Kasa Smart Plug Power Strip HS300, Surge Protector with 6 Individually Controlled Smart Outlets and 3 USB Ports, Works with Alexa & Google Home, No Hub Required , White

I love, love, LOVE this Kasa Smart Plug Power Strip. Im one who tends too keep their mobile phone plugged up into the charger anytime Im home. Studies prove that doing this leads too the battery loosing the ability to hold a full charge in a shortened period of time. So Ive purchased this power strip specifically for my home office, and have attached several important items too each of the six plugs. 1. Charging plug for my iPhone 8. 2. Cordless Panasonic Link to Cell handset. 3. Paper Shredder. 4. Portable Bluetooth speaker. 5. Electric Bug Zapper. 6. Charging plug for my Logitec H600 Headset. Configured everything very easily using the Kasa app for iOS. Assigned an appropriate name for each device plugged into a designated smart outlet on the strip (Outlet 1 - 6.) 1. iPhone 2. 2nd phone (Already have cordless phone 1 plugged up in living room) 3. Shredder 4. Bluetooth Speaker 5. Zapper 6. Headset Next I linked my TP-Link Kasa account after activating the Kasa Alexa skill on Amazon.com. Did this so I could turn On/Off each individual plug/device using Alexa and the many Echo dots/plus/Studio devices I have positioned all over the house. Then I proceeded too set daily on/off schedules for when I wanted devices like my iPhone, 2nd phone and headset too be recharged during the day/night. This was so easy to do using the Kasa app installed on my iPhone. Thats it. Nothing else needed too be done. Now I have a system in place that keeps my portable devices fully charged whenever I use them (Without compromising battery life.) I can also say Alexa, Turn on Zapper when Im covertly bitten by a blood thirsty mosquito. Love catching the little buggers off guard and hearing that beautiful Pop sound when they land on it. Then I say Alexa, Turn Zapper Off once their gone! I owe it all too this Kasa Smart Plug Power Strip. Have now made my entire automated home system centered around Kasa Smart Plugs.

I have 2 HS300s that I bought about a month ago. I like the build quality, the ease of setup, and Alexa integration. However, I am having problems with each plug’s energy consumption reporting. For example, I have 2 27 inch LED monitors plugged into 1 of my HS300s. One plug is currently reporting Current Power of 4027 Watts while the other monitor is reporting Current Power of 6504 Watts (see picture). I would expect each monitor to be using less than 30 Watts. Ive tested this on other devices as well. It seems that the HS300 is reporting 100 times the wattage that it should be. I then spent an hour with tech support before they confirmed that there was a bug, that there was a patch available to fix the bug, and provided me with a private link to the patch which I did not install. Im curious if anybody else has had this issue. My hardware Version is 2.8. 10/30/21: I changed from 3 stars to 2 stars since Kasa still hasnt publicly posted their firmware fix. 10/30/21: Firmware fix is posted. Broken firmware is 1.0.3. Firmware fix is 1.0.11. Seems to be working. Changing from 2 stars to 4 stars

***another update 3/1/22 Red circle of doom twice a week. This started after the last firmware update for me. The thing was running about as well as stated in previous comments. The strip is now losing connection to network, but no matter how many soft resets you try it doesnt respond. Also if you try resetting and re-adding to network, you cant connect to the strips wifi. It seems to me like the wifi module in this strip is dying or the firmware is causing it to hard lock. I fully regret buying these.*** Well, it is pretty beefy in person. It lights up nicely but its basically just dots, like the old days when you had switches that glowed when you flipped them... It could be better if you could tell which outlet was lit easier, like make the dots numbers instead... 1-6 that would be useful. Yeah yeah, I know im supposed to be staring at my phone all day... But nah. I want to set it up, bark at alexa and be able to quickly verify the voice in a box didnt screw up after saying okay. The power monitoring (whole reason I bought this overpriced power strip) is lacking. Really I expected to be able to monitor the whole strip, groups of outlets, and be able to override the auto shutdown of an outlet below certain currents. Basically all you can do is check each individual usage, one at a time, and making groups just lets you switch multiple outlets as a single name. Which frankly, I can already do in Alexa app. So that was a dud. This gets a 3 because I paid through the nose for a powerstrip that does basic power monitoring. I could have just bought one monitoring outlet and plugged my old strip into it. So this really needed to do more for the huge price premium. It does not. If you want to plug in stuff and give individual outlets names to be controlled remotely, this is probably for you. If you wanted to check on power usage of your entertainment center (for example) both total power and individual consumption, then this is not the strip you are looking for... ***Update to drop to 1star *** Wow, it is total junk. Ive only had it a few days. It basically hard locks. Refuses to respond to the app. Forcing a factory reset... Not even the soft reset works. Wow! It wipes out your settings and data from power monitoring. What is the point of this then? To make it worse, it randomly shuts off and restarts itself. I have voice control disabled so its not like Alexa misinterpreted a sneeze as shut off strip Im supposed to trust it even clamps at the supposed joule rating? This thing is going back, I havent been this P/Od at a purchase in ages. Edit* after getting replacement: I was convinced something was wrong with the strip I had. No way could my experience be the expected performance of the thing. So I tried swapping it out. The experience has been better, still almost everything I said in the original post applies. The resetting and locking up, losing data etc is much better. Sure once in a while I have to reboot a router because the whole KASA line of products in my house suddenly drop, Smartthings and Blink and others were still fine. Aside from that it performs about on par with a not so overpriced power strip. Bottom line, back to 3*s. It isnt all that usefull. I am holding out hoping TPlink updates the software to offer better monitoring. Maybe then a higher rating is justified.

It’s a well made and functioning unit. Works great for controlling my non-essential aquarium equipment through Alexa. My only wish is that it could reliably keep time and maintain schedules through a power outage. In the event of an outage, it will return to schedule when power is restored but only if it can reconnect to the internet. And I personally have experienced outages where the internet would not come back on. On the bright side though, it can maintain schedules through internet loss provided the power stays on, but only schedules in the Kasa app, not Alexa routines sadly.

I want to say five... I want to say five!!! I really do! I just cant!! Why not? Because even though I have a dedicated 2.4 ghz network *specifically* set up for my smart home devices (better penetration, less noise than the computers and streaming devices pounding the 5ghz networks) this thing insists on disconnecting two or three times a month! Ok, I admit this I have three and the other two work really well, and this one is not exactly near the base station, so I get that the signal may drop once in a while. The issue is when it does, it doesnt ever reconnect!!! I have to physically unplug it/kill the power, and when it comes back up, it happily reconnects to the network. Why they cant say Hey... .we dropped. Lets automatically try to reconnect! is beyond me, but it is soooo infuriating because it controls my computers external monitors and my KVM so when I kill the power, my desktop goes berserk and needs to all be power-cycled itself. Its so bad I had to install a wired-remote-plug so I could just hit a button switch to kill the power to the strip and reconnect it without having to get out of my chair and climb behind my desk yet again. But its so nice looking, with pleasing colors and a great app and great features! I wanted to give it five stars... I really did! But that damn reconnect issue is just too much. So much so I even considered marking this as a three-star. The only reason I didnt is again, I have three of these and the other two work flawlessly (although they are closer to the router.) Fix the reconnect issue and Ill happily put this back to five. I dont mind it going offline every now and then for a minute or two. I mind that it completely disrupts my work flow when it happens, and the only way to fix it is with the hammer of killing all power, not a screwdriver. So close to being great, but not quite. Cmon TP Link... you can fix this with a firmware upgrade! Just make it automatically try to reconnect!!!

Initially connecting it was seamless and serves its purpose. The major design flaw is that when plugged in the direction the plug is oriented it faces backwards/upside down. Very strange design flaw I did not see mentioned by many.

This is fin great! Having multiple things on different schedules turning on and off makes life so much easier! Highly recommend!

I dont use it for any smart home controls, just for electricity usage monitoring. Great for very low wattage monitoring, like standby mode.

GOOD: Its got screw holes for mounting in the back! I find this to be a much more preferable and reliable alternative to using mounting tape. Its got gigantic plug faces! Yay! But they face sideways instead of normal, to better handle certain types of plugs. This might be good or bad for you (more on this a little further in) Energy monitoring! A hugely useful feature, since none of my other plugs have this. THE BAD: This probably (hopefully) doesnt apply to most people, but unfortunately for me, I actually one type of plug that was designed to be sideways in a regular plug face, the result now being that particular plug now only fits into the bottom outlet, and also blocks access to all but one of the USB ports. Ouch! Just the way my hardware dice has rolled, it seems. I do feel like the USB ports could be placed somewhere to avoid being potentially blocked, though. THE UGLY: Even when I set the Status LED to off, that doesnt completely turn off all the lights on the strip. So to keep it from lighting the entire room if youre trying to sleep or watch a movie, the only option is to create some physical block for the light. Ive put a couple layers of paper over mine, so I can still see the light, but at a much more dimmed brightness that doesnt annoy me.

I recently discovered Kasa (TP-Link) products and am a believer in smart home monitoring. I have plugs, outlets and now experienced this power strip. Everything was pretty straight-forward, easy to install and manage. I have yet to run into buggy installation for any of their products and the app (iOS) interface is an above average experience. Everything about this HS300 product is great except for one thing: the power cord is a good 12-18 inches shorter than it should be. My desk is positioned a reasonable amount of distance away from the wall where the power outlet is and the power strip just does not reach. See picture comparing my existing (and superb) Isotel Ultra and desk position. If Kasa were to simply add some more cord length, then they have a winner (for my use case, yours might be different). I dont think the cord length issue should drop this product rating to 3 stars even though I had to return the unit; everything else worked.