Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 256-260 of 333
 energy monitor February 17, 2008
Stephen Tenbrink (Los Alamos, NM USA)
The P3 Kill-a-Watt energy usage monitor is very handy and useful in this era of rising energy costs. It is very easy to use and has some interesting features. In addition to the showing the usual volts, current (amps), power (watts), and energy (watt-hours), being used by any item that can plug into a wall socket, the P3 also measures power factor which is an indicator of how efficient the unit under test is using the electric energy. A power factor of 1 is the most efficient. One test I found interesting that others should try is to see what the power factor is for the new "energy efficient" light bulbs. While they do give out more light per watt than the older incandescent light bulbs and are by that fact more efficient than the older bulbs I found that these bulbs have a power factor of about 0.7.
 Great Item for going Green! February 18, 2008
C. Hein
This item is very useful for eliminating energy vampire devices. Use this to replace items that take a lot of energy or find out how much your devices uses when just sitting there. Get a surge protector that kills standby power to go with it!
Priority item February 23, 2008
D. Musicant (Berkeley, CA USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Mine won't even be delivered for a couple of days but I already have a leg up on the problem. The reason is that I made my own electricity usage monitoring system a few years ago and have used it many times to determine my usage.
I have most of the significant findings recorded in a notebook. Things like how much energy my CD players use, both when playing music and when "off." How much energy my desktop computer uses, on, off, when my monitor is on, off, when the system is idle, etc.
I really have figured it all out at this point, but my system is more of a hassle to use than the P3 Kill-a-Watt, and that's the reason I'm buying it. My system involves a multimeter and an extension cord that I modified to work with the multimeter to monitor AC current flow. The multimeter has 2A (fused) and 20A (unfused) settings, and I've blown out more than one 2A fuse doing my readings.
Of course, I've saved a lot of money by determining energy usage around my house. Measuring it takes out the guesswork. For the most part, I only have things draw energy when there's a good reason, for instance the wall warts on my cordless phones and my answering machine are on 24/7. I switch off many of my wall warts with toggled power strips, however. Those things add up. I use a power strip to totally turn off power to my computer, reducing usage to zero. My gas + electricity for my entire 1900+ foot house averages under $60/month!
works February 28, 2008
jwill (usa)
The p3 works as advertised. you can gather all the data you need to reduce your power consumption. which is what I wanted to do.
Pretty cool March 17, 2008
Victor Kess (Sacramento, CA)
Pretty cool little device. I would have given it 5 stars if it was able to save some of its information. As soon as you unplug it from the wall it loses all information. one way around this is to plug a power strip into the Kill a Watt that is plugged into the wall socket.
That being said, it is great to check how much power something is drawing. I have used it to compare the draw of different computers against one another. I have also used it to check the draw of my non-power saving plasma against a power saving plasma TV. They each drew about the same wattage and the non-power saving unit was almost twice as bright.
It is more of nerd tool, but people who are curious as to how much power your appliances pull will not be dissapointed.
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