Customer Reviews

P3 International P4480 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor with Electronic Graphic Timer

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

A lot of the reviews here are for the P3 International P4460 Kill-A-Watt Monitor. I purchased the P4480 on a gold box special and am writing this review under the P4480's review page.

I received the P4480 and opened the package and the first thing that I noticed is that it has a battery door. I opened it and saw that it takes 3xAAA batteries. These allow you to program and review the unit with it being unplugged from the wall. The backlight is orange and bright. It can be set as a night light to come on during the evening hours. The unit needs to be set with the correct time and day before it will function correctly.

This model is not exactly what I was expecting. I thought it would be a kill-a-watt monitor with all the functions of analyzing your power consumption of an appliance or device. It turns out that it is mainly an advanced on/off timer that happens to measure voltage, amperage, and watts too. You push the volts or amps or watts buttons to scroll between measuring those values respectively. You can not enter your utilities companies KWh pricing and have it calculate your daily, weekly or yearly spending. It doesn't have a high and low points review or and kind of data logging. It only provided real time feedback of current energy conditions. This is not very helpful in analyzing the overall cumulative energy use of something.

I recently had a lightening strike and my electrical panel needed changing out according to my electrician. The lights would dim and brighten depending on what appliances would turn on and off (ie. the A/C unit). I was interested to use the P4480 to test amps and voltages of things as the fluctuations occurred until my electrician could get out and change out the panel. It was helpful for this, although I found using my electrical multimeter better for doing the same thing

I really don't need an on/off timer that cost this much. The P4480 does provide amps/watts readings which my multimeter cannot provide although you can purchase other multimeters to measure this inexpensively. I will be returning this and purchasing a different model kill-a-watt monitor as I would like analyze my power usage for devices around my home. This one just doesn't do it. The description on Amazon is a little bit misleading and the reviews under this item are not just for the P4480 which is also misleading as the P4480 doesn't have the same features as the other models.

I had the original Kill a watt and enjoyed it very much. I was excited for this one because of all of its bells and whistles. Unfortunately the safety feature is a bit annoying. The product is rated for 15 amps, as are all of them. But this one has a safety feature that will shut the whole thing down if you exceed the 15 amps. Which I guess keeps me safe but there are a lot of things that suck a lot of power that, especially on start up, will suck more than 15 amps for a short period of time. This thing freaks, shuts down and just sits there beeping at you. I never got past this before I sent it back so I did not try the programming features. I would not recommend this one unless you are only interested in "vampire" power.

The UI is a little clunky, but this device does everything it claims to. Unfortunately, on day 5 it said my device was over current (45A) and failed to turn on. The appliance I had it on slowly ramps up when powering on (as opposed to something like a motor that spikes on power up) so I believe there is a design flaw in the P4480.

Update: Bought the P4460 EZ model and a separate timer. No problems when used on the same appliance.

BEWARE -- TECHNICAL DETAILS ARE INCORRECT! AMAZON, PLEASE CHANGE!
I will say as an electrical timer, this product does work but I'm not reviewing overall usage of the product. Instead trying to point out for other potential buyers that this product is inaccurately being depicted in the description! It is missing a key feature that is available with almost every other Kill-A-Watt product yet the decription says it has this feature -- WRONG! Amazon's Technical Details say, "...Calculates electricity expenses by the day, week, month, or year... ". This is a great feature on other Kill-a-watt products (which I own) but not this one! As noted by a few others, this product does NOT have this function !!!! I have several other Kill-A-Watts that I use for this, so I can use this product as a simple timer but isn't that a little overkill, considering the price! Once again, this DEFINITELY DOES NOT offer the basic features of the other Kill-A-Watt products. I will say as an electrical timer, this product does work.
Amazon, Please change misleading description! Thanks!

The "safety" feature trips on practically everything with moving parts making it useless for fridges, heaters, washing machines and even some computers!
I'm unconvinced that my fridge draws 35A when the compressor starts but even if it did for a few milliseconds it couldn't be too hard to have some delay in the cutoff.
Poor implementation of a potentially useful product.

Device does what it says but you still have to do some interpretation of readings. Monitors and records Amps, Kw, Voltage plus has timer that can turn devices on and off. Has protection circuit that will turn off device if power spike goes too high (over 15 Amp). The protection circuit triggered three different times for suspicious reasons. Once while monitoring my refridgerator it tripped in the middle of the night and twice while on an entertainment center as the flat screen TV was turned on. None of those times should have triggered the shutdown circuit at 20amp and 18 amp respectively. The protection circuit is a good thing if accurate but it does not turn power on to the device after tripping which is a bad thing for a refridgerator. It will give you a chance to monitor power at different devices to accumulate usage information. The timer will be handy if you need an automatic/timed switch.

I work in energy conservation and have developed some low cost energy monitoring over the years. I have a couple of the original Kill-a-Watts that I use to monitor appliance energy use, but whenever the power went off, the Kill-a-Watt would reset and start over. I bought this model with a battery clock so I could avoid the reset problem.

I've had the 4880 for a couple of weeks now. I'm using it at home as a lighting timer with different settings for the weekdays and weekends. It was easy to program (I read the instructions). It's easy to override the timer to turn the lights on or off. It's a much better timer that the old mechanical one that is starting to sound like a small coffee grinder.

I like the 4880 enough I am buying another one to monitor appliances. It accumulates the kWh and time so I can estimate the energy costs per year in a simple spreadsheet. I know the price per kWh from the monthly bills (about $45 a month for 500 kWh which works out to about 9 cents per kWh).

I don't know how long the batteries will last, but I expect them to last at least 6 months or a year.

This is an excellent product except for a misleading technical/product description that "Calculates electricity expenses by the day, week, month, or year" Well, *you* have to calculate it because there is no way to input the cost of electricity. The model P4460 does allow you to input the electricity cost and handles the calculation for you. Granted, it isn't difficult to calculate it on your own because this model shows you cumulative KwH usage and the length of time in use.

Once you read the manual and learns to program the on/off timer, the timer works well and allows you customize the timer 7X24 in 15 minutes increment, so you can program it to go on/off every 15 minutes if you want and can be different for each day of the week. This programming flexibility is not possible with any mechanical timers.

I would have given this 4 stars if the product description stated clearly that it only provided cumulative usage and you have to calculates the electricity expenses, 5 stars if it had the calculation feature of P4460.

Been using this intensely for over a week checking the AC mains watt-hour usage of possible household devices to power with my battery/inverter/solar panel system under construction. Have clamp-on AC/DC ammeters, volt meters etc ... but this thing is the most revealing device for revealing AC loading, ever. Read the specs. Cumulative watt-hours is the best feature for an intermittently running device always plugged-in like a TV. WARNING! It does reliably trip off at over about 16 AC amperes so don't leave it alone overnight on the fridge, as it trips disconnecting the load and does on mine. Also, if you are trying to size a battery/inverter system "You don't want a start load like that!" without knowing about it before hand. The very first time that I used it, found that the ice-maker in the fridge was stuck drawing about 2.3 amps doing nothing but running up the electric bill. The motor driven cube-kicker was seized and slap worn out. (Who needs ice in October anyway?) It is an in-line series device - plug it into an outlet, then plug the load into the front of it to go. Make a few settings then let it ride. Very well built with a bright display. Remove the three AAA batteries if not to be used for a while. They just back up your settings - it does nothing without being plugged-in.

Purchased this from Amazon when it was a gold box special. Works well, does what it says. If it wasn't on sale, you'd probably be better off with the base model as this units only adds a highly programmable on/off timer.

Knocked off a star for what I imagine is a quality control issue. Item came in Amazon's "frustration free" packaging, so just the unit and the instructions, no packaging. I can't tell if this was a refurb or not, but the item description did not indicate that. The unit was missing one of the four case screws, and there was something rattling inside. After taking it apart, I found it was a large piece of solder floating around in the unit. Glad I decided to investigate before plugging it in and risking a short. As i said, i have no idea if this was a refurbished unit, but with the missing screw and loose solder piece, I imagine it is.