I’ve always suspected that the simplest and low-key most devious way for a company to control your smart home is not to just make a bunch of connected products but also make the sockets you connect those products into. It’s like controlling the water in Chinatown. A smart socket is a quick and easy way to make any electronic more intelligent. And naturally Amazon had the same idea with the Amazon Smart Plug, a $25 way to easily infuse Alexa into anything else you want to plug in.
The Amazon Smart Plug just looks like a regular three-pronged white plastic plug. It’s a little big considering there’s only one socket, but otherwise it blends into the background unnoticed even as it wields all the real power. You’ll just need to pay attention to the lights while doing initial setup over 2.4GHz Wi-Fi.
Once installed the Amazon Smart Plug can easily become the infrastructure for your whole smart home ecosystem. What ultimately makes smart devices smart is their ability to intelligently turn themselves on and off at certain times without direct user input. And the Amazon Smart Plug offers that ability to any otherwise dumb device you put into it. Set up routines with the mobile app or use Alexa voice commands. It’s so convenient.
However, the Amazon Smart Plug keeps this convenience solely within the Amazon family. Unlike other (albeit pricier) smart plugs it doesn’t work with rival digital assistants from Google or Apple. It also shuts out more neutral useful home automation third-party apps like IFTTT. We wish it gave us more information about its energy usage, too. But if your body already belongs to Bezos you can further complete the contract with the Amazon Smart Plug.
For more on the Amazon Smart Plug check out the extensive review on our sister site PCMag. For more on Amazon read our their creepy new facial recognition tech senses your fear as well as their initiative to donate unsold products instead of trashing them.
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