P3 International P4460 Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor by P3 INTERNATIONAL
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Digital camera reviews of P3 International P4460 Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor
Digital camera Review: Find out for sure what your gadgets really cost
Summary: 5 Stars
After hearing all the hype on TV about how much energy all my chargers were using just sitting there, I decided to find out for myself.
The Kill A Watt is easy to use. Just input what your electric rate is and you can find out instantly what that charger costs (when charging or just sitting there plugged in). Turns out my chargers only used pennies a year when not being used and only a little more when charging. Not worth the trouble to keep unplugging them.
You get the cost by hour, day, week, month and year. For a device that cycles on and off just leave it plugged in for say 24 hours and you can see what was actually used and a projection for any of the time frames above. I found out our small freezer was only using $6.84 a month, well worth the savings and convenience of having a freezer.
The only drawback is that the monitor plugs directly into the wall which can make it a little hard to read. The easy solution is using a short (3 prong) extension cord to get it away from the wall. Even if you do unplug it the data is retained until you press the reset button.
Pressing reset does not erase the rate...easy to change ...as the rates go up and up.
Digital camera Review: Why didn't I buy this sooner?
Summary: 5 Stars
This unit is really easy to use and with the calculations it performs you just plug it in and leave it. For most products you only need to have this plugged in for 24 hours to get a good average. Other things like tvs that get more usage on the weekends needs to be plugged in for about a week. I didn't find the screen hard to read but a 3' outlet strip works well for easy access. Digital camera Review: Household electricity cost management
Summary: 5 Stars
Terrific product.
PROS: Easy to use yet as much detail as you want. Provides hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual costs with the push of a button. Have used for weeks determining costs on Frig, Freezer, TV, window air conditioners and computers. Helpful in making appliance decisions. Allows you to enter local price per kilowatt, which is critical in comparing to new appliances. Before you compare to Energy Star ratings look at what price per kilowatt was used in their calculation and match to yours. Locally we pay $.1602 (16 cents per KW - most rating labels show 6-10 cents). This device saved me from buying new appliances that I thought were a problem but are not the problem.
CONS: Can only do typical 110-120 volt appliances. Cannot do 208-240 volt such as your clothes drier and range/stove.
NOTES: I am copying all appliance data from P3 into spreadsheet to have a 90% picture of all my electricity usage (minus hot water heater, range and drier). Then I can start a more intelligent approach to electricity cost management. Every homeowner should have and use one of these P3 Monitors on a regular basis. Highly recommended.
Digital camera Review: Does what I needed
Summary: 5 Stars
I took the chance and bought a P4460 Electricity Usage Monitor, even though some of the reviewers recieved some bad units. Fortuneatly, mine works fine.
I think the interface is very easy to use, and it does what I'm looking for. Plug it in and an appliance into it, and right away it measures volts and watts and starts keeping track of time and kilowatts (as well as other items). Enter the cost per kilowatt from your electric bill, and it gives you a running tally of what you are paying to run it. The two values it adds over reading the manufactures tag on power consumption and doing the math is that the tags can be off by quite a bit and are usually geared to reporting the max the appliance uses. The other is that this captures how much you are actually using the appliance, especially one like an air conditioner that might use 100 watts when just the fan is running, but jumps to 1000 watts when the compressor kicks in.
Time will tell how durable it is, but the construction appears to be solid.
As far as accuracy goes, I did a few tests, but I did not have a reliable/calibrated known load to measure. I used a lamp and swapped in numerous bulbs of different wattage and a good quality electric heater with 700 watt & 800 watt heating elements. For everything I measured other than one bulb, the meter reported a lower reading than what the manufacturer claimed (e.g. 630 watts for the 700 watt heater setting), generally about 5 to 10% lower. I guess it's possible that the meter is correct. I compared it's voltage reading to a pretty good quality volt meter and they were about 1 volt apart. Even if it's off by 5-10%, it's fine for my purposes.
Digital camera Review: review
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent product - use this one to review my usage on my appliances - Frig, coffee maker, Freeze TV etc). Got rid of my old freezer and old TV once I was able to visualize usage. Also, use it's brother on my back-up generator - AC outlet (more than a few electrical outages in Yaak, MT.) It allows me to set the generator to it's proper running speed for the correct voltage output instead of running it full bore. I use this house one to monitor the voltage output from my generator to household and appliances while I am in the house. Especially love it when I don't have to go outside and into the shed to check on AC output on those freeze your buns off times when the electrical grid and mother nature get in a battle.