Review on 🔌 Aqara Smart Plug: Zigbee Enabled with Energy Monitoring, Overload Protection & Voice Control - Compatible with Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT, & Apple HomeKit by Junrey Jewel

I bought the Aqara Smart Plug for several reasons: 1) as a Zigbee signal booster for Aqara's vibration sensor, which kept disconnecting; and 2) as a power monitor for our laundry dryer in the basement so I can set up automation to notify us when the drying cycle is complete. The Zigbee Smart Plug works excellently as a repeater. This immediately fixed the vibration sensor connection issue and increased the quality of the connection shown in the Aqara app from Poor to Acceptable. I think if I add another smart switch somewhere between my current smart plug and the M2 hub, I can raise the quality of the connection to "Good" (the best of the three levels). So I'm very happy with it. The processing of the device also seems to be very good. It's solid, the switch doesn't feel helpless, and is very responsive to on/off commands from the Home app. And the price is affordable, so everything is fine on those fronts. The disappointing aspect and the reason I'm only giving this device 4 stars instead of 5 is that it doesn't support Smart Switch's power metering capabilities for automation purposes. As I mentioned, I have a tumble dryer hooked up to it and in the Aqara app I can see in real time how the power goes above 4w when the dryer is turned on, when it goes over 200w while drying. the cycle is running and then when it drops to 4 watts when the cycle is complete. So it would be very easy to create an automation that plays a sound on the HomePod and changes the color of the lightbulb at the top to let me know when the cycle is complete. In fact, I've been doing this successfully with WeMo for many years. Revealing plug. WeMo also doesn't let you create automations directly on performance metrics (accept the ability to generate a phone notification through the WeMo app), but the Insight plugin supports Used/Not Used events. These events are different from the on/off checkboxes. "On off." whether the plug itself is included or not. The "Used"/"Not Used" flag indicates whether the device connected to the switch is actually consuming power. So these events are crucial for building automation, which can tell you if a device is actually working or not. So far, WeMo Insight is the only plugin I've found that correctly supports the "In Use" event in HomeKit. The problem with WeMo Insight is that it has a very short lifespan. Almost every year I had to change the plug. In fact, the lifespan was so short that it seems like WeMo are no longer selling the Insight. It no longer appears in WeMo's product line on their website, and the only Insight devices available for purchase here at Revain are "used" products. Sensitive fork, but that's not it. But it's a good Zigbee range extender if you need it, and in fact I'll probably be buying another one soon as those connectors are also much more responsive than WeMos (even with the WeMo bridge). In response to a question I posted about this on this product page, Aqara replied that they are considering adding an "In Use" trigger feature to the smart plug. I really hope they choose to do that. This is a feature that should be available in all smart devices, but most manufacturers seem to ignore it. I hope this overview explains to Aqara and other vendors why it is important to support In Use/Not In Use as another set of triggers besides simple on/off events.