Customer Reviews

Kill a Watt Meter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After several astronomical electric bills I decided I needed to find out what is consuming the most power in my house. The Kill a Watt Meter has done an excellent job to that end. It is very easy to use. It will tell you instantly if an appliance is an energy hog or you can let it run for whatever time period you want to determine your electrical usage/costs per hour/day/month/year. (I use a spreadsheet for the calculations) I think this is one of the best meter purchases I have made in quite while.

Does what it says it does. It does not have the bells and whistles of the pricier units, so don't think you will be able to do complex spreadsheet displays, automatically, as you plan your alternative energy home. If you need to do multi-level calculations, go with the more expensive units out there. IF, OTOH, you simply want to know how many watts a given device is using over a specific time period, and you are OK with keeping a pencil and tablet in hand, this is your baby.

Here's another thing that saves money. Don't plug things in that you don't use. Simple as that. This thing is useless to me. Sure it works as advertised, but the conclusions drawn are one of two things, replace the product (which means you pay more money and thus offset the savings of buying a new product). Or, you decide to unplug stuff that hogs electricity and is not used often, which you should be doing whether you have a meter or not. You're not going to unplug your microwave just because it uses a lot of electricity. You're not going to turn your deep freezer off, or unplug your washer and dryer when it's not in use. You use those things everyday if you're an average American. Again, this product does what it says, but the true value behind the purpose of the product perplexes me. I seem to be the only person on this planet that feels this way. So, I'm rating this product high because it does what it says. But, if you want to lower your electric bill, survey your house and just unplug stuff you don't use regularly (as in every day).

This is a nice addition to this retired EE's toolbox. It appears to display all the basic AC parameters sensibly and accurately. I'm using it to monitor KWH use by the automatic electric pumps in my home water system. Since the results are only meaningful if the wall clock time is also known, the "Kill a Watt Meter" (silly name) records that also. However, my rural area is subject to frequent brief (several seconds) power outages due to thunderstorm lightning surges. These sometimes reset the recording, losing days of accumulated data. I would like to see a capability added to the device to store the accumulated data (time and KWH) and resume recording after the brief outage.