P3 International P4460 Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor , grey

I purchased this meter to understand why my electric bill has become so high. I knew that I had lots of devices connected 24/7 that were each using small amounts of electric power, but didn't know whether that was my problem. Also, I have two refrigerators, but one of them is seldom opened. I didn't know if it was a major contributor to my problem. And finally, I have some devices that we use frequently which clearly consume a lot of power, like our television and home theater system, and I didn't know if watching that for several hours a day was causing a problem.The product provided answers to all my questions.What it doesThe meter plugs into a wall outlet, and then you un-plug the device you want to measure, and instead plug it into the meter. You immediately can see how much power the device is using at that moment in time. When you do this, you have to remember that some devices have a standby mode, where they are consuming some power, but are not consuming as much power as when they are being used. A good example is a TV set. It uses a little power all the time so it can read the "on command" from your remote control. Then, once turned on, the TV consumes a lot more power than in standby.So for many devices, you have to measure the standby power, and then measure the power again once the device is turned on.Almost any power meter can measure these two types of power. However what makes this particular meter so useful is that it can accumulate measurements over time, so you can figure out how much power a device will use, on average, over a cycle of many days. A good example of this is your refrigerator. You can wait until you hear it running and then plug it into the meter and read the power. I did this with the old fridge in our garage and found that it uses 248 watts while running. However, that is not a useful figure because, of course, any refrigerator cycles on and off during the course of the day. What you really need to know is how much power it uses over the course of 24, 48, or 72 hours. With the P4460 Kill A Watt EZ power meter, you can plug in an appliance, walk away, and come back in an hour, day, or week, and read the total amount of power used over that period of time. It is easy to then figure out how much power the appliance will use, on average, during the course of a month, and how much it will cost.To help you with the cost calculation, the meter lets you enter your energy cost in cents per killowatt hour (a figure you'll find on your monthly bill) and it will then tell you how much the appliance will cost per day, week, month, or year. This is pretty neat, although there is one flaw in this approach. The flaw is that PG&E (our electricity provider) has a multi-tier rate system where we pay very little for the first 90 killowatt-hours of electricity, then more for the next 30, even more for the next 60, and even more for everything after that. You'll have to come up with your own math if you want to figure out which rate to use. My solution was to use the most expensive rate because our bill always triggers the top tier (as I expect most people's bills will do if they own a home instead of an apartment). Thus, any new electricity usage will always be charged incrementally at the top rate.What it doesn't doThis meter requires that you be able to plug the device into the meter. This means that you have to be able to get at the plug and disconnect it from the wall. By contrast, you can purchase a "clamp on" power meter that only requires that you be able to access a wire that feeds the device, and you then clamp onto that wire, without disconnecting the device, and the meter reads the power by reading the induced magnetic field from the wire. This is a much more elaborate way of measuring power, and these devices cost at least ten times what the P4460 costs.The meter also cannot help you measure anything that is built in. Thus, you can't measure the power used by all the lights in your kitchen (we have a lot of track lights which are quite clearly consuming a lot of power, but I can't measure this with the P4460). The Kill A Watt also cannot measure 240V appliances like your dryer or electric oven.Summary -- Is It Useful?So, having used this meter for a few days, was it worth the cost and is it useful? The answer to both questions is a resounding YES! I was able to find out that the almost ninety devices I have connected to the wall in this house use enough standby electricity (the amount used when connected, but not turned on) to cost me almost $40 per month. Some of the whacko "green" people try to tell me that I should disconnect these devices, but that is not practical. Do I really want to turn off my Internet modem, my router, my wireless access point, my fax machine, my telephone answer machine, my portable phone, etc. and only turn them on at the instant I'm going to use them? I suppose I could, but it would make them far less useful, and would be a total pain in the neck.However, I did find several devices that used a lot more standby power than I would have thought, and which I CAN turn off. A good example is the furnace. During the summer, I don't need to have these connected (I actually have two small furnaces, instead of one large one). I had never bothered to unplug them. However, the P4460 tells me that they are using 13.2 watts of power, all day, all night, every day. I found that at my electricity rates, every 5 watts of 24/7 power costs me $1 per month. Thus, by unplugging the two furnaces I am going to be able to save about $2.25 per month for about four months of the year.So, I have identified appliances that I can disconnect, without greatly affecting my lifestyle, and by doing so, I can save money. I'll certainly pay for this gadget within the first year, just by doing this.I am NOT doing this to "save the planet," because quite frankly what I do -- and even what lots of people like me doing the same thing -- won't make a hill of beans difference (take a look at how much electricity is used to create a pound of aluminum or roll a sheet of steel ...). I am an electrical engineer, and believe me, you don't change things by operating at the margins of the problem.Instead, I'm doing this because it is going to save money on my electricity bill. The cause may not be as noble as the fiction of "saving the planet," but it is far more real and -- this is the whole point -- far more MEASURABLE!

The media could not be loaded. It is an excellent tool that gives you pretty much everything you need quickly so that you can run around the house testing different things. It has nearly every calculation that you might be interested in. It is very easy to discover surprises for vampires that you didn't realize, as well as figure out the actual cost of things you knew drew energy but didn't know in actual costs, such as how much that computer actually draws if you leave it on. It is a nearly perfect tool. There are a few things I might wish for, like a back light, extension cord, or longer tracking than 99:99. But you can work with all that.USINGYou just plug it in, and plug the device into it and it starts working. It is a little hard to use directly without combining it with a separate power strip or extension cable. For example, it is awkward to read and might not fit if you plug directly into the existing socket in a power strip or wall outlet. It is much easier if you buy a separate power strip, plug this on top of it, just swap in by the power trip extension and device into this. Then you can easily fit anywhere, can tilt and read more easily, etc. In poor lit areas, you will need to carry a flashlight to help read the screen. I just run around with a paper, pencil, and flashlight and write down findings while testing a number of devices in a row. Just swap out an existing plug, hold reset for 5 seconds to start fresh, and you're off and just monitoring the results. Measuring is actually very quick if you are just testing current operating state of things. It only takes a minute or so to swap out, check current wattage and cost, and move onto the next plug. I test items individually plugged into a power strip under a desk in less than 10 minutes -- swap each, power on, reset, cycle through measurements, write down finding, move on.RESULTSIt immediately tells you current voltage, watts in use, amps, Hz, and a few more, and then projects the costs per hour, day, week, month, and year based on what it has seen so far. You can enter your own utility rate in case you run at a high bracket. It keeps a running total in KWh, total cost so far, so to isolate a new device you hold reset for 5 seconds. If you want the total cost while operating in a certain mode such as to isolate when running at full power you just hit the reset and it assumes costs from that point on and assumes if it keeps running at that it will project out. So you can easily calculate after resetting the cost per hour. For example, how much your computer uses while on and doing intensive work, versus sleep mode, versus turned off. It is nice to know how much per hour something costs so you might think twice how long you run it in that mode. Then you can leave it on for a day or two to discover the realistic cost such as how much it affects your monthly energy bill overall. For example, my water distiller cycles and while cost per hour is one thing, I want to know how much I am really consuming per day and per month.EXAMPLESFor example, I learned my space heater uses 1100W at at my utility rate of 0.34/KWh I know it costs me 0.35/hr to use, so now there is a concrete cost that I know. My desktop computer consumes 100W while idle, but my laptop consumes only 30W while idle. My older computer speakers use 5W whether on or off it makes no difference with the power adapter plugged in. My external hard drive draws about 5W while off too. My coffee maker surprisingly uses 6W while off, 6.8W while on, which adds up to $17.80/yr just to sit on my counter while off. Now I will put it on a power strip. Under a longer test for something that cycles, my water distiller, it realistically costs $25/month, which makes me rethink how much I draw from it. I learned my new wireless printers each draw 3 to 4W while in standby mode, but 0W while off. I use them infrequently, so I might as well just turn them off while not using them.DRAWBACKSThere are a few things that could be slightly better, but are all workable.1. I had to build my own dongle by attaching this to a power strip for easier swapping & reading. (cheap & easy)2. Need a flashlight to read in low lit areas due to no back light (no big deal really).3. Long running tests sometimes reset, or automatically at 99:99 rather than remembering only the most recent 99:99. So if you check it shortly after it rolls over or resets, it will not be accurate. (but sometimes works)The biggest problem is #3. I wanted to get an idea of a weeks worth of actual use of my water distiller because the daily use varies and would even out over a week. But I checked it after it reset or rolled over and then only had 8:22 of history in which it had not even run in those hours making it calculate that it was free. But now that it is back up to 47:00 in history it calculates $25/month. I don't know for sure the cause of why it reset other than it was around 99:99, but this hasn't always happened. I have since tested beyond 99 in which it lists "142h". If it did reset at 99:99, I wish rather than a complete reset every 99:99 that it would just drop the oldest data and keep rating the most recent 99:99 once it reaches that much. For example, I can't possibly test my water softener for a month this way in which I have no idea when or how often that runs so that a 99:99 sampling will not be adequate. Or else it just sometimes resets on me near that time. But really this is minor. I use it much more often for spot checking things.

So far this Kill-a-watt has worked well. I'm a little nervous about bout the grounding pin breaking, based on some other reviews, but I've been very careful to grab firmly by the back-half of the shell and pull straight out with no issues. I do like that it remembers usage so, if it is in a difficult place to read (like behind the fridge or under a desk), you can move it to another outlet to read it. However in almost any outlet, it can be difficult to read because the LCD is not backlit and has a narrow viewing angle. It is especially difficult to reas the tiny units unless looking straight at it. (IMO, they should improve the display and add backlighting and a button to turn on backlighting (not always on and consuming power).I'm not sure I would trust it to measure something like a space heater though - not over any extended period of time. I did check several heaters, but for only around 5 minutes each, so there was no chance of heat building up in the outlet. I did notice that all of the "1500 watt" digitally controlled thermostat heaters I tested would spike to over the measurable 1875 watts for a couple seconds when they first kicked on. It handled it fine, but I wouldn't abuse it like that regularly! It's unfortunate, because measuring usage of a heater over at least a 24 hour period is probability about the most logical item to measure next to something like a refrigerator or dehumidifier, but some of these small heaters really push the envelope, at least when first kick in and still use 1450-1500 watts for several minutes so they can quickly warm a room.