SONOFF S31 WiFi Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring, 15A Smart Outlet Socket ETL Certified, Work with Alexa & Google Home Assistant, IFTTT Supporting, 2.4 Ghz WiFi Only (2-Pack)

The Sonoff isnt the smallest, but I needed an outlet with local control and power monitoring. I was able to flash Tasmota onto the outlet in about 5 minutes, as the Sonoff is easily disassembled. With Tasmota firmware running on the outlet, all control is local with Home Assistant. There is no need to pair the device with a server in a far away country and there is no communication going on outside of my house. In fact, I put all of my IoT devices on a VLAN that does not have any access to the internet or my normal household network. Keep everything local with local control and keep spyware out of your home.

Update: It appears that I have spoken too soon. Out of the 6 total units that I have now, 2 of them will not power on or pair (I am 7 days in the dark with their customer service with this so far) and 3 of them randomly read as Unavailable. Looks like Ill be sticking with Wyze outlets for the future. Disclaimer: I ordered these to run on my Home Assistant (HA); I have not tried using them with any other system or integration. This review is for the S40 Wifi Plugs. TLDR; I liked the 2 pack of S40 plugs enough to buy another 4 pack and also suggest them to my brother. For anyone running Home Assistant, the setup isnt that horrible, but you are going to have to use the eWeLink app for the initial setup to your network. Additionally, you can get them to be on a local LAN (and not on the cloud) but it will involve some Googling, reading, and some work to get it done. The initial (app) setup was smooth and getting things to work on HA only took a couple of more minutes after doing a little Googling. The energy monitoring seems to be fairly accurate in the sense that a 60-watt LED light was reading approximately 58 watts in HA, but I wasnt proactive enough to verify with the Fluke or Kill-A-Watt yet. (Ill do that and update this review at a later date) At this juncture, Im more concerned about reading energy draw vs no energy draw in order to act as a trigger instead of monitoring energy usage (I monitor consumption at the breaker panel, so I dont really need to do it at the component level yet). The only drawback that I have encountered thus far; if you wish to remove a plug from one network and use it with another, you MUST first go into the eWeLink app and remove it while it is still in the original network before trying to move it to another location (with a different network). In my experience, if you do not perform this step first (and attempt to remove it from the app when the plug is at a different location), the plug WILL NOT turn on nor will you be able to re-enter pairing mode. Im not sure why it was acting like this, but when I returned it to the original wifi network, I was able to get it working without any problems. My original experience with Sonoff was with an S40 Lite Zigbee model and it frustrated me to the point of wanting to chuck it out the window and steered clear of their products for a good while. Thankfully, these (S40 wifi variant) was much easier to play with and my gamble paid off; resulting in me ordering a 4 pack to use within my HA ecosystem as well.

Easy to pair and get it working. Alexa, lights on, Alexa lights off! This plug is very handy! I am going to use it for my Christmas tree when its time! Looking forward to not having to struggle with the outlet each night.

The Android application itself it quite underdeveloped. It has basic features like a timer, usage graphing, and naming conventions, but lacks any sort of optimization.

Like many other reviewers, I have purchased this particular switch to install Tasmota on. I use them for energy monitoring, and in some cases their original intent - outlet switching, in my home. I buy whatever pack is cheapest per unit at the time, be it 1, 2 or 4 pack versions. Theyre all the same in my experience. To get them installed with Tasmota, I first tried to solder leads to them. Then I tried to solder pin headers and that was a little bit easier. Im slightly beyond entry level skill with soldering, but I destroyed at least three units in this learning process. I finally graduated to micro-grabber electrical test clips and have ripped through over two dozen conversions now without incident. Lets be frank. Id rather Sonoff just offered Tasmota OS from the get-go, or made these over-the-air flashable. I will settle for nothing less than local control and Im definitely not itching for a new and different cloud solution or app. Id prefer not to hack these devices in the first place and if Sonoff works towards preventing this from a hardware or software standpoint, I will buy no more of them. At the time of this writing (March 2022), this is probably one of the cheapest way to get local energy monitoring and basic 15 amp capable on/off outlet switching. I use Home Assistant for my home automation platform. These are fully compatible with their new energy monitoring dashboard. This provides me with significant insight into my homes energy use, especially now that theyre widely distributed to the overwhelming majority of my outlets. I usually capture between 13-18 kilowatt hours per day, the bulk of my usage. To be clear, I use higher grade energy monitoring switches in mission critical applications (furnace, fridge, etc.), but these are great even for non-mission critical high amp usage scenarios up to 15 amps. Ive pushed some of mine well up to the limits and havent had any major problems or sparks fly. Out of a couple dozen, Ive had one actual device failure. Oddly enough, even with different firmware, different units operate differently on my WiFi. Some stay connected to Wifi 100% of the time, others intermittently connect throughout the day. I dont lose any granular Home Assistant data because of this, nor are they ever inaccessible and fail to turn on/off. I dont have a good answer as to why different units behave differently with the same software. Odd behavior, but it doesnt result in problems. I really cant complain anyway, Im using them well outside of the manufacturers intended use. Build quality is good enough but I wish there was a bit more consistency. Since the majority of buyers are intending to hack these, I really wish they wouldnt cinch down some of the poor-quality screws like they are Shee-Ra or the Hulk. Ive destroyed way more screws than Ive wanted, and thats with the perfect screw removal tool which Ive determined to be a 2.0mm flathead screwdriver. Again, I just wish I could buy a decent quality, super cheap, 15 amp capable smart switch product with the OS of my choice out of the gate. Ive used these to solve VERY REAL problems in my home. From triggering outlets based on other inputs to making serious dents in energy conservation, I believe the $200ish dollars Ive put into these Sonoff S31 units will eventually pay for themselves. Its fairly easy for me when Im paying almost $0.25 per kilowatt hour, others might not have as good of an ROI. If anything, Ive achieved some level of energy usage consciousness. Ive killed and/or automated quite a few parasitic energy draws I wasnt even aware of, and have easily increased my automation abilities at the same time. Its important to know that these utilize about 2 watts each, just to function. This might not seem like much, but with two+ dozen of them running 24 hours a day - were talking about a ~50 watt constant load just to monitor outlet energy. For me, Ive killed and automated much more than that, so Im in the black as it were. Its important, at least for me, to keep tabs on the cost and value of energy monitoring. Im hoping I can continue to use these to save at least $500 in energy in the next 5 years, and so far, that seems to be a reasonable goal based on how I use them. Lastly, I dont want to get too much into minutia, but you need a fairly robust WiFi network to support the internet of things over WiFi. Personally, I utilize multiple networks, including Lutron, Z-Wave, Zigbee and WiFi to get there. Put simply, I dont use these cheap and ubiquitous hacked WiFi devices to service mission critical applications in any way. If a failure would cost me a fair bit of money, I spend more than $10 to capture energy usage and (sometimes) provide switching capabilities. +4 stars for being a hackable and very useful device overall. You can debate about that last star, even I waver between 4 and 5 stars. They provide much value for not much dollar and a reasonable +/-2 year path to return on investment for many people that are trying to optimize energy consumption or provide local, automated switching controls.

I use for dehumidifier, Steamer, Online media box. I use for coffee maker to start 8 am. Surprised it made coffee 12pm lunch time. Too many ads in the app. For 4$ each. And Wi-Fi. CAnt beat the price but not perfect.

This is a warning to anyone who wants to purchase this that they should consider the App Store reviews for the required app to run these. At the time of writing this, eWeLink-Smart Home has a 2.8 star rating plagued with bugs and all kinds of issues. This app is required to use this device and you need to have an account with them in order to link to your Google Home so when considering this product I highly suggest you consider the App rating. There is also a ton of privacy issues associated as it requires you send your location information, other data, home network access, and identifiers in order to create an account which is your email address. It is also not clear who I am sending this data to, or why it needs persistent location data. This is a Sonoff product that requires an eWeLink app which has the support email going to Shenzhen Cool House Technology Co., Ltd. When clicking on the Privacy Policy on the app store it doesnt actually go anywhere and just takes you to a home page that is in another language and when translated has no links to the Privacy Policy. Not a product I would want running inside my home network.

I first bought SwitchBot smart plugs thinking they would work with the Core SwitchBot integration with Home-Assistant, extremely disappointed in not only the broken integration, but also the terms of service from a company that has had a lot of recent YouTube praise. Unfortunately, it just shows the known ignorance and total abandonment of values in the name of convenience... Enter HACS and Sonoff; While Sonoff is also doing some data mining it is possible to run the S31 Smart Plugs completely local without the app or the cloud using HACS on Home-Assistant with no fooling with jumpers or fussing with flashing. Several recent HA forum posts and YouTube videos cover the procedure, just look for the most current so you can follow along more easily since the recent changes. Also, Stay away from the S40 if you use Home-Assistant. S31 is the way to go. Deducted a star for the shady terms of service that are getting all too common with IoT products. Otherwise, it would be 5 stars.

Wouldn’t connect in normal mode. Only compatible mode. Worked but kinda screwy on updating. Other ones I’ve seen update quick every couple seconds. Now it’s stuck showing the same wattage all day even with no devices plugged in. Guess I’ll update on the replacement if it works or not.

These are great plugs that provide a great deal of power usage info, are easily flashed to Tasmota (for local home automation), and are well manufactured. Have at least 8 in the house now, purchased over many years, and they keep working great.