P3 International P4320 Kill-A-Watt Power Strip
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List Price: Our Price: $69.92 You Save: $30.03 (30%) Availability: Usually ships in 4-5 business days Category: Tools See more product details |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of P3 International P4320 Kill-A-Watt Power Strip
Customer Review: Bulky and not high quality
Summary: 1 Stars
The item turned out to be very bulky roughly 2in by 2 inches.. not like a normal power strip that is about 1 in thin. Also, the item I received was defective in that the Off button would not turn off the power strip at times. I contacted Tech Support and I paid $$ to mail it back for a replacement. However, I think the Customer Service was not that friendly nor due they reply to emails. I got my replacement power strip back in box with no letter or explanation of what was fixed. My replacement was also bad so I wasted my shipping money. Now , I am getting a 2nd replacement. This is a horrible experience for a customer.Customer Review: Does not Work!
Summary: 1 Stars
DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT! I had purchased my first unit and it dies less than 7 days later. It appears that when the power is disrupted to the unit it shut downs. Pressing the rest button does nothing. I ordered a second unit and sent the first one back. We had a major snow storm on the east coast and the lights went out. The unit never came back on again. This time the unit was 4 days old. I have the Kill A WATT EZ Plugged with a power strip and have never had a problem. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!Customer Review: Good quick and dirty electricity measurer.
Summary: 5 Stars
This one is nice as it will save the max/min values. So you can run a machine on it. Stress the machine. Then find out what is the maximum amps it drew at any particular time. Current was really all I was interested in but it can also keep track of total wattage over a period to determine hogs. Not sure exactly how useful voltage is since that tends to be a constant with most devices. I had also picked up the smaller wall unit plug which is the real quick and dirty, but since it does not keep track of the maximums it was of limited usefulness compared to this one even though it was a bit cheaper.Customer Review: Great energy-use tool
Summary: 5 Stars
I love it. It has done just what I bought it to do - figure out what it is costing to run various computers and electronics around the house and at businesses.Customer Review: Great way to check standby power consumption, too!
Summary: 5 Stars
Although the product description, in a strictly technical sense, contains an error in that it cannot truly measure efficiency of any appliance connected to it, it is extremely useful to determine the cost of operating any appliance or group of appliances...it provides all info, & actually more, than the average consumer might use (i.e. power factor, which is NOT a measure of efficiency).
Any appliance with a remote control consumes power in its "standby" mode, i.e. waiting to be turned "on" either by its remote control unit or its built-in "on" button/switch. As it is "waiting," it is consuming a small amount of power. For a remote-controlled home theater system, that could include a TV, audio-video receiver, cable box, CD player, DVD player, etc., etc.. Typically these are all plugged into a surge-protector power strip (or at least should be) & all consume some amount of power even when "off," i.e. in "standby." Although it's not much, in my case it comes to about $50/yr. That, of course, doesn't include all the other household items which can consume power constantly, clocks, computers, battery chargers, cell phone chargers, etc, & which the Kill A Watt PS can also independently measure.
The cost of operation is very easy to determine: Just plug your surge-protector power strip (or device or devices) into the Kill A Watt PS (for a month, for example) & it continuously records the power consumed in "standby" of everything connected, as well as, power used during normal operation. To determine the cost, check your utility bill to get the cost of power for the month...then just take the total cost & divide it by the total kWh on that bill to get the price per kWh for that month. That number (price per kWh) can be multiplied by the kWh that the Kill A Watt PS measures & the total is the cost for the elapsed time (number of hours) that is indicated on the Kill A Watt PS. If it was plugged in for a month (24 hrs times 30 days=720 hrs ), just multiply the cost by 12 for the annual cost.
Really pretty easy... you will probably be amazed at how much power can be used just watching a home theater system. By the way, raising the volume, obviously uses more power! You can watch that happen with the Kill A Watt PS.
Although the product has some surge protection, I found its surge-protection energy rating to be considerably lower than I personally would feel comfortable with to protect my home theater system, so I don't use it for that purpose.
One note of information: When you unplug some appliances with built-in clocks, it is likely that the clock will have to be reset when plugged back in.
All-in-all I found this product extremely useful & it, when used according to its manual, performs simply, quickly, & safely, as advertised.
BTW, Amazon had the best price by far (Aug 2009)!