P3 International 4460 Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
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Company Info: P3 International Category: Gadgets Price: $40.00 Rating: 4.0/5.0 Reviewer: Wayne Eggert Date: July 19, 2008 Pros: Monitors electricity usage of an appliance and automatically calculates costs by day, week, month, year; Simple to operate; Useful for anyone with many electronics> Cons: Fairly expensive for a gadget that just monitors electricity usage; Not great build quality Overview Ever wonder how much electricity your refridgerator was costing you to run each year and if it's time to replace it with a newer energy efficient refridgerator? How about the cost to keep that Playstation 3 or XBox 360 on standby 365 days a year? Maybe such thoughts never crossed your mind a few years ago, but as oil, gas & food prices rise, keeping monthly costs down has quickly become a growing concern amongst many American consumers. Additionally, if you haven't already heard, the rate cap on electricity is scheduled to be removed in 2010 -- which means electricity costs will rise for many Americans. P3 International brings us the Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Montitor, a simple way to monitor how much electricity your appliances are really costing you in the long-run and identify "vampire electronics" that are sucking up costly energy when plugged in, but not in use. |
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There are two different versions of the Kill-A-Watt -- the newer Kill-A-Watt P4460 ($40 street price), which is the focus of this review, automatically calculate estimates of energy costs by day, week, month & year and retains data during a power outage. The older Kill-A-Watt P4420 ($20 street price), will not retain data in the event of a power outage and will require you to do some (fairly simple) math to calculate energy costs. Otherwise both versions are nearly identical in terms of what they measure (line voltage, current, amps, kilowatt hours, etc). I chose the higher-priced Kill-A-Watt P4460 since I do have the occasional power outage and didn't want to lose data I had been accumulating. If you don't mind the inconvenience of losing data during a power outage, get the older model and save yourself $20 -- then calculate cost of energy.
Product Specs (from manufacturer's site):| Model: | P4460 |
| Operating Voltage: | 115 VAC |
| Max Voltage: | 125 VAC |
| Max Current: | 15A |
| Max Power: | 1875 VA |
| Weight: | 5 oz. |
| Dimensions: | 5 1/8"H x 2 1/2"W x 1 1/2"D |
Features (from manufacturer's site):
-Shows the operating costs of your household appliances
-Accurate to within 0.2%
-Large LCD Display
-Calculates cost and forecasts by week, month and year
-Built-in battery backup
-Displays eight critical units of measure
First Impressions
The Kill-A-Watt was nicely sealed in plastic packaging, nothing special there. I'm not a huge fan of products sealed in plastic that require you to destroy the packaging to get the contents out, but I can understand why companies do this (deter theft, limit products returned "as new", etc). A small manual is also included to explain how to use the Kill-A-Watt, as well as safety & care instructions. The Kill-A-Watt itself had a small row of buttons and looked pretty straight-forward -- plug your appliance into the Kill-A-Watt, plug the Kill-A-Watt into the wall and off you go!
Using the Kill-A-Watt
I don't normally read manuals all the way through -- just kind of skim them over to see if there's something important I need to know to avoid electricuting myself or blowing something up :) The Kill-A-Watt seemed easy enough to operate once plugged in. Hit the menu button a few times, get the the screen that lets you input electricity costs, click set.. use the up/down buttons to adjust your electricity cost per KwH, click set again to save. Once you set electricity costs you never have to do it again (unless your electricity costs change). Holding the reset button allows you to clear the previous data that was collected on the Kill-A-Watt (except for electricity costs of course!). The menu button allows you to cycle between things like line voltage (voltage at the outlet), volts, amps, current, watts, KwH, total time and electricity costs.
First Test -- The Stereo!
I keep many appliances plugged in year-round and figured a good first test would be my JVC Stereo that is usually blinking "12:00" when not in use. A few seconds after plugging the stereo into the Kill-A-Watt, it was happily reporting that I would spend roughly $20/year just to have the clock blinking. Now for the real test -- turning the stereo on and having it play a CD!! Surely this would consume much more energy since it's spinning the CD, displaying track info, playing through the speakers. To my amazement, when playing a CD the yearly costs only went up to around $26/year. Not too shabby, almost makes you want to keep the stereo running full-time knowing that it doesn't consume much more electricity when on than when off.
Second Test -- Desktop Computer
I have had several computers at home running practically 24/7 over the last 5 years.. more for convenience than anything. I'm sure you've all heard someone say something like "Why turn the computer off? It will cost just as much with the spike in energy during boot-up than to just leave it on." Turns out, that desktop computer I was leaving on 24/7 eats up roughly 150 watts when idle.. over a month at $0.09/KwH I'm spending $11.00 to have the computer running for convenience. And the funny thing? There's at least 12 hours of the day where I'm not even around to use it. So there's $5.50/mo that I could have been saving if I would have shut it off during off-peak hours -- that's $66/yr to have a computer running when I'm not even around to use it! Yeah it's not a million dollars, but if you have 2 or 3 desktop computers running 24/7 that could easily be $30-40 of your electricity bill each month.
Third Test -- Laptop
I have a newer Dell Latitude laptop with a 14.1" widescreen display. Yet another device that I use often enough that I just leave it on 24/7. Fortunatley laptops are less power-hungry since obviously their purpose is to be able to run on battery and they are optimized to consume less power than their desktop counterparts. The laptop costs roughly $3/mo to leave on 24/7.. not bad at all! Worth the convenience for the amount that I use it.
Build Quality
One thing that I did notice, as some other people have mentioned, is the plastic housing of the Kill-A-Watt seems cheap. When removing it from a tight outlet sometimes it feels like the plastic casing is going to split in half at the seam. I usually try to support it with my other hand & grab it towards the back, or if it feels like it's pulling weird I'll stop and try another way. I've also had the plugs bend some when attempting to plug it into a tigher outlet. Usually you realize when it's not fitting in right, but for $40 you'd think it would feel pretty solid and not like you were going to crack something. After all, the whole purpose of the device is to plug it into outlets & remove it multiple times.. if it was a one-time thing it would be acceptable if it didn't feel all that stable.
Other Short-comings
There are a few other short-comings that would be great to see addressed in a future model. Unfortunately the display does not light up, so if you plug the Kill-A-Watt in behind an appliance, reading the display can be a difficult or impossible task. Why have the convenience of having it automatically calculate energy costs if you can't read the display? When plugged into the wall, the Kill-A-Watt covers both electrical outlets -- the manual explains that you can use an approved extension cord if you don't want to cover both outlets. Why not have a small cord coming out of the Kill-O-Watt and solve the problem of the plug feeling chintsy and also the problem of covering both electrical outlets?
Overall Thoughts
There's not much competition in the market of measuring electricity costs -- which is why P3 International is able to charge $40 for a gadget that doesn't feel extremely well-built. Fortunately, it is a very useful gadget and still well-worth the cost if it can help save you the $40 it costs within a short period of time. Many people don't realize just how much electricity an appliance is costing them and haven't had the need to worry about such things. Hopefully as the need to trim monthly expenses increases, there will be more demand for devices like the Kill-A-Watt and the competition will drive prices for these electricity monitors lower.
The Kill-A-Watt is a straight-forward electricity usage monitor, and it does the job well. If you don't have many appliances, you're probably not going to find it very useful after the first few days. It's not a videogame, it's not going to walk the dog, and it's not meant to be "fun" in the sense of entertaining. The Kill-A-Watt is a great device for gadget-crazy consumers who have more electronics plugged in than they can count on four hands and it's great to have a way to put an end to those "electronic vampires" that keep making an appearance on your monthly electric bill.
Ease of Use: 4.5/5.0
Build Quality: 3.0/5.0
Usefulness: 4.5/5.0
Final Rating: 4.0/5.0