P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
by P3 INTERNATIONAL
|
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 |
|---|
Tools and Hardware Reviews of P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
Customer Review: This slick gadget will pay for itself several time over!
Summary: 5 Stars
Ahhhh geee, another gadget for the junk drawer. Yaaaahhhhhnnn. WRONG!
This slick gadget is one of the best investments anyone can make when trying to conserve energy! So often, the real culprits in our homes are items we don't see, or don't think about as being power guzzlers. Here are some examples I found...
That 10 watt 12 volt outdoor lamp I illuminate the US flag at night actually draws 50 watts due to the transformer. I'd be ahead with a low wattage 120 volt lamp.
My house has a crawl space, where I run a 20" box fan 24/7 at the garage entrance during the summer months to reduce moisture. The beefy Lasko one I was using consumed 100 watts on LOW - I replaced it with a $12 WalMart/Lasko that only draws 50 watts on low (and only 100 watts on high), yet still has ample airflow.
Here were just 2 examples were I discovered I could cut energy use in half that weren't obvious and would have been overlooked without the Kill A Watt. A third example was as informative. I was concerned that my garage freezer was drawing a lot of power, and possibly failing. Nope - the Kill A Watt indicates that all is well. Whew! I was about to buy a new freezer, but the Kill A Watt saved me hundreds of dollars right there already.
Just buy one - you won't regret it!
Customer Review: Perfect - and here is a helpful tip
Summary: 5 Stars
Works as advertised and at a great price. But here is a little tip I picked up that you can get the energy cost in seconds - and no need to wait for 1 hour for the Kilowatt per hour calculation.
Plug in any device then press to select the Watt readout. Take that number and go to [...]
Just plug in the wattage readout, enter how many hours it is on (just enter 1 to show how much per hour to operate) and the cost per Khw. This is normally right at the top of your monthly utility bill where the calculate your bill. Example, I am in Iowa and a KHw is .08034
It will amaze you when you see how much power your devices turned OFF are costing you. Examples from our house - a flat screen in our bedroom costs $10 per year turned off. Laptops, plugged in - but fully charged and completely turned off - 7 cents per day or $36 per year. New computer with screen / printer all in standby mode - $80 per year. And the biggest - I put a small dorm fridge in my office = $51 per year. For that price I can walk upstairs and grab a soda.
What is shocking (pun intended) - with just 5 things we checked in 15 minutes we have cut our electric usage by 12%!!
As the saying goes "You can not manage what you do not measure!".. Now there is no excuse!
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.