hello I am Wanderer001 and this is my review of the Wyze smart plug from
Wyze labs not just Wyze cams anymore I felt it almost necessary to review the
Wyze plug mainly because well back in July Home Depot
didn't oopsy and release some specifications about the plug early and
I did a video of it because I happened to be around and saw it so that's over
there not pertinent anymore but I felt I felt compelled to do a review so I
actually ordered this before it was readily available to the public so I did
early backing which got me a sticker saying that I was a early backer of the
plug but realistically plugs are where I got my start in smart home and smart
automation so new plug comes up I want to check it out so what you're looking
at is a plug that is 2.7 inches long with a ave height of one and a half inch
and a depth of one inch now I will say in that video over there when it was
leaked I compared this to the Amazon smart plug because well the form factor
looks very much like it however here is the Amazon smart plug here is the Wyze
plug while the form factor is very similar here's the thing the Wyze plug
is much smaller it's it's in every dimension it is smaller than your Amazon
plug here's the other thing and I'm gonna start this review off with saying
this the price for this is $15 as compared to every other smart plug
that's on the market right now that is the price to beat but here's the other
thing you get two Wyze plugs for that price now I have one kind of set up in
my bedroom so I don't have both to show you right now but you get two for $15
that's a very hard price to be so the device itself the front you really it's
nothing yeah you have your wise logo you've got an LED status light there
it's all matte finish top is also matte there's nothing on this side there's a
singular button on this side to turn the device on and all
now if you have seen any of my other reviews for smart plugs as a long
playlist over there you'll know that my preferred smart plug right now is the
tp-link mini this is a close second I'm gonna say the placement of the button on
this being on the side means that well if you put it in a hard-to-reach place
it might be tricky to actuate back again nothing really to look at maximum
voltage for this is 15 amps they they did stress that so 15 amp now price is
one thing but the other thing that helps gauge a smart plug or smart device is
how easy it is to set up so let's take a look at that setup of Wyze plug first we
open the Wyze app come up to three dots in the corner and we select app product
next we select plug and here it says make sure you're on 2.4 gigahertz and
then insert your wise plug in to power and then push the on button and so you
get an LED light we're going to put it in and see if the LED light comes on
without actually having to turn or press the Wyze power button and there we got a
blinking light so we did not actually have to press the button which is good
so we're gonna hit next I pre-loaded my information for my Wi-Fi
network for my IOT devices we're gonna hit next alright so we have to drop the
2.4 and go to the broadcast network that this is doing so we're gonna hit the
drop down here and we're gonna long press and hold and get that to go
straight because I don't know why I decided to go crazy all right here's our
Wyze plug we're gonna connect to that and then we go back here it's connected
but has no internet which is fine and then we're gonna sit here and wait for
the countdown to connect hopefully it doesn't take the whole time we'll see
probably won't make you sit through all of it if it does actually take the full
time and hopefully no so finish setup ok shadow was a cat walking by
finish setup we can enter a name here if we want I'm not sure if I'm going to add
a well we'll have to do something so wise plug one I do realize that's not
the correct spelling for Wyze but just wanted to have something in there and
we're gonna finish setup and I've earned a badge now I did order this before it
was available so I did the pre-order so I don't know if this badge is because of
that we will find out I'll find out where the badge actually goes a little
later but here we could see my Wyze plug one pretty quick response I like it not
bad now setup really easy right well here's the thing the plug that I
originally set up and had in my bedroom and have been using for the last month
and a half was super easy no problem this plug when I tried setting it up
before this review it took me 6 attempts to set it up now I can't tell if that's
because well one I was on Android 10 for this one and not on Android 10 I was on
Android insert flavor of the month here can't remember I had to do a security
update for Android 10 in order to actually get this to set up so hopefully
in the future that will not be a problem for you
but just know you get two of these in a box one could be easy to set up one
might give you a little more difficulty so make sure one that you check your
phone and everything is up to date and to one of the options that they did say
was make sure that your data was off for this one I made sure to turn the data
off now on that note Wyze and one of the reasons I like Wyze as opposed to
something like Amazon plug but TP and Wii mode do similarly is the fact that
it is compatible with not just Amazon products it is compatible with Google it
is compatible with Amazon it's compatible with IFTTT which is great now
however I will say that again after adding this to my Wyze account and
having Wyze already linked to my Google account I had to unlink and then relink
the Wyze skill in Google in order for this to be picked up Amazon right away
no problems however I will say the Amazon skill compared to the Google
skill there's a there's an issue Amazon when you trigger it using the voice
assistant there is a noticeable delay between sending the command and the
command being actuated in Google that's not a problem
it happens fairly quickly here let me show you what I'm talking about Alexa
turn on basement plug Alexa turn off basement plug hey Google turn on
basement plug turn off basement plug now I'm not saying that that is bad but it
is a data point that I have not seen anybody else really address when they've
been reviewing this plug and I wanted to make you aware of that now some other
things to consider about this plug well one is if you take this out of the
socket or you have a power failure how long does it take for this to
reestablish a connection to the network so that actually takes this plug twenty
seconds to reestablish itself to the network I will also say if you leave
your status light on and the status light stops blinking it is not finished
connecting to the network I went into my mobile app and I went hey I should be
able to turn this on and off but I can't do it yet so there's a little extra lag
time between status light blinking turned off and then it being connected
to the network speaking of the application well that's the other way
that you can interact with this plug so let's take a look at the application
here you have the Wyze app when you first log into it you can see I have two
separate plugs time you add a new plug or a new item it
will always go to the top here you can toggle your plug on and off and there
you can see the light turning on and off to the side now the app itself I will
say was originally designed for the Wyze cameras so they kind of cannibalized and
and built upon the app for these extra things such as the plug such so down
here these are all pretty much related to the Wyze cams
that's your shopping that's your account so let's actually just pop into the plug
to see what you can and cannot do actually we're gonna go into this plug
because this is the plug I use more often so inside the plug the settings
are you can turn it on or off and that's toggling a plug nowhere near
where we are currently you have timer which will allow you to
right here it says turn plug on after X amount of whatever or you can set it to
turn plug off after X amount it's fairly standard for a smart plug you also have
vacation mode which will allow you to put this plug into a vacation mode so
what it will do is will automatically turn on and off the plug as if you were
home now you don't get to set anything up there you can also tell it to don't
show me this again we're just gonna go turn on and that vacation mode is on you
can see it's in green if you want to turn that off you just click on it again
so turn on and off so we'll randomly turn the plug on and off based on making
it look like your home here you have run time so today you can see it's been on
for 59 minutes and it will show you exactly when it has been on nice little
chart there average I get about hour 45 because this is my bedroom light so it's
only on really in the evenings but here it'll show you just about how long it
stays on and you know give you a little graph and kind of help you figure out
your using your plug now keep in mind that this does not keep track of energy
in any way shape or form it just tells you readouts of how long things have
been on up here you have coming to settings you can change the
device name so just like when you originally set it up you can change the
device name there plug status light now this is neat I like this you can turn
that on or off and since it's in my bedroom I like to keep that off because
while the status light isn't terribly bright I don't want that on schedule
automation so Wyze allows you to set up specific scheduling so for me these are
all things that I set up for my Wyze cam and Wyze cam pan to turn on and off
based on specifics specific days of the week now to set up an automation you
come up here press the plus sign so you can create a schedule a shortcut or a
device trigger in our case just so you can see we're gonna set a shortcut and
we will call this wise plug and select an action now from here you would have
to select either your basement or bedroom plug so we're gonna go that and
we're gonna select turn on or off we're gonna say turn off and hit save and now
we have a trigger that will add a shortcut to our main menu now we are
going to discard all that because I really don't want to have that on my
main screen I prefer to use my voice to activate the plugs or button on the
device share well if you have somebody else with a Wyze account you could share
access to specific things using this now if you press on share you would have to
know their email address in order to do that device info is just that it tells
you all the device info it will allow you to update directly from there
however when a update is pushed it does automatically show up on the launch
screen when you enter the app and that really is the Wyze plug the rest of the
app is really meant for a lot of the other things other Wyze sense the Wyze
bulbs and the Wyze cam it if they pretty much are making their own little
ecosystem now so if you're interested I'll put a link over there to one of the
Wyze cam videos that I've done so that you can get an idea of other things that
the app can do this was mainly just to show you what the smart plug application
could do something else that I don't see a lot
reviewers do in regards to smart devices or smart plugs which I tend to like to
find out is what happens if powers lost how does the device return what is the
devices return state once power is restored meaning if the plug is on and
power is lost what happens well in the case of Wyze here if the plug is turned
on meaning you have a light on when power returns after being lost the plug
and light will be back on if the plug and light is turned off when power is
lost and then restored the plug and light will be off there are some other
plugs that will return to an on state even if it was off which is problematic
sometimes if you lose power in the day and is restored later in the evening
having a light come on at 3 o'clock in the morning not the greatest thing so
you won't have that problem with the Wyze plug now the LED light here is blue
as I stated before it's not terrible if you have this in a bedroom it's small
enough and not terribly bright to disturb you but you can turn it off as
you saw in the app you may have also noticed that during the setup this is a
2.4 gigahertz only smart plug meaning that is the Wi-Fi net spectrum that you
would use so you don't use 5 gigahertz with this it's not a 5 gigahertz is for
things that need to be fast this does not need to be fast this needs longer
range which is why it is only 2.4 gigahertz so one of the other things
that I like to do with all of my smart devices because I'm power conscientious
so to speak I came from my condo which everything ran on electricity I want to
know how much this uses when in idle state and when it is just turned on with
nothing actually plugged in so when the plug is turned in connected to your
network but not on in any way shape or form with nothing plugged into it it
uses between 0.06 to negligible amounts of power
the only other smart plug that I've had that has that
type of Idol level is the tp-link mini again review over there smart plug so in
idle state very good uses very little power similarly when the plug is on and
nothing is plugged into it it uses between one point seven to one point two
now I didn't notice that with the idle and with it being on the longer that it
is in those states the less power that it uses so in idle it starts at one
point six but the longer it's stayed in the idle state the power level drops
similar similarly when turned on it starts at one point seven but then
slowly goes down to the one point two again making it one of the better plugs
for somebody who's conscientious about electrical usage so the last thing to
cover hubs this is a hub list device meaning it sits on your Wi-Fi network as
a singular device it does not connect to a smart home hub and then talk to the
hub which is connected to your network this sits on your network so if you have
a lot of smart home devices on your network this will just be another one on
your network now I've got a lot of smart home devices that are hubless and have
had no issues so for most people you won't have an issue adding a few of
these to your network now given the form factor given the
price and given the functionality that you get from this I I have been a Wyze
product fan since the Wyze cam version won and realistically I think I I was
skeptical with the plug because what more can you do to a smart plug that
hasn't already be done already been done well you get a smaller form factor than
every plug on the market currently you get two for the price well under
anything that's currently on the market that's not like a Chinese knockoff so if
you are in the market for a smart plug I would highly recommend checking out the
Wyze smart plug because well fifteen dollars gets you two of them so you can
you can set up a whole bunch of these for well under any price that's
currently available and the fact that it is interoperable with all
the services I hate things that compartmentalize and only work with one
service Wyze there sticking to not doing that so good on them so if you're
looking for a smart plug highly recommend checking it out I have been
Wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please leave them
in the area below and as always thanks for watching