P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
by P3 INTERNATIONAL
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List Price: Our Price: $14.99 You Save: $15.00 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Tools See more product details |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
Customer Review: recommended
Summary: 5 Stars
I have owned the kill-a-watt recording ac ammeter for about 3 years now; it is a cool device. It measures energy consumption on 110V AC lines. To use it, plug it into a wall or 3-wire extension cord and then plug your load into it.
It displays real-time voltage, current in amps and power in watts. It also displays elapsed time since plugged in and cumulative work in kWh since plugged in. The display is quite readable from 30 degrees either side of perpendicular.
I have no way of judging how accurate it is, but it seems to jive with energyguide estimates on my various tested items. I would bet it is within 5%. I have tested consumption on many things including coffeemakers, fans, TVs, computers, lights and UPSs.
I discovered that the Bunn home coffeemaker uses <1/2 the power of a conventional home coffeemaker even though it is difficult to avoid having it heat 2 pots of water when you make 1 pot (presumably because it does not actually boil water which burns a -ton- of energy). And it shows that my fridge used 23.74 kWh in the last 309 hours which at the $0.10/kWh national average would be $67.12 per year almost exactly matching the $71/year estimate. It also let me confirm that a CFL bulb did use around 1/2 the energy of an incandescent.
Customer Review: Nice meter
Summary: 5 Stars
I've always been curious about the power draw on various items and since I have a Fluke DMM (digital multi-meter), I'd set up some special "extension cords" to be able to use with it for measuring the amps (which is the main thing that you can't easily check). Although that works for me, this unit is much simpler to use with no risks of possible "hot wires" with bare metal parts exposed that someone could get shocked on and this only costs $20 (versus over $100 for a good DMM). This also has the built in timer feature and instantly tells you your KW/hr bill from what's running & how long it's run, otherwise I'd have to time the item myself and multiply the wattage out to get the same numbers. For some items that you turn on & off yourself, doing the math is easy, but other items (like a fridge) that automatically turns on & off make this a lot better (so you don't need to stand over the item 24/7 to see when it turns on & off).
Once you've learned what you can from this, it does become a dust collector. As others have noted, it does block a second outlet if you have it in the wall, so chances are you'll remove it after a short term measurement. I've not found any major surprises in my power use with it, but we'll see as I play with it anywhere I can.
Customer Review: Impressive capabilities and accuracy.
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought P4400 Kill A Watt at Amazon.com for about $22. The first thing I did with it - I compared its readings with those of Extech 380975 Clamp Meter, which costs about ten times more than P4400 Kill A Watt and must be quite accurate. What surprised me, the readings of the two meters agreed within 1% in all types of measurements: power, voltage, current, frequency, phase shift, etc.. This is a very impressive accuracy for a $22 power monitor. P4400 Kill A Watt has one advantage over Extech 380975: it can integrate power over a long period of time and show the total amount of energy consumed over that period. On the other hand, Extech 380975 can also do some things that P4400 Kill A Watt cannot, for example, it can measure currents up to 1000A and powers up to 240kW. The most important difference is that P4400 Kill A Watt is a plug-through power meter, therefore one must unplug the load from the wall outlet, plug in P4400 Kill A Watt into the wall outlet, and then plug the load into the meter. With Extech 380975 you just clamp the magnetic choke on a single wire - the load does not have to be disconnected even momentarily. In conclusion, I think that both power meters are very accurate and useful, but each one has a different field of application.Customer Review: A good product
Summary: 4 Stars
The P4400 Kill A Watt monitor is a neat little device that helps you understand where the electricity in your home is going. You plug it into an outlet and after about a second it gives a read out of the present power usage of any device plugged into it in watts. The Kill A Watt will also record the amount of energy used to the nearest hundredth of a kilowatt but, it will take some time for devices that don't use much energy to even register in that setting. Due to this it takes sometimes 15 minutes to an hour to get a useful Kilowatt measurement (the unit the utilities use when billing) from a small household alliance or computer.
The Kill A Watt's only real problem is that it has no memory or movable screen and requires some force to plug into a socket as well as to plug something into it for measurement. To remedy this I leave it plugged into a surge protector so that I can plug and remove it easily, have some slack to move it when reading the screen and a convenient off switch.
This is diffidently something an energy conscious person should have at their home and will teach you a thing or two about your electronics and their hidden costs.
I feel it was worth the twenty five dollars I spent on it.
Customer Review: simple yet totally effective
Summary: 5 Stars
To me this little baby is for those you value savings over the long run, just like spending a few bucks to buy a CFL light bulb knowing that in about 3~6 months it'll pay for itself.
What I found effective by using the P3 is that all TV's, dvd players, & audio equipment should be plugged into a power strip... I observed wattage usage as high as 25 watts/hr on stand-bye for a tv, dvd player, and home theater(these are energy star products 2007 & newer). Thats over 575 watts of wasted power a day(assuming you use the equipment 1 hr per day)for a typical living room set. Stand-By Power usage is shocking, & eventually you'll be plugging every device into this meter to see what really is an energy efficient appliance. Energy saving for $200 or more a year(based on a single 3~4 bedroom home) can be had by monitoring energy usage & using simple devices as power strips & programable timers.
It's amazing that such a device hasn't been available on the market 10~20 yrs ago... this would do wonders for former brown-out states(CA in the late 1990's is a perfect example). By purchasing the P3 kill-a-watt, you'll be on your way to being energy conservative, being green, and saving a buck in the process.