Kasa Smart Plug Mini, Smart Home Wi-Fi Outlet Works with Alexa & Google Home, Wi-Fi Simple Setup, No Hub Required – A Certified for Humans Device (HS105)

I like automation. Have one on a desk light, used daily. Has a plug-in slide dimmer on a wire between it and the lamp, so it turns on on a command, and dims from a wire. Have one on my motorcycle trickle charger. I can just turn it on timer for an hour or two to top off the battery, if I feel the bike has not had enough use. I have not scheduled, but would imagine that works well, also. Used it on the Christmas tree, too. Alexa, turn on plug Tree worked great! (Go Brooklyn!) The enclosure could be a little less real-estate hungry...

I keep getting more and more of these. I use them all over my house. I use the app on my phone and Amazon Alexa to turn them on and off or schedule routines. Good quality and great price. Can’t beat them.

Attached my lights so Alexa can turn them on when asked to. Or you can program when you’d like to turn on what’s plugged in. I set it to turn on when my alarm wakes me up I’m the morning. Easy to figure out, I’m not the best with setting up electronics. And this was a breeze.

The Kasa app is how you initially set it up. After that, you set it up in the Amazon Alexa app. Worked easily and right away. I use this plug for my book light. Every night, I say, Echo, turn on book light. Then my Echo Dot lady says Okay and turns it on. In the morning, I have a routine on my Alexa app. The Echo Dot tells me what day it is, turns on the book light, then plays some music. So the integration is fantastic.

The device is working, is fairly easy to setup, and the app is decent. However, I need to emphasize that the whole Kasa app/cloud comes with a big privacy caveat. First of all, the app needs your location data in order for it to setup a new device, ie. a new smart plug. You can’t get pass it, though it allows you to disable location access after setup. This is completely unnecessary. Second, it stores your WiFi password in the app and possibly online. This does make setting up easier, but again, unnecessary. Third, there’s no way for you to tell TPLink to delete these kinds of sensitive data without also deleting your account. So, be aware of these before you make the purchase.

If you are buying this to work with Alexa, you should know That you are going to have to setup a second account with Kasa that then enables you to connect it to Alexa. It also uses an old school method of requiring you to use your cell phone to use WIFI to directly connect to the device during configuration to set it up to talk with your hone WiFi network. I’m an IT guy so while this stuff comes easily to me, the setup failed several times until I restarted the device. The setup process is painfully slow compared to the Alexa devices. You might want to buy the Amazon smart plug instead. This purchase was a promo one or I would likely have purchased the Alexa plug to avoid multiple online accounts.

Its really a fairly decent product, but they are a PITA to install. Totally not really intuitive. Supposed to be easy, but clearly not designed for average people. Im guessing engineers decided what easy should look like. So vexing. Terribly bulky packaging.

I freakin love these things. They kinda drive my GF nuts because I have so many things hooked up to them, but I love not having to think about turning lights on when the sun goes down and being able to control all these parts from afar. Of the smart home type products Ive used so far, all the TP link ones have hands-down been my favorite. The app is intuitive and has a lot of great options.

I’ve owned a lot of smart plugs over the years, and I think I can safely say this is the easiest to set up (took...maybe 2 mins...maybe less?) and has so far proven to be the most reliable. It also has a very nice small footprint. Why on earth anybody still uses Wemo smart plugs (bulky, unreliable, often decide they don’t want to be controlled by Alexa anymore - “unresponsive”, and take a really long time...and a prayer... to set them up), is anyone’s guess. But I have finally given up on them, and will probably use this brand from now on.

I bought this for a specific purpose - to be able to power cycle our smart TV when it became unresponsive, without needing to get to the outlet behind the TV. Once set-up problems had been resolved, it does this very well through the app. I havent yet set up Alexa integration, so cant comment on that. Setup appears simple - plug in, and use the app to guide through the stages, following flashing lights on the unit. Despite following to the letter, it kept stalling at the stage when the app was trying to communicate via the wifi network to the smart plug and (I think) trying to establish direct communication with my phone via its own SSID. It kept getting stuck at that stage, taking me down one of two routes, the app asking if I could see blue and amber alternate flashing and if so, trying to select its SSID on my phone or otherwise doing a reset. Neither were successful. I sent the first back, suspecting a bad radio after talking to support. Same with the second, and having decided that it was unlikely I received two bad units, I spoke to TP Link support directly. They were very good, considering the low price of this item and got things going after a router and phone reset and a long (30 sec) reset of the smart plug. However there is nothing odd about my network - a single Linksys WRT series 802.11ac device or phone (Pixel 4). So why was this so difficult? A puzzle given the large number of excellent ratings.