are you looking for a smart plug that works with Alex a Google home Siri shortcuts IFTTT smarter
things line clove and apple home kit that comes in a ridiculously small package then you're in
the right place hello I'm Wanderer001 and this is my review of the switchbot plug Mini Apple
home kit Edition there are two different switch plug Minis that you can get one is compatible
with apple home kit one is not this particular one is the Apple home kit version now before
we actually get into the review I will state that switchbot did reach out to me and provide
me with the plug mini home kit Edition for the purposes of doing an unbiased review which is
what you're going to get so let's get into it for starters let's actually take a look at the
form factor that we get here at the top you will notice some blue painters tape that is
mainly to cover up there is a QR code that you can use as part of setup so didn't want to have
that visible in the review but the plug itself is ridiculously small compared to other smart
plug mini style plugs out there the one thing I did notice is it does taper off in the front
so you can see it kind of gets a little fatter in the back but Dimension wise you're looking
at 2.8 inches by 1.5 inches by 2.3 and for size comparison because I have an affinity for smart
plugs here we have it next to the Amazon smart plug you can see it's considerably smaller here
we have it next to the Belkin WeMo mini smart plug at the time and the tp-link smart plug
notice that form factor Wise It's very similar in size and the one that I cannot grab at the moment
is the Y smart plug which is fairly close to the actual size of this and uh price point which we'll
talk about a little later here as we walk around the actual smart plug we'll talk about the front
here well you've got kind of like these recessed protectors for the actual plug-in portion which
I kind of like down here we have an LED light this is a bright white light which if you're
using this in a dark room hypothetically to turn on and off a fan so you have white noise going
in the middle of the night that bright white light can get a little distracting however
utilizing the application which we'll talk about a little later you can actually turn that off so
good on switchbot for allowing you to do that coming across to the we'll call left hand side
there's nothing on the right hand side we do have a very large and tactile actuation button
which does when the device is turned on off makes a noticeable clicking sound like this
that is not to say that it is distracting in any way shape or form but I do like things that have
that click because hey it lets me know did that actually turn off in the middle of the night so
when I like cut power to something hypothetically like a TV set that I can't tell if it's on or off
if I have this plugged into it I can tell because I'll hear that loud click and here you can also
see kind of what I was talking about with that tapering you can see it gets fatter towards the
back but that design actually allows you to have two of the mini smart plugs one on top of each
other you can even use it with other smart plugs should you have them but you could stack two of
these coming across to the back there's really nothing to look at you've got your standard for
me US plug-in but I will use this opportunity to say that this can accept 15 amps of power
so that's going to be up to fairly larger pieces of electronic equipment that you have around your
house so this smart plug will allow you to enable them to be smarter and not have to worry about
overloading the plug itself but because this is a smart plug there is a setup process to utilize
it for the smart features which you're getting it for so let's take a look at just how easy it
is to set up switchbot plug mini here this will be set up of the switchbot plug mini right here
we've got the switchbot app opened up and with the plug mini here we are going to select the
plus sign in the upper right hand corner and then we are going to locate the plug mini from the list
here and here we go plug mini us we're going to select that kind of giving you General do's and
don'ts for the plug so what we're going to do is we have to plug in the device and then hold down
the power button for about two seconds so what we're going to do is we are going to bring into
Focus over here a power supply going to plug in the switchbot mini there and we're going to give
it a chance to realize that there's power it does not look like there's any lights that happen so
we're going to press and hold now for two seconds it is flashing might be a little hard to see but
we hit next allow switchbot to access location so I'm going to say yes and here we have my
Wi-Fi so it wants me to put that information in and I have inputted that information so we're
just going to let it do its thing select a room just going to say all devices and we're going to
call this switchbot plug mini so there's our name and we hit save and done and now we can actuate
switchbot just like that that was set up of the switchbot mini plug as you saw ridiculously easy
to set up even compared to other smart plugs that I've done and I've done a lot over there
in the corner but if you've had another switchbot devices you might be wondering well this during
setup looks like it was using Wi-Fi and it does it uses Wi-Fi 2.4 gigahertz so that's going to give
you longer range slower speeds but you don't need those faster speeds you just need longer
range because this is a switchbot device there also is Bluetooth LE 4.2 integrated into this
meaning that if you're for whatever reason Wi-Fi goes out and I've had that happen to me where I
still have power but my Wi-Fi goes out because my ISP is being ridiculous I could use my smartphone
over Bluetooth and still use the smart features of this which is a great thing that you might
not have realized with the switchbot plug mini here that other smart plugs cannot do one other
thing to consider is because it does have Wi-Fi integrated into it on like some switchbot products
which would require you to have a hub in order to use them over Wi-Fi this one you don't have to do
that it's built right in some other features that the plug mini here has that other brands do not is
actual energy monitoring which you would pay a lot more for on some of those other competitors
but all of that is actually accessible through the application so let's take this time to look
at the switchbot app for the switchbot plug mini homekit Edition this is the switchbot app for the
switchbot mini plug you can see right here this is our main screen which will list out all of
our devices we could see our switchbot plug mini there is actually highlighted in white letting us
know that that particular item is online looking at our main page here if we quickly come up to the
three dots in the corner we can sort our devices and we can manage locations currently I only have
one location we have our plus sign right here which will allow us to add other devices to this
we have our notifications area our home selection so in my case I only have one so it just says my
home we have Bots that are nearby currently I don't have any other Bots that are nearby and
then our actual device from this screen we can see that our switchbot mini plug is currently off and
connected via Wi-Fi that little cloud indicates that it is connected over Wi-Fi instead of over
Bluetooth which this is capable of doing if I tap right there that lets us know now it is turned on
it will also give you a wattage readout right there so this is just plugged into a LED lamp
so right now it is only doing 4.4 watts and outlined in red letting us know that that's
on I can turn that off right from there and then the switchbot mini plug is off if I select the
plug itself right here this is all the data that we can get for it as well as a giant hey this is
off button if I select this on this page we get a green ring letting us know now that the switchbot
plug mini is turned on I kind of wish that the indicator on the main page was also green instead
of red because to me red means off or stop a little little thing to split hair is about up
at the top here we can see today it's giving us a lot of information so we've got energy it's used
almost nothing because realistically I haven't run this today because this particular lamp is
only used in the evening when I need to clean in that specific area we have an actual power
output while it's on as well as the current amps and current voltage we can also see what the power
usage was for the other day and then we have our power on duration again because this lamp is not
on all that often I don't have anything as of yet but this would allow us to see how long this
particular device has been on for I love when smart devices add stats like this because it
adds a little extra aside from just being able to turn on and off your device which a lot of other
things can do up here we also have our history so if I select this this will give us a history for
this device so right here you can see the powered on duration for this device overall has been two
hours and 20 minutes with a power consumption of still less than a kilowatt and here in 2022
it shows us total less than that kilowatt and the total run time if I select this it'll give
me a drop down and here we can see my October stats and if I click into that it's going to
actually give me this visualization this chart so here you can see nothing nothing because I wasn't
around and then hey I used this lamp because I was cleaning and I left it on for an hour 35 minutes
but this will give you a visual representation breakout so this will be able to be over months
over years all that data will be saved here and you've got the ability to export this data which
is really great so if I select export hey how do I want to export this particular information so
that is a really cool feature we're going to turn our lamp right off or in my case the smart plug
we're going to turn that off over here we have the ability to set up a schedule so let's say
there is a particular day and time that you want this to come on and at day and time you want this
to come off we simply come up here and select add well okay hours do you want this only once
or do you want this to repeat and then action turn on or turn off so we can say 8 PM repeat and we
can say this day this day and this day and then it'll turn on and we hit save and then we can add
one that says repeat and we'll pretend that these are these similar days but then we would say turn
off and then I would save and then on those days the light will turn on at this time at this time
and then on these days the light will turn off obviously you want to have that as a different
time but let's say we only want it to turn on or we only want to turn off all hypothetically
I left this on well guess what I don't want it to remember that but I do want to remember having it
to turn off so we can do that or in the upper right hand corner here I simply select delete
and then I can select what I want I can hit done if I don't want to do anything or I hit delete
down here at the bottom which will delete those and then I'm done because I cleared everything
out selecting back that's our scheduling delay hypothetically if you want to delay the turning
on or off of this smart device you can set that up here so you can have 30 minutes hour hour 32 hours
and then start so I have to select one so I will say 30 minutes and we go start and now it will
turn itself on after 30 minutes so hypothetically if I know I'm going to be out for the evening
and I don't want to have to set up a constant recurring program but I do want this particular
light switch this particular smart plug to turn on because it's a light well I can set this and then
I don't have to worry about remembering the smart plug will automatically turn itself on
by the time I come home because of that setting we also have a logs function right here so this
is going to show you everything that's happened so right here you can see these are particular Amazon
Echo commands that I ran with it because you can set up Amazon Echo which we're getting into but it
shows you turned on turned off I did have when I was initially setting it up and testing I did have
one unknown error but I just had to do a firmware update and it took care of that but that is our
logs area so that's everything for the controls of the smart plug itself now in the upper right hand
corner right here and we can see it also shows that the power duration for today has been two
minutes now but in the upper right hand corner we have the sprocket icon which brings us into
the settings for the plug itself not just the operation but the actual settings for it so at
the top here we have the naming convention I just called it switchbot plug mini I can select that
and I can change the name change its location and change its room so I'm not going to but
that's how you could do it and you can see right there it says all devices which is your room and
then which home it pertains to right here here we have our Wi-Fi settings so if you needed to
set this up via Wi-Fi you can come back in here and change it here we have our indicator light
on or off so there is an indicator light on the front of the device if you don't want to have
an indicator light because maybe you have this in a bedroom controlling a device that you want
to run overnight you don't want that indicator light to be on that's how you would turn it off
here we have Miss touch prevention so right now it's off but I can turn this on and if I do it's
going to give me this little warning saying when this is turned on a window is going to
pop up on the phone that you have to confirm first before the action will actually happen
so if that somebody uses a voice command uses the button on the plug or has this on their home and
tries to use the button you're always going to get that warning saying hey what's going on do
you want to approve this coming down we have our cloud services you have the ability to integrate
with Google Assistant Amazon's assistant IFTTT and line clove for Japan only so not for my area but I
got the big three right there coming back we also have the ability for NFC control roles these you
will need the switchbot smart tags in order to do but you can hypothetically set up routines where
I use NFC on my phone and touch this particular tag and this action happens or set up another
tag and this action happens so realistically you have the ability to turn on or off the plug but
you also have the ability to switch between on and off and those are all done through those NFC
tags which you would have to pick up because there are none that come with the box but it's nice for
the price of this plug that that kind of thing is thrown in here we have our FAQ so coming in here
is going to bring up pretty much the switchbot support page and you can find your particular
device right here we have our firmware my firmware is up to date so there's nothing there and then we
have our device info which I won't be showing you because there is a lot of sense of information in
that area but that's where you can find the MAC address and all that fun stuff for your device
and then all the way down here at the bottom this is our delete so if you want to remove this from
your switchbot account this is how you would do that and we're going to select back because that
is everything that we can do for the switchbot plug mini here within the switchbot app as you
saw there is a lot that you can do with this plug mini using the application for its form factor and
let's be honest switchbot not terribly well known for things like this I was actually
very surprised with the amount that you could do I also appreciate that even though the application
integrates other Switchback products that it doesn't kind of crowd the app it is still easy
to discern the plug mini from other things that you have in there which again is a design thing
that you might not actually think about but something that I think about having come from
a condo that used electricity for all of my appliances is actual power usage of devices
so the plug mini here uses .07 watts of power when idling meaning it's just plugged into your
electricity and connected to your Wi-Fi when turned on meaning you're not actually plugging
something into this but you turn this button on it will use between one Watt and 0.9 watts of power
now compared to all the other plugs that I've done the power usage is not the highest but it's
also not the lowest but one of the things that I want to reiterate is the fact that this also has
a Bluetooth chip inside of it not just a Wi-Fi connection so it is going to use a little more
power but it's still not using crazy amounts where it's going to be detrimental to having this plug
around or having several plugs around one other thing that I like to consider with smart plugs is
what happens when power is lost meaning if I have something plugged into this power is lost to the
device and then power is in turn what happens to the device that was plugged into this meaning if
I had a light plugged into this and the power went out when the power comes back and this reconnects
is that light on or off so if you have something plugged into this and it is in an on state meaning
a light is on Powers lost and then restored the light will return to an on state likewise if the
power is lost and that light is off once the power is restored and this reconnects that light will be
off that doesn't mean that it's a good or a bad thing but it's a data point because if power is
lost and is dark out you want that light to come back on when power is restored however
if it's three o'clock in the morning when the power is restored and this is in your bedroom
that might be a problem I do wish that they had something in the application that would allow
you to alter the on state when power is restored that's something I'm looking at you switchbot that
is a possibility and would be a cool option to have speaking of when power is lost and power is
restored how long it takes for your smart device to reconnect itself to your network is another
thing so in the case of not just your Wi-Fi going down but your power in general going down because
then you can't use this over Bluetooth it will take about 15 seconds for this to re-establish
connection to your Wi-Fi network once power is restored to it small data point but something I
like to do especially with something like this which might be in a hard to reach Place meaning
you can't actually turn the device on yourself because you'd have to unplug it from here and
then plug it into the wall to get it working again so something to consider last thing with a smart
device is pricing and pricing can be variable depending on when you see this video right now as
of filming this video the switchbot plug mini here home kit Edition is 15. the the only other smart
plug that I've had that has come anywhere close to the pricing of this was the wise plug however
for that price though you do not get half the extras that you actually get with the switchbot
plug mini so if this is the first time you've actually heard of switchbot you did not know
that they made mini plugs I strongly recommend checking out the switchbot mini plug home kit
Edition especially if you have a apple home kit not a lot of smart plugs support that 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 if you found this video helpful consider
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