WeMoInsight WiFi Enabled Smart Plug, with Energy Monitoring, Works with Alexa (Discontinued by Manufacturer - Newer Version Available)

I already had one WeMo switch to control a lamp in our living room. I wanted another one that I could use with our Bona Vita coffee maker that I could control with my iPhone. The WeMo Insight switch was on sale at Amazon and is significantly smaller than the original one I already owned. I decided to get one.Since I don't get up each morning at the same time I don't want the coffee to start when I'm still sleeping. With the WeMo Insight switch, I set up the coffee the night before, turn the coffee maker to the "on" position and then when I get up, launch the WeMo app on my iPhone to turn the WeMo on. Coffee starts brewing and by the time I get to the kitchen, it is fresh and piping hot!I have the switch programmed to shut itself off at 3:00 PM so that if I want an additional cup of coffee during the day the coffee maker will work without having to manually engage the switch. I also have it programmed to turn "on" on Fridays only at a specific time since that one day I volunteer at a local park and know when I have to get up.I'm a fan of these devices, but they do have some problems that Belkin needs to work on. Occasionally, in order for the app to work on my phone, I need to "kill" the app and relaunch it. I have a couple wireless routers in the house, all on the same network, but the Belkin seems to get confused as it passes from one to the other. Once it's found the switches, it works perfectly.The big difference between the original Belkin WeMo switch and the WeMo Insight is size, with the Insight being significantly smaller. This works much better in an area where the switch is visible, in this case on my kitchen counter. It's also well designed to allow the use of the second plug in an outlet if the Insight is plugged into the bottom outlet.The Insight also has the ability to give you a lot of details about how much power you're using with whatever device you're controlling. In fairness, I don't use that feature, but if you're powering a device where you need that information, the Insight has a detailed report. You can see what it looks like on Belkin's website.These Belkin switches are a bit pricey, but really do the job, day in and day out. I've had the two mine for some time, and they're very reliable. You can easily set a device to come on or turn off at a specific day, at a specific time, at sunrise or sunset, or manually. The rule is stored in the device which remembers it even during a power outage or it the device is unplugged. You can also trigger these devices from outside your home. When properly set up, you can control them on your phone from anywhere.With the WeMo Insight, you can also see how much electricity you're using on the outlet where it's connected and potentially program whatever device you're controlling to lower usage and hence cost. This isn't a feature I'm using, but if you need or want that information, the Insight gives very detailed usage stats.I'd judge that the initial setup to be pretty straight-forward. You will need to know your wireless router's name and password. Setup joins the switch to your wireless network in order for you to control it. In my case, I use WPA2 Personal and had no problems getting the switches to function. Like most devices, there is a reset switch in case you need to move them to a new network. You then create rules for the switch which dictate how it will function. To do this, you need a free phone app that is available for both iPhones and Android phones.I really like this product and find it much more functional than just putting a timer on an electrical outlet. They're a bit pricey but appear to be very durable. I've owned my original WeMo switch for three years and it hasn't hiccuped yet. Ive owned the Insight for about nine months, and it, too, has been reliable.I think of these as more than just a gadget. If you're looking to take control of an appliance or lamp or what-have-you, this is the product to consider.UPDATE Saturday, February 6, 2016: I've been a fan of these devices for some time, but very disappointed in the iPhone app that let's you control it remotely. Until recently, my network consisted of multi access points. When launching the WeMo app, it was 50-50 whether it would find the switches, and if it did find them, identify them in the right state, e.g., on or off. There must be a new sheriff in town at Belkin's software and engineering department because suddenly this app is working much better. They sent an e-mail out several months ago that said they were going to work on getting the device to work as it was supposed to, and by golly, it really is greatly improved! I always enjoyed using my WeMo switches and thought they were a good investment, but now I'm far more enthusiastic. The app on iOS is greatly improved and the two switches I own are operating better than ever, even though they are both a few years old. Whoever took over the engineering department for WeMo at Belkin, "Thanks! Great job!"

UPDATE December 2014. Several more software and firmware updates (10.1.1 latest) and the product is now working as expected and deserves 5 stars. 99%+ the phone app works to connect (quickly) to devices and control. Insight is still a tad slower. We now have 7 different WeMo products and all are working very well. I wish I didn't have to go through the months of agony when we first got them. The current functionality is excellent. Working very well on both iPhone 5 and 6.UPDATE September 2014. In the last two weeks, Belkin has provided two iOS updates (1.8.X) and one or two firmware updates. The connectivity issues are nearly gone now. As I suspected, the issue was with the iPhone app that couldn't connect 8 times out of ten. With the new updates, connectivity is very fast and pretty reliable. I'm still only giving the product 4 starts out of five for the months and months of issues I had with the product. The software is still not perfect with the Insight switches in terms of getting the update of data used, time on etc, but turning on and off all switches is now nearly instant as it should have been back in May of 2014 when I first purchased the products. Hopefully this new behavior will remain and I can now be happy with the product.ORIGINAL REVIEW: This generous 1 star is for the WeMo Insight switch. I also have two of the Light switches and one of the older plug-in units which would rate maybe 3.5 to four stars. The Insight is pretty much a piece of junk. I purchased two in May of 2014 and have had nothing but problems with them. In fact, I've had to send both back to WeMo for replacement, one is due to arrive tomorrow. In a nutshell, the WiFi connectively with this product is simply awful. More than half the time, the silly device doesn't show up on the iPhone or iPad. Quit the app, reboot the phone, try using the Airport utility as recommended, no amount of fuzing around gets the unit to show up. It's just easier to walk to the device and manually turn the unit on and off. Belkin support has ranged from just awful to decent. Getting the last unit replaced due to it's inability to be reset and then send out a signal was pretty bad. I had to keep calling and calling to finally get an RMA. The other two light switches and the one original switch work pretty well but not perfectly. At first I blamed their app which is pretty awful at updating itself. Then two Insight switches just flat out failed. Do not buy one! Try the other lesser expensive switch first and understand that the WeMo app is not very good. My wife and I have a good wireless network, we've got Airport Expresses (newer units) to extend the range, that didn't do a thing to fix the issues with the phone app and the Insights from communicating. The time I've wasted with Belkin support, frustration trying to get the switch to operate isn't worth it, I'll just get up and do this myself with far less issues. Too bad because when the unit works, it is pretty slick. If it actuall worked 50% of the time, I'd be in better shape than I am now, the Insight fails far more often than it works.

Working as well as expected.

Why is this product rated so highly Amazon, if the reviews are so polarized? The answer is simple, the WeMo smart plugs share the same listing with the WeMo bridge, dimmer, and light switch. That means the star ratings for any one of those given products are part of the star rating for each of them. This artificially raises the star rating of terrible products like the Insight or Mini smart plugs. Amazon needs to look into this ASAP... this product page needs to be broken out on a by-product basis to prevent inaccurate star ratings.Anyways, now that, that is out of the way, let's move on to why the WeMo Insight and Mini are just wrong.1. Setting up the device is just unacceptably fickle. It took me around three hours to get this product barely functional. The root issue is that the device was designed in an extremely unreliable manner. The whole process of connecting directly to the smart plug via its wifi, giving it your home's wifi password, disconnecting your phone from the smart plug's wifi, so that the smart plug can connect to your home wifi, and then your phone connecting to your home wifi too and then trying to find the smart plug on your home network, is just terribly inefficient despite them trying to automate some of that. Google's Chromecast uses the same principal to set up their devices, but it's executed right. WeMo should aspire to Google's execution or rethink it altogether.2. The app is awful. It will constantly crash. Just connecting to different wifi causes this app to restart, which is poor design, to say the least. The smart plugs have a fifty-fifty chance of being unreachable at any given time, and remotely control these are just too unreliable to even consider using that "functionality." This product was so terrible I did not even touch the rules. However, it is worthwhile stating that if these smart plugs are something you just want to set up once with a bunch of rules and then rarely ever control it via the app again, it just might actually work out for you.3. Both of the smart plugs I bought would randomly shut off during use. I'm not doing anything particularly crazy with these smart plugs, just running a small desk fan, so I doubt it was tripped by excessive current draw. At this point, I'm done with these "smart plugs" and am on the way to returning them.I am incredibly disappointed with Belkin. If I recall, correctly, they were one of the first one companies on the scene with smart plugs. Given this product existed since 2013, it should be way better today then what it currently is today. They really do just feel like first-generation products. I think given Belkin's dominance in the smart plug industry, they have become stagnate in their innovation, especially with regards to this product. It's just so sad, I sincerely hope one day they do release a truly amazing smart plug, but for now, these ones do not cut it.

I'm pretty happy with this device. It allowed me to smarten up my "dumb" washer and dryer (i.e. old style knobs and dials).With the rules in the app, I set the appliances for the hours with off-peak electricity cost. I had to get creative with how I programmed the rules for 7pm to 7am weekdays but with 24 hour weekends.When the cycles are done, I get a notification on my phone which helps save me a trip or two to the basement guessing on whether I can put another load in or not.There are a couple of things I wish were easier though. Hydro off-peak pricing is pretty common so I'd like that rule programming to be a little easier to put in and the app could take care of the background technicalities (e.g. I could punch in what my off-peak hours are and not have to handle Fridays 7pm-12am, 12:01 Saturday to 11:59, etc to Monday).I would also like them to fix the bug with the monthly power rate (very very difficult to set in the app due to a bug with the number selections) and the email address in the consumption report (always clearing out when you go to verify if it's in there).And finally, I technically get two power off notifications because of that little two second gap when the washer enters the next phase (e.g. spins then starts filling for a rinse cycle). The device thinks the cycle is done because of my power off rule. The power on rule has a "for X amount of time" selection, but the power off one doesn't. I'd like that rule to be possible, however it's difficult to make suggestions to WeMo or Belkin about the app. They direct you to the user forum which is arms-length away from anyone who can actually affect the development.All of that being said, the product works well enough for my purposes.

I'm an electrical engineer and I can say this product is poorly designed. The idea is great and it would be great if it operated the way it intended, with consistency. In two weeks of use, I've had to restore it to factory settings three times in order for my wemo app to see it on my network. My network is solid. There are many other reports of this on the web. Further, if I'm trying to control my appliances, like my coffee pot, unfortunately, the idea that my outlet should communicate with a "wemo cloud" in order to receive my instructions is just a really bad concept. It allows belkin to build a community, collect data, and obviously sell that data. Privacy issues aside, this is my outlet. There's no reason for the message "on" and "off" to be routed through a third-party system. That just makes the operation of my house dependent on this system, it's upgrades, all that jazz. I tried a firmware update over the air, and the system hung. I had to restore settings.Imagine when you turned on a light in your house, if the switch had to contact belkin's computers, then the light only turns on if belkin's computers decides to issue the command to your light bulb. This is the wemo network, in some regards.If a company decided to make a home system with the user's best interests in mind, there would be no belkin cloud. Our hand-held computers (smartphones) are more than smart enough to issue "on" and "off" to a specific IP address in your home. With proper encryption. With or without external internet connectivity. The Wemo network may work without the cloud... but in anycase, for my outlet to require factory resets out of the box means that they're not properly testing this device.I've worked at companies that design microchips for cellphones. We don't have the luxury of shipping product and fixing it later. It HAS to work flawlessly, always. I'm very disappointed that a potential IoT leader like Belkin, who is making this great ecosystem of products doesn't feel like they have a serious responsibility to deliver 99.99999% up-time and working product.

Got one of these almost 5 years ago since I wanted to monitor the energy consumption of my appliances, particularly my gaming/server PCs & monitors. Back then, when the smart home switches were still in their infancy, Kill-A-Watt was the only reliable cheap alternative you could get that wasn't a smart home plug. Unlike my iHome (basic smart plugs) that keep disconnecting and can rarely get them to pair again, these were easier to reconnect even when you lose connection which seldom occurs in all the years I've owned them.You can monitor your electricity usage in real time, schedule it to turn on or off and also manually tur it on or off, locally or remotely using your smartphone or tablet anywhere there's internet - yes even in public hotspots! As my PCs have wake on lan enabled, I can restart them anywhere/anytime there's a problem and reconnect via remote desktop app even when on vacation. Any price around $50 for this I believe is well worth it. Got a discount on all of mine but now they don't sell it at work so I bought this online. Eventually, this ended up being my third WeMo Insight Switch and I might get more. I hope Belkin doesn't discontinue these as I plan on using them in the Smart Home I plan to build in the future.