Squid’s Quick Take:
This plug is for you IF:
- You exclusively use Amazon/Alexa as your smart home hub, and never plan to change
- This power strip or this outlet don’t suit your needs better
- You aren’t attaching this to something you’ll need to still work if the internet goes out
- You don’t mind the high price
- AND you like the aesthetic and form factor of the plug
If that isn’t you, we recommend the Kasa Smart Plug Mini as a significantly cheaper alternative that has more features and a similarly easy setup.
Let’s get into the deep dive:
Introducing: The Amazon Alexa Smart Plug
Amazon has had an amazing decade. Since the announcement and release of Alexa in 2014, Amazon has become an epicenter of smart home development. Its strength lied in its platform – a place where thousands of companies could develop “Alexa skills” for their appliances, turning their increasingly electronic devices into a part of a truly connected home ecosystem.
4 years after Alexa’s release, Amazon released a staple product: the Amazon Alexa Smart Plug.
It’s worth noting that this wasn’t groundbreaking at the time. Kasa/TP-Link made a connected smart plug in 2015, and plenty of digital timer plugs were on the market even before connected homes were widely available.
This late-to-game device from the early-to-industry giant does not compete well on price. Especially when considering products like this Amazon Basics power strip (3 surge-protected outlets) or this Amazon Basics wall outlet (2 outlets) are about the same price as the single Amazon Alexa Smart Plug.
AMAZON SMART PLUG – USER EXPERIENCE
Build Quality:
The build quality on this plug is exceptional. There is a matte look and texture that I love, the housing feels solidly built, and the logo is so near invisible it may as well not be there. The logo is printed only as a shift from matte to glossy material, leaving the impression of an unmarked plug.
For me, this is perfect. I hate logos on my stuff.
The aesthetic of this plug would almost make it worth its high price, if it had some more functionality to power up the package. We’ll get into that later.
Form Factor:
While stylish, this thing is large. Not only is it the widest of the plugs we’ve reviewed, it’s also deeper along it’s “z axis”, making it stick out from the wall further than other plugs.
If you have an outlet with side by side orientation, this thing will easily cover three outlets.
Additionally, if you have an outlet near furniture or in a hard to reach place, this larger form factor may not fit, for example, I wouldn’t be able to fit the plug in the lower slot of the outlet next to my desk.
Most smart plugs have the side-byside orientation problem, but for a noticeably smaller footprint, we recommend the Kasa Smart Plug Mini, or the GHome Smart Plug Mini (though that second one has vertical form factor issues you should stay aware of).
Installation & Setup
Amazon has NAILED the effortless setup. Open the Alexa app, hit the plus sign, answer a couple questions and scan a QR code? It automatically found the device and within minutes I was setup and ready to go.
The only easier setup I’ve seen is with Apple HomeKit devices, but that comes at the expense of a truly walled garden. Alexa’s ease of installation earns a perfect score in this aspect.
App Experience
I’m not a big fan of the Alexa App. Specifically, I think that the UI can be difficult to understand, because it tries to blend so many things onto each screen.
This does get overcome with familiarity- if you already use the Alexa app you’ll either know exactly what I’m talking about, or you’ll be so used to the app that you don’t even notice how many unrelated things they jam onto the home screen.
Setting a schedule for the plug took more steps than with other app interfaces. There is no device-level scheduling with this Alexa Plug, if you want it to run at certain times, you’ll need to make an Alexa routine.
Making a simple routine to have a plug turn on at sunrise took me 15 steps. Compare that with Kasa’s app, where I was able to make the same automation in just 6 taps.
The reliance on routines is a drawback if this is your first or only smart device, but if you’re synchronizing rooms of plugs or devices it’s a great system. Alexa’s real strength is in the breadth of its ecosystem – there are simply so many devices that you can add and use as triggers, you’ll never run out of customization options.
With all those options, it would be nice if Amazon would build in a simple timer feature. I like using my lamp as a gentle “stop gaming in 30 minutes” device (I set it behind me where it causes glare on my screen when the light comes on).
Another nice thing I noticed – Alexa allows you to have a plug “Toggle off or on” depending on the plug’s current state. That’s a more rare feature than you might expect.
The other nice thing about an Amazon official product – no need for a third party app. You definitely sacrifice features that come in those third-party/device level apps, but I can’t argue with anyone who just wants to keep their phone screen free of clutter.
User Experience Score: 8/13
This is a beautiful plug, with a startlingly easy setup process. The app is a powerful ecosystem platform with a poor UI that may be confusing to newcomers.
AMAZON SMART PLUG – FEATURES & PERFORMANCE
This plug is an Amazon Alexa product, not an Amazon Basics product. That said, the plug is . . . Kinda basic.
It powers off. And it powers on. When you schedule it to. If you need more than that, like a timer, or a cycling/circulating mode, this is not the plug for you.
The low-profile button has a really nice feel, and is beautifully set into the side of the plug. Our thorough and scientific testing (pressing the button like a hundred times) revealed no issues.
Turning the power on or off via your phone has the slight delay associated with non-Thread compatible devices, but it is better than others we’ve tested.
The fact that this plug can only be programmed through Alexa routines means two things:
- The plug can do basically anything if you have the proper device to trigger it with
and
- The plug can’t do any of the things that other smart plugs do out-of-the-box.
For example, want to have a temperature sensor in your home trigger your smart plug? You can do that, with the Alexa app.
But want to have a cycling plug that turns off for 29 minutes, then on for 1 minute, 24 hours a day? (I’m looking at you, terrarium owners who want to auto-mist their tanks all day.)
The GHome Smart Plug does that with one command in the app. With Alexa, you’d need to schedule 96 different routines to make that happen. (The GHome also integrates with Alexa)
Along similar lines, I don’t want to schedule an Alexa routine every time I want my lamp to turn off in thirty minutes. (it’s to remind me to stop reading and go to bed.) Just give me a simple timer feature like other plugs have.
Features & Performance Score: 5/13
While you can do impressive things with Alexa routines, this plug doesn’t come with the built-in features of other plugs.
AMAZON SMART PLUG – INTEGRATION
We score integration on 3 things:
- Does the device integrate well with other company’s devices? Can it work with both Google and Alexa, etc
- Does the device integrate powerfully with products from it’s own ecosystem/company?
- Will this device be integrating into future systems, both on a home and industry level? Id est, will this work with your future smart home, and will it stay valuable in smart homes of the future?
The Alexa Smart Plug we’re reviewing here abjectly fails the first test. Alexa only, Google users are out in the cold. It also doesn’t meet the Matter standard, work on a Thread network, or 5g wifi.
The second test it passes with flying colors, just by nature of being an Alexa product. Nobody has a wider smarthome ecosystem than Amazon.
It also measures up to the third standard well. I’ll get into the details in the next section (how Amazon supports the device), but I’ll just say this: smart plugs aren’t going anywhere as a quick conversion tool to make dumb devices smart. And Amazon won’t drop support for a staple product like this one.
Integration Score: 3/13
For all it’s integration capabilities within the Amazon ecosystem and good prospects of future support, A lack of Matter certification and 3rd party hub compatibility places this plug firmly within Amazon’s walled garden.
AMAZON SMART PLUG – COMPANY & CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Amazon has come under fire in recent years for allegations of poor ethics and business practices. Yet, I suspect that many of those moral objectors still take advantage of Prime’s 2 day shipping and unparalleled returns policy.
That’s who Amazon is as a company. At the end of the day, Amazon strives to be Earth’s most customer-centric company. And they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
What does all of this have to do with plugs?
Amazon has teams of customer service agents who can and will help you solve your products problem, or get you a refund if it’s not the right fit. Even the negative reviews for this plug show that they were able to get support for the device.
One important story we pieced together from the reviews: Multipe users complained that if the plug was disconnected from wifi for 7-10 minutes (in a brief internet outage) the plug would turn off. That created some real problems for one user who had connected a fridge to the outlet.
When we ran the “wifi down” test, the plug didn’t have the problem.
Those reviews were less than a year old at the time of writing. That tells me that not only did the Amazon team take the reviews/reports seriously, but they fixed the issue. You can’t ask for higher assurance that a product team is supporting and improving a device.
Company Score: 13/13
Where this plug is concerned, it’s clear that the Alexa team is highly involved with support and updates.
AMAZON SMART PLUG – SQUID SCORE
The Squid Score encapsulates a philosophy that is unique to SquidReviews. Here, we recognize that not all smart devices simplify life, and connecting your home doesn’t necessarily make it a more peaceful one. About half of the way we evaluate devices comes down to how the device responds in an internet or power outage.
Locking users out of their home when the internet is down is a surprisingly frequent shortcoming of smart locks. That’s not the Squid Score way.
For smart plugs, we ask the following 2 questions:
Question 1: Will the Amazon Smart Plug remember schedules when it becomes disconnected from WiFi?
A: Unfortunately, no. This is one of the drawbacks of requiring users to do everything through Alexa routines.
If you’ve hooked up something important, like a fish feeder, to trigger with your smart plug, and you’re gone for the week, make sure your internet is stable for that time, or use a different plug.
Question 2: If the power goes out, will this plug turn back on when the power is restored?
A: Also no. this plug won’t remember it’s last state before the power went off, which can be a big problem in regions (like the midwest in storm season) that frequently have micro-power outages. When power is restored, the plug will stay off until it recieves instruction to do otherwise.
As far as simplifying life, this plug doesn’t outperform other plugs in it’s category, and I don’t think the somewhat complex app experiences contributes positively.
There is a life-simplifying aspect to not needing an additional third party app, we’ll give them that.
Squid Score: 3/13
Smart plugs are meant to simplify life, set and forget. But this plugs poor performance in the case of internet and power outages will add one more thing to remember when those inconveniences strike.
AMAZON SMART PLUG: OVERALL AND FINAL THOUGHTS
Our scores so far average out to 6.8. When choosing whether to shift that up to an 8 or down to a 5 (We rate on the fibonacci sequence here), the extremely high price pushes this down to a 5.
Seriously, why is this plug so expensive? You can get a smart power strip from Amazon Basics for near the same price, or you could go to a third party and get a premium plug that features energy consumption monitoring. This plug is as under-featured as it is beautiful, and I can only give it a 5/13 overall.
Overall Score: 5/13
The Amazon Smart Plug has beautiful aesthetics, but is ultimately too expensive for the lack of features that are considered basic in other smart plugs.