hello I'm Wanderer001 and this is my review of the Kasa smart plug 2 or
hs10 7 now it's called the Kasa smart plug tube because well there are two
plugs on this particular model now this is a very specific use case and I have
mixed feelings about this particular Kasa smart plug I do prefer tp-link as
my preferred smart plug reviews over there in the corner will kind of tell
you that but we're going to talk about this one for a little bit there are
pluses and minuses but we'll get into that as we go along with the review so
what you're looking at is a 4.3 inch long with a 1.9 inch height and a depth
of 2 inches so this is a very beefy plug when compared to something like the
tp-link mini so you can see these are quite substantially different now as I
said before the use case with this is having two separate plugs that will
actuate two separate things on a single wall plug now a reason you might want
this is because well you have a single plug that you want to utilize for a
light on one side and light on the other side you know nightstands or either side
of your couch which is how I have this set up now the beauty of tp-link here is
it does work with your voice assistance so you can use your echo and Google home
devices for this and well the question is something like this how easy is it to
set up well let me show you how easy it is to set up all right set up of the
dual sided tp-link here
sadly all the plugs in my new house are upside down
it's a power to both sides Center is blinking indicating that it is ready for
pairing so we're going to open the Kasa app in the upper right hand corner we
are going to select add a new device so we're going to come here add device so
here you've got all of your choices in our case it's a smart plug here it is
the smart plug 2 outlet so we kind of skip that step and we're already there
so normally start then plug in but it's blinking next showing orange and green
it is orange and green and now it's connecting and this is spinning off in
the corner I'll just kind of let you see that off in the peripheral so we have to
choose our network I'm going to choose the one that I use for my IOT devices
it's spinning again you can see it's rapidly blinking there
and there you go it's white the center which means it's connecting the app is
catching up still working with the app here hoping it doesn't take a few
minutes if it does I'm just gonna cut out so you don't have to sit through the
entire process it shouldn't be that long no not there we go
it's all done and you've got add plug one add plug two so you can give it a name
if you wanted to currently I have nothing to name them so we're just gonna
leave them as is although it's making us actually name them before we can go
ahead so let me do this quick so after I gave one of them a name says I can
choose an icon or take a picture so we're just gonna leave it as is with the
plug and save and then we would do the same thing for this picture all right
both of them have been labeled I'm gonna hit next and there you go everything's
finalized so sounds good and now it's
requiring an update but that would be the installation in the installation
process and we're just gonna update the firmware now but you're not gonna have
to sit through that see not terrible at all now we're gonna take a quick walk
around cuz I did neglect to do that before so like I said before a plug on
either side you have a status light here in the middle and then two switches to
control either side now these if you're putting this in a hard-to-reach place
will be a little tricky to get to but thankfully there is an app that you can
use with this or again once you link it to those voice assistance now with the
echo devices you will need to enable the Kasa skill which is the Kasa app that is
how you control this with your echo devices and likewise with the Google
home solution you will have to activate the account there to speak with your
tp-link devices so let me show you what it actually looks like for using this
with the Kasa app when you first are brought into the Kasa app in this case I
have several plugs but if we were just
looking for the plugging question here you can see living room left side and
living room right side you can toggle the switch on and off from here remember
there's two sides so you can toggle either or clicking on it will bring you
into the switch itself again can toggle on and off we've got a nice animation
there name is located at the top so living room light left side plug one you
have options here at the bottom and options top we'll start with the bottom
you can schedule scheduling by clicking the plus sign up here will allow you to
schedule when a plug is turned on or off you can switch through the times there
and days currently it's on so if you set something it will turn the plug on on
those times switching it to off means at those times it will turn itself off you
would hit save we're just gonna hit back and back one more time
timers again if you want to have the switch turn on or off after a specific
amount of time this is where you do it set the times here away mode now a way
mode is unique in that during these times that you set days the switch will
turn itself on and off incrementally to mimic you being home so if you have this
in my case living room lights it will alternate left and right specific
times making it appear that you are home actively doing things run time is just
that it will show you the run time so here you can see total run time today
past seven days and past 30 days as you can see I haven't been running this all
too often because well I've been testing it and the place I'm going to put it is
a bit of a pain to get to after it's placed so small run times but this will
tally everything up you will notice that there is no electrical usage like the
Kasa power strip review over there shows you so this is just what the rest of the
Kasa line does they don't have that feature now you'll notice that
there are two dots at the bottom here that's because if you swipe it will
bring you over into your next plug so now it says right so we're going to talk
about this up here which is the sprocket which brings you in to extra information
so from here you can change the name and picture so here I can see if I change
that it would change I can also select the icon and choose a new picture or I
can select a picture from the album on my phone or I could take a new picture
if I wanted to take a picture of what this was actually of and that's for left
side and right side custom here you could see swap so you can move either/or
so the left side now becomes the right side and the right side becomes the left
side we're gonna swipe it back and come back so status light LED so if you don't
want to have the status light on you would click that and toggle it on or off
so that white LED that's in the middle when it's not on but just in passive
mode would be great if you just click it off you don't see it for me this is
gonna be in the bedroom behind my bed so I don't want that bright white LED light
disturbing me so I can keep that off here you've got device info which will
tell you timezone location device time Wi-Fi network model and then extra
information down here now firmware version keep in mind that you do not
automatically get firmware updates you do have to manually update the firmware
and that is done back on your main home screen here by selecting this drop down
and selecting firmware and that checks all of your casa devices now I'm gonna
quickly run through these top options because well I've done this for all my
other plugs but this is just if you have a tp-link camera this is if you set up a
scene so setting up a scene will allow you to have like a routine so in the
case for my good night routine some things some of my plugs turn on some of
my plugs turn off smart actions right now you need a specific smart actions
hub to use this so we will not be talking about that because I don't have
and activity so for the particular plug-in question
there isn't much activity going on because well it hasn't been really used
all that often and that's turning on turning off that type of activity not
you manually turning it on and off you set up those actions to happen and that
is a look at the Kasa app for your two sided switch so there you go you
saw what you can do with the Kasa app now again I did forget to mention that
each side is controllable separately you saw that in the app each plug was its
own separate actuation and that includes the voice assistance as well
now the TP link hs107 here operates on the 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi ban that
means long range slower speeds than your 5 gigahertz but you don't need a 5
gigahertz with something like this because you want the range not the speed
because all you're doing is telling it turn this on turn this off now something
that the newer TP plugs have been doing including their power switch is the
ability to turn off these LED status lights now especially with this these
are all white now when you do connect and this is idling the main switch main
light here will turn off after a short amount of time however when these two
are on they are a bright white unlike the blue light that you get on the TP
mini now again in the application you saw you can toggle these on and off so
you can have this completely off which is good if you're using this in a
bedroom and trying to use this to use for your nightstands you don't want this
bright white LED keeping you up so let's talk about some of the things that you
might not have considered with a smart switch first being what happens if the
Smart Switch loses power things that are plugged into it what do they come back
as once the power is restored which is something that I had not considered in
the past but have had the pleasure of experiencing with some other power
switches so I make sure to check on that now so what happens when power is lost
to the device whatever the last state was is the state that it will return to
so if you have a light on this side that's turned on and a light
on this side that's turned off then when power is restored to the device this
light will be on and this light will be off which is good in some cases but if
it's 3 o'clock in the morning and this light's coming back on that's a little
problematic but it's something to consider and know will happen with this
device now another thing to consider is when power is lost how long does it take
for a device to reconnect itself to your network and that's the big thing you
want to be able to use your smart home as soon as your electricity comes back
on which is a big thing for me so it takes 11 seconds for this to
re-establish connection with your Wi-Fi network and make it usable again so not
terribly long at all so that's a good thing now another thing to consider
which you may have not is power usage so anything like this is going to use a
little bit of power even if there's not something plugged into it drawing power
so in those cases what you're looking at is when it's idling meaning it's just
plugged into your wall nothing else is plugged into it it's just on your Wi-Fi
network well the beauty of this plug is it uses negligible amounts of power in
fact in the corner there the device that I use to read power usage pretty much
said I can't detect anything it's it's zero two point five meaning it's almost
negligible now since this has two sides to it once you start turning these on
you start using a little more power so one side either side you start using 0.6
put them both on then it's point 9 now surprisingly this is a little less power
draw than the tp-link mini so that's that's kind of a good thing if you need
this type of form factor now the problem with this type of form factor and you
probably saw when I was doing the set up and when I was showing you the LED
status lights are you're not going to be able to get two smart switches on a
single outlet this takes up a lot of room on an outlet you will be able to
get another power plug underneath it or on top of it but you will not be able to
get to smart switches so again for me this sits behind my couch
and controls a light on either side of the couch and then I have something
underneath it for like a fan so for me this setup is perfectly fine but keeping
in mind depending on how your outlets are situated if you have something like
this where the bottom outlet is too close to a wall and a top outlet has
nothing well then you just lose all of this ability because of the wall so in
this case you might not want something like this form factor you would want
something like the TP mini but the beauty of all tp-link smart plugs are
you don't need a hub meaning there's a secondary device that you need to
connect to before you can connect this to the Wi-Fi network Philips hues
lights were notorious for that years ago I think they actually started moving
away from a hub and if you're the slightly more tinkering type you'll be
happy to know that tp-link hs10 7 here does in fact work with IFTTT so you can
have fun with if this than that so the question is how much does something like
this cost well depending on where you get this in sales and so forth you can
pick this up anywhere from $30 to $25 now keep in mind you are getting two
different plugs in one it is a very specific use case for my very specific
use I have found it great because I want to be able to have that secondary plug
to use for my fan so having two smaller plugs would not work and I didn't want
to like daisy chain a power strip into another smart switch and this filled a
purpose for me it may fill a purpose for you which is why I'm doing a review of
it so you can figure out is this something that you need in your life if
not I mean I highly endorse the the mini plugs from tp-link but the tp-link hs10
7 also is a very good plug for what it does it is chunky I will admit that but
it's a small price to pay for being able to have two actuated switches on a
single plug in your wall with that being said I have been Wanderer001
if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them
in the area below and as always thanks for
watching