hello Iam Wanderer001 and this is my review of the Kasa smart light switch or
HS 200 and while I will admit this is not the most elegant of setups that I've
done for a review sadly it is a light switch it goes in a wall the light
switch is already in the wall that makes this a little trickier to do and
lighting situations being what they are this is what we have because this
particular light switch is in my basement
I wanted a smart connected light switch so that I could make sure that my
workshop area was off or on depending on what I need it now
wanted connected one well because obviously if I'm forgetful and don't
turn my light switch off well I can turn that off using a voice command because
this is compatible with both echo devices as well as Google which lets you
not have to worry if this is on or off you because you can add it to your
routines and have it shut off at night if you needed to now I will set set up
of this little trickier than I had anticipated only because this requires a
neutral wire and I pretty much had the old light out of the wall and notice
that well it did not have a neutral wire so I had to bring in a electrician in
order to actually put this in here which also means that sadly parts of my box
and information are gone as well I wasn't around when they put it in sadly
such as the life of a youtuber that actually has a nine-to-five job what I
can say is after the electrician put it in the setup process was not terrible at
all so let me show you what that looks like right now
setup of casa tp-link smart switch so could not do the actual installation
myself so this is after the guy came through and did the wiring that I needed
not quite even but you can see there it's flashing green and red for the
Wi-Fi signal as well as that might be a little tricky to see maybe my shadow it
that indicates that it is currently off clicking it turns it on so it gives you
a little kind of area to click but that is not what this is about this is setup
so we come over here open up our Kasa app and we're going to
try and do this around the camera so we're going to add a device and then we
tell it what we're looking for so we have a Smart Switch we have what they're
classifying as Kasas Kasa smarts which h2 HS 200 which is a single so this is
not a 3-way and this is not a one with a dimmer so we're gonna say this one have
you already installed your Smart Switch we're gonna say yes we have because we
have after it's saying it's blinking and it is blinking so we're gonna move on to
the next step so what it's doing now is it's trying to connect now I will say
that there was a Wi-Fi network that this was signalling out so right now all
right so it's asking us to choose the network we are going to say the one I do
for my a ot IOT devices and we're just going to join and we're gonna let this
do what it needs to do the Wi-Fi indicator is blinking rapidly now so I'm
hoping that means it's connecting oh yeah there we go it's switching over so
what it did is it probably went on that Wi-Fi network that it was transmitting
and then bounced me back and it wants me to name my device so we're gonna cheat
and we're gonna use our voice workshop and we named it and we're gonna move on
and I can select an icon if I want I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do for
this one we can always come back and do this later so we're gonna leave it at
that switch one and we're gonna hit save and
keep moving on congratulations it's good to go all right sounds good so let's
make sure we can ah there's a firmware so we will upgrade that and then double
check to make sure that it will work from the app all right our firmware
firmware rolled through so we're going to hit done and then we're gonna find
all right down there it's our workshops which the app won't let me get
down to it but I can turn it on and off from the app so again not terrible at
all this set up after its installed I will say it does come in a few pieces
first being is this front plate here which covers your actual switch now
there's a MAC address there which is why that's taped over underneath here you
have your reset and restart if we can get in there a little closer reset and
restart buttons which are covered by the faceplate now I will say because this is
a much chunkier light switch like the actual backing of it takes up a lot more
space the outlet that was here originally was housed in a plastic which
is why I couldn't have a ground wire housing they used a metal housing in
order to add the ground wire but they chose a smaller one so you can kind of
see all of this empty space here which also means that this sticks out from the
wall a little more than I would like when I have the plate cover on it which
it sticks out from the wall which is why you're getting this shadow around here
that's really my only complaint if I had a deeper place for them to put this it
would not have been so much of a problem I will say it was a little odd for me at
first you would think that this is a toggle switch well it's a toggle switch
that you always just push it down you don't have an actual push up here so
you've never have to worry about oh did I leave it up and then I come along and
if I use the voice assistant well the up now becomes deaf you don't
have to worry about that it's just to click on and off you will also notice
that when the lights are off a little indicator light there that lets you know
where to click in the setup you also saw that there was a Wi-Fi indicator there
so there's a lot built into the switch itself to make this easier now aside
from the voice assistant and the switch itself the other way that you're going
to interact what this is through the app and this
uses the Kasa app so let's take a look at the Kasa app right now this is the
main area when you first log in you'll notice I have several different devices
on here I have a smart light bulb I have a lot of smart plugs and right down here
at the bottom is my smart switch now the problem I have right now is because I
have so many the the app itself does not seem to be able to recognize fully
whatever's at the bottom before this was this TV switch but now it's it's the
workshop so you can very carefully turn it on and off from here however if you
attach this to either your echo or your Google home you can use the voice
actuation and I'll take care of that but to look at the options we have for the
switch itself from here big power button turn it on turn it off and you see that
nice little animation in the background you also notice get a little color on
that plug letting you know it's on and off you also have down here suffer
options several options first being scheduled coming up and pressing the
plus sign will allow you to add a schedule so this will allow you to set a
time set the status for turn this on or off at this time and then you could say
what day of the week hit save and that will create a schedule we're not going
to do that timers just that after the switch is turned on 30 minutes or turned
off 30 minutes start so what that does is after 30 minutes it will turn off or
after 30 minutes turn on and these are all adjustable as needed away mode well
you set a start time and an end time and what day of the week and what that will
do is it will mirror you being home during those times so your light will
turn on and off like you were home run time just that it shows run time per day
run time in the past seven days and run time in the past 30 days now for me this
isn't a terribly used area in my house it's the workshop I don't really go in
there except because my dryer is in there for some reason
so unless I'm doing laundry I'm not down in that area so I'm not gonna have
runtimes on this you also have the settings option right up here and from
here you can change the name and icon so if we wanted we can come here and we can
pick an icon we can pick a picture to represent that from our photo album or
we can take a picture using the camera and we just save that or we've got a
plethora of choices here also we can change the name but we're gonna go back
because we're not making any changes device info just that all the
information you might need on your device and then you can remove the
device if you so want it now that's pretty much what you can do just for the
switch itself now there is a lot that you can do on this main area and I have
discussed this several times before but I will go over this quickly because well
you might just be looking at this light switch and not any of the other videos
that I've done so up at the top you have your listings of all of your items here
if you had cameras it would be listed
here I do not scenes so this is kind of like
the scene that you can set up with your echo or Google home where it's goodnight
and certain actions happen based on you either saying something clicking this
button or using the audio cue this area has changed quite a bit this is now
actions this used to be like a Smart Hub thing so this is kind of if you've got
several things that can work together you can set up actions so if a light
switch is turned on a camera will also turn on or if a camera senses motion a
light switch will turn on sadly with what I have you don't really get much
use out of this area but you would come down here and add action so we would say
motion sensing control switch scheduled scene or auto timer so if we were just
scheduled scene we would click on that please select a scene in this case I
only have the one scene which is goodnight and I hit save and then select
a time and I can select a time that that would run now again based on the way
that I use my plugs and smart switches this area would not be as useful but
perhaps for you it would be so again control with a switch you can come in
here that's the only switch I have we save select a device or group now here
you can select device or group that would be controlled
by that switch so again might be more pertinent to you but not as far not as
useful for my situation events well activities sorry I really don't have any
activities because well those are based off of smart actions and scenes now the
last bit that I want to talk about is over here the hamburger button clicking
on that will allow you to access settings and some other information and
private email which I don't want to blur out so clicking on that is important
because settings is where you come to update your firmware your firmware for
these devices does not automatically just update itself so periodically once
a month I generally come into the settings and let it search for all of my
devices to see if there's any firmware updates if you've got no firmware
updates you're good to go but that has been a look at the Kasa app
for your tp-link smart wall switch so surprisingly you can do quite a bit
through the Kasa app for just the light switch keep in mind if you are attaching
this to your voice assistance you do have to use the Kasa skill for both
Google and Amazon it does also work with IFTTT this light switch much like all
the other smart devices is a 2.4 gigahertz meaning longer range I wanna
say less speed but it doesn't need as much speed as the 5 gigahertz and 5
gigahertz just would not reach to this portion of my house easily there's just
too much for it to have to go through it does not require hub which is one of the
beauty things of this but it's also a tick against it the more smart things
that you have that don't require hub mean it's just another thing on your
Wi-Fi network so eventually you could have too many things on your Wi-Fi
network I have not run into that instance it and you've seen again link
over there somewhere to the smart home stuff that I've had I have not run into
a problem as of yet one of the things that I have not seen and tested myself
because I wanted to know what happens when the power is lost well if the power
is lost and this is in the off position meaning the lights are off when the
powers are stored the lights will be off if the light is on
and power is lost and then restored the light will be on so in some ways good
because well if you're walking around and the lights are on and the power goes
off and then comes back on lights on works for you however if it's three
o'clock in the morning the lights gonna come on so just keep that in mind now
testing reconnect ivities problematic because if there's total power loss
because you're not going to be pulling this out of the wall and putting it
somewhere else so testing its Reconnective speed little trickier I
will say that pretty much as soon as my Wi-Fi network was reestablished this was
back on the network closing thoughts light switch over smart switch well this
was kind of necessary because it controls overhead like so it was
something I needed is it worth smartening up a light switch using the
Kasa smart light switch HS 200 in my opinion yes if you're just looking to be
able to turn on a bank of lights and you want to be able to use a voice assistant
or an app then this is the way to go it doesn't monitor any energy usage it
just it turns your light switch on and off and you can now use your voice or an
app for the price of between 25 and 30 dollars it's up to you if that
convenience is worth that price tag for me I've been sitting on this for a while
mainly because I was going to use it in my kitchen in my condo to turn on and
off the kitchen light which I could see from my living room when my wife left it
on and I wanted to turn it off to save power so if you want to do that I would
highly recommend checking out the Kasa HS 200 smart light switch
I haven't Wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please
feel free to leave them in the area below and as always thanks for watching