around my home and they NEVER fail and when you update you ALEXA WIFI information, it covers all your specific devices, all your plugs, etc. Separate items like Roku boxes, speakers, TV, etc are pretty easy on their own. Please save your self much grief, aggravation, and possibly a near serious brush with a stroke and buy ONLY ALEXA plugs. Alexa will appreciate you and so will your blood pressure.

I purchased the Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug (not the mini) to power a hot water recirculating pump in my basement. I received it in one day with Amazon Prime in a very sturdy box. The Kasa smart plug came with a quick start guide card with very clear, straightforward instructions. I downloaded the Kasa iPhone app (which has outstanding reviews) and I set up the smart plug in my office only a few feet away from my Verizon 2.4 GHz router. The app walks you thought the set-up process quickly and without a hitch. During set-up you will name the smart plug for future identification. I used a night light plugged into the smart plug to test it out. There is a button in the app that you touch to turn the smart plug on or off and it worked the first time. Then I moved the smart plug to the basement where I was going to use it. The new location was one level down and approximately 50 feet away from the router. After plugging in the smart plug into the basement outlet, the smart plug blinked several time and then turned green and worked the first time. Next, I launched my Google Home app on my iPhone. In the upper left hand corner of the home page there are three horizontal lines. Tapping those lines bring up a menu. Tap on the Devices in the menu and follow the directions to add a new device. Google Home identifies this smart plug as TP-Link Kasa so scroll down until you see this device. Once set-up I simply said Hey Google turn on <smart plug name given during set-up> Google Home turned on the smart plug and confirmed that it was turned on. There are other nice features on the TP-link app that allows you to set-up a schedule for on-off and a timer that will turn off the smart plug after the count down. So far, I am extremely happy with my new smart plug on my first day of use. Should anything change, I will update my review.

Works as advertised. Set up was easy and painless. Usage is pretty straightforward. I do like that I can use Google Assistant with it, too. Being able to tell Google Assistant to turn on the porch/garage light without having to touch my phone as I drive up to the house or to say turn everything off when going to bed is super convenient. That said, I do have a few gripes: 1. The plug is rather large and will block the other outlet in a duplex outlet. I guess the solution is to get the (slightly_more_expensive) mini version of this. 2. These can only be controlled via mobile app. A desktop app or browser plugin would be great. 3. (Android) The app widget takes up a 4x2 space and contains 4 *scenes. While you can resize the widget to be bigger (as big as the screen, if you wish), theres really no point because it doesnt add more scenes despite the extra space. Its limited to 4. No more, no less. This makes no sense. For me, I only really need one scene and currently theres no way to make the widget smaller with less than 4 scenes. 4. Scenes cannot enable an auto-timer (or, for smart bulbs, do complex behaviors such as scrolling through bulb colors. A sleep timer that ends with a gradual dimming would be amazing). You also cannot schedule scenes, if you want scheduling, you need to do it for each plug/bulb individually. Gripes aside, Im actually very pleased with the line of TP-Links smart products. I just hope Ill see issues 2-4 mentioned above resolved in a future update. *Scenes are programmable switches that can turn on/off TP-Link Smart Plugs and/or TP-Link Smart Bulbs for particular situations. For example, if you come home at night, you can have a scene to turn on your garage and patio lights, dim the lights (eg: 15%) for watching a movie, or just turn everything off when you go to bed. You can do any combination of plugs or bulbs. Scenes for smart plugs are limited to on/off actions only. Scenes for smart bulbs can do on/off and brightness level/color temp/color (depending on your bulb model).

OK, my error in not reading the reviews before I ordered this. I needed another DOT and fell the the promotion to purchase a smart plug at the same time for $35. Since the Dot is $30, the plug was only $5 so I thought I would give it a try. Bad move. If you are thinking on purchasing any TP LInk product check out their forums page first and you will see frustrated people trying to get this thing to work on their network. Since I cant post the forum link directly, try searching for tp-link forum and you should find it. Ive tried restarting the setup process several times, clearing things, changing settings, etc. and nothing seems to make this plug work on my network. You must enable remote control for the device in order for Alexa to recognize the plug. The problem is, I cannot turn on the remote control setting. The app keeps telling me the plug has no internet connection. The problem seems to be getting the smart plug to work with my router. I see several messages about people buying a new router to get this plug to work properly. Then I see instructions for fooling around with router settings etc. etc. etc. Im not about to purchase a new router because this device cannot work properly with the one I have (only a couple of years old). Ill probably not return this as it does work with the phone app, but that is not what I wanted (I wanted it to work with Alexa). At this point I am completely turned off on these smart plugs. Ill do some searching to see if there are other devices that work properly, but you would think that something that is marketed by Amazon as working with Alexa would actually work but I guess not. UPDATE OK, I opened the package at 11 am this morning. It is now 7:45 pm and I just got this device to work with Alexa. I figure I have spent at least 5 hours searching for the solution, which I found on the forum website. Maybe you will have better luck with the setup of this so-called smart plug but dont count on it. The problem is definitely related to the router that is in use. If you have the wrong one, then you are going to have problems. Because of the setup issues I still leave the rating as 1 star. UPDATE 2 days later OK, I would now give this device minus 5 stars as it stopped working with Alexa today and back to the old problem. No new equipment installed, I havent changed any settings on Alexa, Router or the device. It just decided to give up on its own. UPDATE 12 days later I pretty much gave up getting Alexa to control this device. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didnt. The problem is, Alexa would frequently not tell you if it was successful or not when asking to turn off the plug. I wanted the plug to control my stereo so I wouldnt have to turn it off manually. It got to the point where I had to go check to see if it turned off. Now, what good is that? As I stated before, it works fine with my phone but having Alexa CONSISTENTLY control this device is impossible as it keeps loosing its integration with Alexa. I did receive a nice email from Amazon with suggestions on how to set it up. Of course, I have already gone through those procedures too many times to bother trying them again. These devices remind me of the bad old days when trying to setup a PC. Seems that companies continue to make the same errors over and over again.

This review is for an item I just received. The setup is straightforward, TP-Link include a small card that takes you through the basics of setting up the switch on your home network. It took a lot longer to move the couch and physically install the switch than it did to do the network setup. To setup the device you do need a smart phone or tablet to instal the KASA app. Not sure why they call it KASA. The KASA app searches for devices and runs through the setup onto your WIFi. I checked for new Firmware using the KASA app but it the unit I received was up to date. Wemo devices need updating frequently, maybe TP-Link have simply got this right. Alexa integration worked first time without issues and has been solid since. TP-Link instructions on the web have you use the Alexa app on your phone to detect the devices, you can in fact do this by voice command by saying, Alexa, discover devices, wish the instructions had incuded the voice command. I attached two living room lamps to this one smart switch and it works fine. Using a smart switch without the need for a hub is a much simpler and cheaper way to control lamps than getting smart bulbs plus a hub. I was successful in controlling the switch away from home using my phone, but I found it doesnt work consistently like it does when at home. Id occasionally get a could not connect message. Waiting 10 seconds or so resolved the issue. It is possible to establish scheduled on/off events for each of your switches at different times of day and days of the week. It has an away Mode but this was kinda useless. You can say you will be away from 9am to 6pm for instance and schedules are modified, however much more useful would be an away mode over multiple days for when you are away on vacation. I was surprised that managing your switches cannot be done on the web. The Phone app works fine, but the limited screen size limits how much they can get on the scree at once. Id like the ability to manage the switch(s) from a web page. The Amazon Echo has both app and web page control, TP-Link need to do the same.

I have three of these HS100 smart plugs and the first two worked fine for turning on/off lights at night, holiday lights and such. They are relatively easy to set up and work with Alexa devices (after additional set up). A minor issue is that they are quite large and can take up a lot of space on an outlet. You can really only plug them into one of the outlets or they will end up blocking both. A bigger issue is with the third plug I purchased. It set-up fine but it will not stop supplying power. It appears to work fine (power light goes on and off either by button on plug or using the app) but even with the power light out it continues to supply power. Based on some online research, this appears to be due to a bad relay switch that is stuck in the closed position. I did not pull this out of the box until I was already passed the Amazon return window so I am dealing with the manufacturer. They responded to my issue by email in a timely manner but gave me a list of so many troubleshooting items and information required (most of which is written in micro-text on the plug) that I can see getting a replacement is going to be quite a pain. I think this is a decent product when it works but it should not be that difficult to quality control for something like this. Luckily it was a great deal on Prime Day so I guess I am not out of too large an investment.

April 3 Update. Seldom do I give up. So, after I wrote this review I: - deleted the Kasa App - reset each of my three Smart Plugs to Factory - power on reset of my iphone (6s) - install Kasa App - set up each smart plug per guided instructions - power on reset my iphone And...yes. The Away function works for all three plugs now! The sunrise/sunset still doesnt but thats a documented item so it is a just a bit of discord in the documentation. I can also say that the Away function actually is working, lights are off and on in a good way. Upping a Star. These plugs come beautifully and wastefully packaged. They are very well made, and as attractive as a largish power plug can be. They do hog up outlet space, you can squeeze a three prong grounded plug into the open outlet, but it is right against the Smart Plugs bottom. The LED indicator lights are a nice, visible green but dont light up an entire room at night, good! Installation is easy, the Kasa app walks you thru the process and it worked fine for all three of the plugs I purchased. For me, there was an uncomfortable amount of time from when the installation was complete until the app came back and said things where ready to use, and the first time I tried to cycle each outlet, no communication. After that, immediate on and offs upon command. So good! Integration with the Amazon Echo is easy, and it works reliably and quickly. I named my Smart Plugs Lamp, Lamp 1, Lamp 2 and Alexa wouldnt cycle the plugs with those names, so I changed the names to simpler ones and it now works perfectly. OK, beyond that. The scheduled times, and the countdown timers work fine and are nice features. However, the Away function only starts on one of the plugs. Two of the plugs wont start Away, rather they say unknown error. I deleted and reinstalled the Kasa app, I reset and reinstalled the plugs, same issue. It seems like the Kasa app wont support multiple Away settings on a single account? Other issue: there are instructions online to set up the Away function from Sunset to Sunrise, which would be a nice feature but it also does not work as the Away feature needs to be in the same day...you cant go dusk to dawn with the random Away function. Overall, a good product. It is newer and TP-Link is a good company, so I expect a few software upgrades and theyll work out the issues Ive found so far. I would like to see TP-Link work with Amazon on Frustration Free eco-friendly packaging, really no reason to have as much plastic and paperboard go into protecting this product.

UPDATE: Because I liked the Smart Plug so much, I decided to buy the smaller TP-Link Smart Plug Mini and love it even more. The mini works just like the standard sized Smart Plug and uses the same app, but the smaller size allows you to access both of your outlet plugs without it blocking anything. You can plug in two Smart Plug Minis into the same outlet! Although its a little more pricey, its well worth the cost. The TP-Link Smart Plug: so good that I ordered a second unit a day later. After receiving an Echo Dot for Christmas, the family and I have been enjoying the many perks Alexa has - voice commanded music, daily weather and news updates, sport score updates, timers that could be set that didnt require me to wash my food prep messy hands...the list goes on. I was fortunate enough to get one Alexa enabled light bulb as a gift as well, but really didnt want to buy more bulbs since I knew once the bulb burned out that it was done. Enter the TP-Link Plug. This unit makes any three pronged outlet one that is Alexa enabled. Anything that can be plugged in can be used with this outlet, but must be able to stay in the on position. For those with newer televisions that will receive power, but not actually turn on when initially plugged in, this wont work for you. This also applies to coffee makers, toaster ovens, and so forth that require you to actually turn it on and cannot stay in a perpetual on position. I used my TP-Link as a switch for a lamp thats in a difficult to access corner of my house. Once the lamp was switched in the on position, it would go on and off depending on whether I commanded Alexa to turn the outlet on or off. In addition to being Alexa enabled, this switch can also be remotely controlled by your cell phone/tablet using the Kasa app. This is really useful when working late - I can turn on my lights on the drive home from work so my house wont be dark when I walk inside. This app also enables me to set my lights on using away timers while Im on vacation. For those who have multiple TP-Link products, you can make customized settings for turning on/off devices in the morning, the evening, for movie nights, and so forth. You can set schedules, on/off timer, and see how long youve left your devices plugged in and running. Installation takes less than five minutes - simply plug the unit in, download and install the Kasa App, then follow the directions on the app to connect to your wifi. Overall, this is a cost effective and clever unit to use if youre looking to control your electric and electronic devices from afar, whether using Alexa or your phone.

The TP-Link is a nifty device once you get it up and running. I bought it specifically to start using with the Amazon Echo Dot 2nd gen with Alexa. The directions in the box are very simple but not as obvious as they should be with the two important points below. Before I go any further, this device will only work with the 2.4ghz wi-fi signal. It is very important for you to know your current equipment, that would have saved me a lot of frustration. It turns out my AT&T router will emit 2.4 or 5ghz, not both at the same time. After talking with an agent things improved rather quickly. One other important note, when you are trying to connect your phone via the Kasa app, you need to be within 3 feet, 2 is even better. Again, would have been nice to know upfront. If I had known those tidbits upfront, my total time to connect to my phone and using it with the Kasa app, 5 minutes tops. Connecting and voice controlling with Alexa, another 5 minutes tops. I am physically disabled and must admit, I am very thrilled to be independently controlling device. Not knowing how well the TP-Llink would work, I only purchased one at $22 vs regularly $45+. I am regretting that decision now. If it holds up well over time, this will be the first of many more to come. If it was clearer prior to purchasing it about only operating on 2.4ghz and a 2-foot range from my phone during the initial setup, I would have given it a 5 star. After all, I do really like it and it works great with the Amazon Dot 2nd gen with Alexa. It shouldnt be left out, that the Kasa app on the phone has plenty of options for those not interested in voice control. If over time things change, youll be the second to know.

Works as intended which is always a good thing. The only negative Ive found is that once you connect it to one device it and decide to use it with something else it does not want to connect with it. That is a problem. If you leave the same device connected all the time it should work great.