hey everybody it's norm from tested and as we're getting back from the holidays and back into the
groove of filming i'm sitting in this week with a tool tip yes a product recommendation for a piece
of kit that i started using this past holiday season and honestly if i started using it earlier
last year it definitely would have been included in my favorite things of 2020. i'm talking about
the humble smart plug connector this is the wise plug and it's one of many smart plugs you can buy
it's on the marketplace it's almost become a commodity item but this i've really come
to love using not only because it's super simple to set up the app is really nice but also it's
extremely affordable you can get a pack of two of these two pack of these plugs for under
20 dollars and there are links in the description and the comments below
they're not terribly new they've been on the market for about a year year and a half or so and
smart plugs really are a way to turn any appliance any piece of electronic that you normally would
have to manually turn on and off into something that you can remotely control uh without the need
for a hub so this all is connected over wi-fi very simple it is a three-pound connector the profile
here is one of the smaller versions in terms of its dimensions about a little over two and a
half inches uh by about two inches by 1.5 inches or so and it fits neatly into your wall outlet
or a surge protector and then you plug in your device into here and in my case over the past
holiday seasons i bought a bunch of these to have set up for my holiday lights of course
so the christmas tree and my outdoor lights garage lights uh stairwell lights all were plugged into
their own wise plug connector and then via the app you basically assign the name
you pair them to your wi-fi network and i have my eros set up my around my house so 2.4 gigahertz
network for these devices uh and then you can either manually turn them off or on with a phone
app or you can group them uh have them set on a schedule so i had all my holiday lights turned on
at an evening around four or five o'clock and then turn off at midnight and just that automation
of not having to switch the individual lights on and off was so much of um made it totally
worth it was so much of a game changer for how we celebrated our holidays uh and they do have smart
device integration as well so you can have this as a skill for your alexa devices or your google
assistant it doesn't have support for apple's home kits so if you have a home pod you can't
or you can't use siri for example to automate this uh and uh among the other smart plug connectors
on the marketplace there are some have a little more advanced features like um sunrise and sunset
automation so having lights turn on at sun uh sunset and turn off at sunrise and that kind
of stuff but you can pair this with if this then that so you get a little more uh automation and
as we're um packing away our christmas lights now or into january i've now moved these wise
plugs into my office so i recently just had it set up for my office shelf lights i had my book nook
over there and for lighting setups based on led strips yes they have those wireless remotes but
oftentimes if you buy them from different brands they actually there's a lot of crosstalk so
one button on one remote might do something different and they can kind of overlap so having
these connected has been really really nice for my home office here so i can have them all set on one
command or individually again set on and off the timing is for the scheduling is pretty accurate
usually um off by maybe a minute or so so if you need something extremely precise this might not be
uh the perfect thing for you and it does require a cloud connection internet connection because
you're tapping into their service now the wise company is a pretty big company they have those
cameras uh the wi-fi cameras uh all over the place and a bunch of other products uh so i and the app
is really well designed so i trust that they're going to be around for a while and really at this
price point again two of these for under 20 bucks uh it's something that it's a no-brainer for me
to set up and just build in some more automation into my home office there is a new model for 2021
for which the setup is over bluetooth as opposed to a wi-fi connection so it streamlines
that setup a little easier and i just pre-order the outdoor plug as well that isn't out yet
but i'll have a link to that that's just ten dollars for a plug with two outlets 15 amps
and that one i think has a light sensor as well as well as weatherproofing so you can do outdoor
lights so this is the wise plug smart connector uh if you automate your home in a different way use
different smart connectors use a different hub i love to know in the comments below what your
setups are but this is just a simple no-brainer and cost-effective way to automate lighting or
any other type of plug-in electronics uh in your home thanks for watching this video we'll be back
with more product and tool recommendations in the future and i'll see you next time
bye