Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 16-20 of 333
 Great gadget to have around June 12, 2006
Kundan Sen (New York, NY United States)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is great - it did live up to my expectations, and at about $30, it's definitely a great buy.
This shows the volts, amperes, watt, KHW, line frequency, and so on. The power consumption is the best feature - it leads to quite a few pleasant and unpleasant surprises! It was great to find, for instance, that the tower fans use under 50 watts - compared to a 1200-watt AC, that's a great savings! However, it was not-so-nice to see that my hair dryer consumes close to 1800 watts with the heat on high.
While not a terribly cost-saving device by itself - it will have an effect on your power consumption, and may lead to smaller power bills. At least it tells you how much power your gadgets consume, unlike the packaging which is often misleading and rarely contain the power rating.
As another reviewer mentioned, desktop computers were the biggest surprise - with a core duo churning out Seti at Home work units, I was surprised to see it's costing me about 300 watts an hour, or about $27 a month - whereas, using the PC for just 4 hours a day for my personal use, I end up with less than $5 a month! Ouch!
My only complaint - this unit has only one outlet, but is designed in such a way that it guards both the outlets on the wall. That means, I run one outlet short of what I had before. Of course, I can buy a outlet duplicator from the dollar store and put it on this, but it would have been nice if this just took the space of a single outlet - just shifting the prongs a half-inch towards the edge would have solved the issue.
 fun little geek toy, great for tightwads, useful for accounting too. March 22, 2006
Suzanne Bunton (Texas, United States)
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
I own two of these toys. I bought my first to run around the house measuring power consumption of my other toys. It was very useful for reducing my home energy consumption, which i did by almost 50%, without suffering. I bought the second so that i could, in combination with my first unit and some good power strips, meter all power consumed by my home office (It is not in proportion to the square feet of my home office/total sqft, the usual metric used in accounting). The added electricity savings of knowing what my high consumption appliances really were, paid for the first unit in a week. My tax savings generated by accounting for my office's true power consumption paid for the second unit in 2 months. My only complaint is that I can't reset them without unplugging them.
Very Handy Gadget February 19, 2005
Cable Dog (Portland, OR USA)
16 out of 22 found this review helpful
Want to know how much current a device uses? What about the wattage, voltage etc? Plug the Kill-a-Watt into a power outlet and then plug in the device you want to measure. You can select to measure voltage, current, wattage, volt amps, Hertz, power factor or kWh. The maximum current is 15 amps. A very easy to use, accurate and inexpensive piece of electrical test equipment.
Amazing little gadget January 2, 2006
James (Seattle)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
Just a few years ago a power analyzer with the capabilities of the Kill a Watt would have cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. I was blown away when I found I could get such a cool little toy for under $30. Since I recieved mine I've been going around the house plugging everything I can find into it, in some cases I was pleasantly surprised and found that the average energy consumption of some devices is considerably less than the peak listed on the rating label. In other cases though I was not so lucky. The TV, stereo, computer equipment and everything else that remains at least partially on all the time all adds up to a scary amount over time.
I'd recommend this unit to anyone concerned about their energy use. The cumulative killowatt-hours counter is very useful for any device which draws a variable amount of power over time and will show at a glance how many KWA it has consumed in a given period. Then all you need to do is multiply that by the cost per KWA your electric company bills you and you instantly know how much that appliance just cost you to run.
For the more advanced users out there, this unit is also capable of measuring volt-amps and power factor which I've found very useful in my experiments with discharge lamps and ballasts, but these features are probably of little use to the layman.
I LOVE This Gadget, Great for Monitoring Energy Usage January 16, 2006
Patrick S. Pope (Chicago, IL)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
There were two primary reasons that I purchased the Kill-A-Watt: 1) to measure the [questionable] energy savings performance of the Power Planner by Energy Smart (see review) 2) to disprove the stated 2900 Watts on my Bellissima Ionic Volcano Hair Dryer (see review). Tertiary reasons included a general interest in energy savings. As it turns out, the Kill-A-Watt demonstrated that both aforementioned devices did not live up to stated manufacturer claims.
The Kill-A-Watt plugs into any typical grounded three-prong receptacle. It also has a receptacle so it acts as a splice, presumably measuring voltage and current to determine power in watts (ohm's law V=IR, Power=VI). In addition to measuring power, voltage and current in real-time, it can also measure kilowatt hours (kwh), via an imbedded timer. This unit, kwh, is the measure by which your electric utility company bills you.
In general, the Kill-A-Watt is extremely easy to use. There is a large LCD display indicating the value of interest. The digital readout and buttons make it extremely easy to navigate through the various functions.
Particularly interesting is observing the difference between the stated wattages and realized wattages of various consumer devices. It is also interesting to watch the energy creep caused by thermal factors (in p=ir^2). FYI, for typical resistive elements "R" goes up as temperature increases.
As you can see, the Kill-A-Watt allowed me to disprove various manufacturer claims.
Measured Wattages:
Belissma 2900 Watt Hair Dryer
Ionic Hair Dryer (aka Volcano) ...1525 Watts
ConAir 1875.............................1515
Hair Made 1875........................1540
Andis ProStyle .........................1250
Other Consumer Devices:
Heated Towel Warmer (stated 100 watts)....... 131
Lights:
Sunbox Sunray Full Spectrum Lightbox (stated 120 watts)....123 watts
Lights of America Fluorex Outdoor Lamp (stated 65 watts).....65 watts
Lightwitz 30 watt light bulb..... 30 watts
Lights of America 200 Watt Equivalent Compact Fluorescent (stated 42 watts)....45 Watts
It is important to note that the Power Planner by EnergySmart was intended to save money on devices with older electric motors. In my review of the Power Planner, I outlined the test results using the device on my parents 40+ year old secondary refrigerator. Sadly, the Kill-A-Watt showed that there was no realized difference using the Power Planner over multiple 24 hour periods.
If you have any interest in energy conservation/savings or are questioning manufacturer claims, I would highly recommend that you purchase the Kill-A-Watt. It is great for measuring instantaneous power, current and voltage, but also power consumption over a period of time.
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