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- First reviewAugust 21, 2017
- Last reviewAugust 21, 2017
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itzram's Reviews
Operate electrical appliances remotely with this TP-Link mini smart Wi-Fi plug. It lets you switch lights and other electronics on and off, check their current status and schedule their operation from your mobile device via the Kasa app. This TP-Link mini smart Wi-Fi plug supports voice control when paired with your Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
Customer Rating
4
Wi-fi Range extender with buildt-in Smartplug func
on August 21, 2017
Posted by: itzram
from Milpitas, CA
There are two parts to this product. It is a wireless Wi-Fi extended and it is also a smart plug.
The electric plug is managed through wifi. TP-LINK Kasa App available in all the app stores allows you to remotely (not physical interaction) manage any device (on/off) attached to this plug.
I setup the app in about 2 minutes. Probably 2 or 3 taps in the app is that is required, rest of the time is taken by the app to basically discover the devices, connect to them and setting up themselves to manage those devices. Really simple, intuitive and fairly quick.
There is also a "scene" functionality. This is quite interesting. Basically, you can create a customs scene, say a "Movie watching" scene. In this scene you can set all light adapters to off and only one ambient light adapter to be on. So if you tap that scene, all lights turn on/off appropriately in one tap. This is pretty cool. I can only visualize the idea behind it as I had just one adapter to check the functionality.
You can also set the app in away mode which will allow you to operate the plug even when you are away. For example you could turn the lights on in your house during night time when you are away to simulate presence in the house.
The app also integrates with Alexa which means that Alexa can learn to use the app to manage the devices. So, you can talk to alexa which talks to Kasa and manages the devices.
The second part of this device is the Wi-Fi extender. This is similar to the AC2600 Wi-Fi extender available with TP-Link. I have used this product and I can tell you that they have fixed a bunch of issues on the AC2600 with the AC1200 range extender with smart plug. I could setup the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies in one pass (the AC2600 has many issues in setup). There are quite a few controls such as a access controls that you can set regarding which devices can access the extender.
However, one big con is that performance through the extender drops like a stone in water. In my house, I could get only 50% of the performance with an extender as compared to direct Wi-Fi. That is some serious performance overhead there in this device. But then, the purpose of this device is to provide better performance than a connection with just a single band of signal.
The KASA app also allows you to control the extender functionality completely over the cloud when you are away from home or using local Wi-Fi when you are in. Everything works like a charm.
I would recommend this product where you are looking to make your home smart and at the same time trying to get some wifi extensions going in your backyard or something like that.
Submitted as part of a free sample program
There is another major con. There is a significant reduction in performance when you compare to connecting to an extended vs direct Wi-Fi. In the case of the AC1200
Mobile Submission: False
I would recommend this to a friend!
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