REVIEW – If you live in an older home that doesn’t have a bunch of smart home features built into it, you can find all sorts of products that will help you update your home to be smarter. One way to do it on the cheap is to add smart adapters to your existing wall outlets. Today I’m going to show you the Gosund Mini Smart Plug. Let’s take a look.
What is it?
The Gosund Mini Smart Plug is a small 3-prong adapter that goes between the wall outlet and the device’s power cord. Once connected and configured, you have full control of the outlet when you are home or even when you’re not.
What’s in the box?
- Gosund smart power socket
- Instructions
Design and features
The Gosund smart plug has a white plastic housing with a power button on the side that has a built-in LED that shows the status of the adapter. When it’s red, it’s powered on and when it’s off, it’s powered off. 🙂
The smart plug is small enough that it will not block the other outlet.
What can it control?
The Gosund plug works great with lamps, a crock pot, fans, Christmas lights, and other small devices. It is not suitable for the appliances whose power is more than 1100 watts (eg: air conditioner, microwave oven, induction cooker etc.).
The Go Smart app
To use the smart plug, you have to have a 2.5GHz wireless network and you need to set up each smart plug using the Go Smart app on your iOS or Android device.
The pairing/setup process is quick and easy. Once completed, you will see a listing of adapters and their status. From this home screen, you can tap the power button to toggle the status of the adapter.
You can also go into the settings of each adapter to set up timers and schedules for the Gosund adapters to automatically turn on and off.
If you want to get even more complex, you can set up scenes of multiple Gosund adapters. For example, if you have 3 adapters in your kitchen, you can make a kitchen scene and assign an automation to it to trigger based on a condition like weather or time.
In addition to setting up triggers, you can also control the Mini Smart Plug with your voice using Alexa or Google Assistant.
I tested the smart plugs with a lamp and it worked perfectly.
What I like
- Does not require a hub
- Easy to set up
- App allows for a variety of automation
What needs to be improved
- Only works on 2.4GHz wireless network
- WiFi has to be active for triggers to work
Final thoughts
The Gosund Mini Smart Plug is an easy way to get started making your home smarter. Configuring the plugs takes only a few minutes and the app is straight forward and easy to understand. Although this is a basic device, it does offer advanced features such as compatibility with voice control and automation triggers. If you haven’t wanted to spend a lot of money on a system that requires a hub and complicated setup, these smart plugs are an easy way to get started.
Price: $9.99
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Gosund.
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First Julie, live your posts, have been reading them for a long time.
You did nit mention if this requires an internet connection. I have been looking for some of these for my cabin, which is totally off grid, and I can not seem to find any that will work without the internet. I have wifi network setup and extending out to remote solar cameras so that is not an issue.
Thanks for your reviews
Hello Storm. You raise a good question! I know that you need WiFi to set up and to control the switches from outside your network, but I didn’t test having no network connectivity at all or if the switches would perform based on previously setup schedules even if WiFi was down. I’ll do that this week and let you know the outcome and update the review. Thanks!
Security? Is the firmware upgradable? Is it secure?
Jim, I don’t see any info on the sockets having firmware update capability and I don’t see any security details.
There has to be an active WiFi connection from the plug to your local WiFi for the triggers to work. It doesn’t look like the plugs save the schedules internally. A scheduled trigger worked when I forced stopped the app on my phone, but triggers did not work when I turned off my WiFi router.
i have just recently purchassed a 2 pack of the Gosund Mini Smart Plug for some small projects around the house..Wow as an old fart that can barely use my cell phone, i have to say that these things are great :-)setup was pretty easy i did have one prob but the excellent email tech support from Gosund was quick and easy to understand. So far i have replaced 5 light timmers with one plug do do all my inside xmas lights to all come on at the same time with just the one plug. They are not rated for outdoor use but i found that if i put the other one in my garage and run an extension cord to my outside lights i have managed to cut out the 4 timers i was using for them. i forgot to mention that the cost of these plugs are very reasonable compared to some that i have researched.
i am not much on the techi stuff but i have found that the learnig curve on the setup and usage was a lot better then figuring out my cell phone 🙂
I have this at home. Its so easy to install and configure. Now I am enjoying its benefits at my smart home. It really works well alexa. It can remotely control my electrical devices plugged into it even when I am still at office with just one tap or voice command. Love it!!
I spent the day comfortable while using this Gosund smart plug. I have no worries every time They work silently and consume less energy and can save money from electricity bills.
You didn’t even mention a model number in your review. Is this the WP3 or WP5? I’m trying to figure out the difference between the two models.