Smappee Home Energy Monitor UK

Useful/interesting to begin with but adding appliances not that simple and not that accurate at the appliance level in terms of identifying. Makes little or no difference to consumption.

Does what it says on the tin. Easy to install, the app works well with prompts to name devices as they are recognised.

Please beware, the original device and the replacement I received from Amazon both had old software which will not connect to the Smappee service. The installation process seemed to work almost up to the final stage. The iphone app reported success, but the smappee only got to flashing (not breathing) green.The devices with this old software cannot be updated remotely.After a week of discussion with Smappee they identified problem was old software (despite the serial numbers being reported with the first query). They offered to replace the units with old software for units with new software.

I wanted to like this product, I really did. The idea of a product which can not only monitor overall power generation and consumption, but then also learn the identity of individual appliances so that the consumption can be broken down amongst appliances, enabling you to see not only what's on at any one time, but also build up a picture of what appliances cost you money, is a great one. After a number of weeks trying it, though, it became clear that the usage, in practice, just doesn't live up to the marketing promise.It looks nice, and installation and set up are easy enough - once up and running you can either wait for it to pick up appliances, which it assigns numbers to, and then try and figure out what they are, or you can turn pretty much everything off and use the in-built "teaching" ability, which involves turning the appliance off and on when instructed to by the app, to get it to learn on demand.The problem with turning everything off is that you can't - at the very least you'd need your Smappee and your wireless network. Even when down to nothing else on in the house - at all - the learning was patchy at best. It would learn some items relatively easily, others wouldn't be picked up after multiple attempts. The larger the wattage, the easier it was to pick up, but about the lowest I was able to get it to detect was 120W - anything under didn't get detected either by it, over time, or through learning. That counts out pretty much everything lighting based, in this day and age of low wattage LEDS. After a fortnight of it learning by itself, I only had half a dozen or so items shown in the appliances list as ones that it had detected which it wanted me to identify for it - I would have expected considerably more.Even when an item is learned, though, the problems don't stop there. Smappee claims to identify something based on its unique energy signature, but I take that claim with a pinch of salt. The bigger the item's wattage the more accurately it got picked up - power showers were picked up with accuracy, but the lower the wattage, the more chance that it wasn't identified as the item in question, or (more likely) was identified as a different item. This meant that the events product illogical results - why would a kettle that hadn't been turned on for ten hours suddenly be recorded as turning off? The tumble dryer is tracked correctly for half the time as the tumble dryer, but then appears as the hob, when the hob isn't being used. The oven turns on, but the dishwasher then turns off. I could go on, but you get the picture - the accuracy is simply not there.The ability to link comfort plugs is a good one, when combined with something like IFTTT, but again, there are some issues. The main one is that having events which are tied to activity of specific appliances only works when you can ensure that that appliance will be recognised all the time - which you can't. The other niggle is that whilst there are triggers based on the amount of energy being generated, or the amount of energy being consumed, there's nothing based on the difference between the two - as we have a solar installation, I would want to enable the plug only to be activated when there's sufficient power being generated over and above that being used at the time, but there's no way of doing that. A bit of a glaring oversight, in my view.Since a major point of having this device is saving electricity by identifying expensive items and their usage, then this lack of reliability in identifying appliances accurately means that it shoots itself in the foot, really. If you can't trust it to be always identifying the kettle as the kettle, then how do you know that the cost it says is associated with the kettle is accurate? You can't. At best, the only numbers you can rely on are the headline numbers for power generation and power consumption, but there are solutions out there which do that for considerably less than the cost of the Smappee.I'll conclude where I started - I wanted to love this product, I really did. But when your product's USP is based around it being able to do something, then it has to be able to do it easily, repeatedly, and reliably, and I'm afraid that in my experience the Smappee just cannot. Maybe the technology is not there yet, maybe it's just too much to ask. But if you're claiming that that's what your device can do, then it needs to be able to do it.

I had to send back one device which wasn't able to fine any WiFi networks after starting up. As we did connect it ass as per manual we were sure that it must be something in the device, so we sent it back and got a replacement which is working without any problems.Additionally we bought 6 of the sockets. We now have all "always on" devices on the sockets and only switch them on when we actually use them, the device will pay for itself within 2 years after doing this.It's easy to find out if you have an old appliance you might want to get rid of because of too high power consumption.

Amazon return policy ran out 26/11 , Smappee stopped working 27/11 no lights no comms no nothing now have to get a replacement via manufacture thanks Amazon, any other retailer is you can still go back too, beware will update if and when i get a replacement, not that i am very confident about the product now

Sadly I bought this product direct from the manufacturer and am stuck with it now. If I'd bought it from Amazon it would have gone back for sure.If you want to blow >£200 on current clamp with a basic network up link then go for it but don't kid yourself this thing is any more than that.The "learning" function is only of use for humour. No matter how much time you spend messing with it the results are terrible. Prime examples are it finding : 38 TVs none of which is ever on for more than 2 minutes, A washing machine with a 21 minute wash cycle and a vacuum that's only ever been used once at 4AM and apparently drew 3kW while in use.....The apps are horrible. Summary data is poorly presented (a screen with 3 numbers, one of which isn't supported by my device..). Logging is minimal and contains no detail. Assuming the learning feature worked I would expect to see drill-downs onto individual items as an absolute minimum but pretty much all you get is a total draw over time plot. Also why are there 2 apps anyway? The newer one is just a re skin with a couple of options removed.The "smart plug" is nothing of the sort. It's just a remote on/off unit. No logging... yeah really, it does take current readings and you can see them in a well hidden menu somewhere in the older version of the app but they are not stored, not real-time and tbh I don't even think they're accurate though that's hard to prove given the shoddy presentation doesn't actually tell you what you're seeing. At an absolute minimum I'd expect the readings from the plug to be exposed in real-time to 3rd party applications.Most of the above I would forgive as I knew I was taking a risk on this product given it's reviews and the general concept behind it. With almost thirty years of electrical and software engineering experience under my belt I had a lot of doubts about the learning function ever producing worthwhile results but I had hoped at a minimum it would be able to push reliable data into Influx/Grafana. If the fancy bits worked that would be a bonus and justify the cost over a much cheaper generic logger.What I can't forgive though and what's worst of all is the customer service. My plug arrived faulty and all their support team could do was ask me to repeat the same failed registration process over and over again. Apparently they have no remote diagnostic tools and no concept of technical support at all. After a few days of making no effort to fix the fault they asked me to return the plug to them at my expense (international shipping as well). I objected to this as this is 2019 and they should be able to diagnose the fault remotely and at the very least cover shipping. I was assured in writing that they would credit it back if I provided receipts so I sent it back. After they received it they emailed to say it was fine but that the radio in the meter unit must be faulty and would need returning (again at my expense). I pointed out that this didn't seem likely as it was reporting wirelessly but after getting a second confirmation costs would be reimbursed I sent it in anyway. Several days later I was pleased to get both items back working and emailed them to arrange payment for shipping only to be told they wouldn't be honouring their promises as "nothing was wrong with the devices". This is clearly a flat-out lie and they are thieves but given the costs involved, the lack of a credible re-seller to act as intermediary and their foreign base of operations it's not worth pursuing sadly.I can only hope that this review saves someone out there the disappointment of buying this lousy product or having to deal with the unprofessional, dishonest and incompetent company that make it.