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Product: P4400 Kill A Watt
Manufacturer: P3 International
MSRP: $39.95 [BizRate]
Lowest Historical Price: $19 [History]
Introduction
We live in a world that is growing ever more concerned about energy usage and energy efficiency. If you have a desktop computer or a home theater, you know firsthand how much wiring hides behind your systems. How much electrical energy do these devices use? The P3 International Kill A Watt aims to demystify what exactly is contributing to your electrical bill.
In a nutshell, the Kill A Watt is an electricity usage monitor that installs between your wall outlet and the device(s) that you want to monitor. It displays real-time statistics such as Voltage, power (Watts), current (Amps), Line Frequency (Hz), and Power Factor. The really useful portion is displayed via the purple button, which shows the cumulative electrical usage in Kwh as well as the total test duration in minutes and hours.
Usage
There's not much to say about usage, except that you plug it in and then plug in the device that you want to monitor. The toggle buttons are self explanatory and you can take a look at the brochure. It does hog all of the adjacent electrical outlets in a typical wall plate unless you use an extension cord. The LCD is also hard to read in many situations so it would be nice to have a backlit option in future revisions.
Performance
As soon as it is plugged in, the Kwh meter begins accumulating a history of the total energy used, so it is best to leave it monitoring your device over a typical usage cycle. For example, I opted to test my home PC and associated peripherals by splicing the Kill A Watt in between the wall outlet and my main power strip. Over the course of 380 hours (about 16 days) it showed that 61.76 Kwh had passed through. Using some basic math I figured out that this would accumulate to 118.72 Kwh per month. I then consulted a recent electrical bill for the prevailing rate of $0.11430/Kwh, and extrapolated to an annual cost of about $163 to keep my PC & peripherals running under my typical usage patterns.
Armed with information like this, one can take preemptive steps to reduce electricity consumption. If you're the type that keeps your PC on 24x7, consider configuring your PC to go into standby mode when it is idle (mine is already configured as such). The electricity bill savings could go towards your next upgrade.
Conclusion
With the price of the basic Kill A Watt hovering at about $20 for the past few months, it's a relatively inexpensive purchase that has the potential to save you its cost many times over. However, many of its benefits can be realized by simply adopting power-conscious habits. The benefit of the Kill A Watt is that it gives you quantitative data that you can use to calculate your exact expenditures and savings.
Image Gallery
Price History
Manufacturer: P3 International
MSRP: $39.95 [BizRate]
Lowest Historical Price: $19 [History]
Introduction
We live in a world that is growing ever more concerned about energy usage and energy efficiency. If you have a desktop computer or a home theater, you know firsthand how much wiring hides behind your systems. How much electrical energy do these devices use? The P3 International Kill A Watt aims to demystify what exactly is contributing to your electrical bill.
In a nutshell, the Kill A Watt is an electricity usage monitor that installs between your wall outlet and the device(s) that you want to monitor. It displays real-time statistics such as Voltage, power (Watts), current (Amps), Line Frequency (Hz), and Power Factor. The really useful portion is displayed via the purple button, which shows the cumulative electrical usage in Kwh as well as the total test duration in minutes and hours.Usage
There's not much to say about usage, except that you plug it in and then plug in the device that you want to monitor. The toggle buttons are self explanatory and you can take a look at the brochure. It does hog all of the adjacent electrical outlets in a typical wall plate unless you use an extension cord. The LCD is also hard to read in many situations so it would be nice to have a backlit option in future revisions.
Performance
As soon as it is plugged in, the Kwh meter begins accumulating a history of the total energy used, so it is best to leave it monitoring your device over a typical usage cycle. For example, I opted to test my home PC and associated peripherals by splicing the Kill A Watt in between the wall outlet and my main power strip. Over the course of 380 hours (about 16 days) it showed that 61.76 Kwh had passed through. Using some basic math I figured out that this would accumulate to 118.72 Kwh per month. I then consulted a recent electrical bill for the prevailing rate of $0.11430/Kwh, and extrapolated to an annual cost of about $163 to keep my PC & peripherals running under my typical usage patterns.Armed with information like this, one can take preemptive steps to reduce electricity consumption. If you're the type that keeps your PC on 24x7, consider configuring your PC to go into standby mode when it is idle (mine is already configured as such). The electricity bill savings could go towards your next upgrade.
Conclusion
With the price of the basic Kill A Watt hovering at about $20 for the past few months, it's a relatively inexpensive purchase that has the potential to save you its cost many times over. However, many of its benefits can be realized by simply adopting power-conscious habits. The benefit of the Kill A Watt is that it gives you quantitative data that you can use to calculate your exact expenditures and savings.
Image Gallery
Price History
Nice review. Just curious, how much power does your computer draw at max load?
Why does the price history show $163?
#2: where do you see that?
#3 you're too slow, it said $163 up until 5 minutes ago or so
It changed already. At first it was showing $20 for everything up until today that listed $163, which was Ben's estimated usage.
This thing is listed here about once a week, each time for the same price. If the price is the same every week, how is this a bargain worth posting?
For the whole house monitoring try this device:
Blue Line Innovations PowerCost Monitor
It installs on the house meter and have a remote display
Nice review. Where will these be archived? How easy will navigating through the reviews be?
Editor's Note: See here Reviews
In reply to #6:
While I can see why you might ask what you do, this is being sold elsewhere for $30 (Harbor Freight, but their pricing is pretty bogus). If you look closely, you might see that some weeks it is not available for the $20 figure.
I appreciate this item's appearance (and re-appearance) here. I decided it would be a good gift for my brother -- he is very frugal and works for the power company. When I went to check on it, the deal was expired. I was able to wait for it to come around again.
The only thing that can make this an even larger bargain is to use it and adjust accordingly. Check out discussion on technocrat.net if you are interested. The meters do work admirably well for the price.
It enables us to monitor how much power we use everyday lurking around Bensbargains.
#1 - I've got beast, just the box alone draws 250 idle and 380 load. And yes, I am using the Kill-A-Watt to measure it
#8, If I understand your question, click on history, and scroll through the prior discussions. If not, sorry.
Does the device run on batteries or consume power as well? Might need to get two and run a Kill-A-Watt to measure the Kill-A-Watt.
this device has been $20 for a while... when is it going to change?
It's worth posting because of Bens comissions...
Step 1: Purchase Kill-A-Watt.
Step 2: De-mystify how much energy your appliances and electronics use.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!
I'm thinking the upper model P4460 is the way to go because you plug in the prices from you latest electric bill, and it then calculates daily/weekly/monthly/yearly consumption in $$$ from other reviews I have read. Sounds very convenient.
Sure the P4460 is 2x the price, but the last thing I want to do is pull out the calculator and start doing the math when I get various readings from different electronic units. I want to get straight to the point. Then again, if you are conservative enough to be looking into what things cost to run around the house, you'll probably want to buy the cheaper model!!
#7, I already have a whole house monitoring device. It reports total amount of energy usage every month to the power company, and it is already attached to my house for FREE!
#13: it probably uses less than 1 watt. Also, I'd have to guess that it measures the wattage that it's putting out through the output plug, which doesn't include the power it consumes.
#7: I don't really see the point of buying a whole-house power monitoring device. It would be like the check engine light in a car. You'd know that something is wasting power, but you wouldn't know what it is. I guess it could be useful for estimating what generator you'd need to get to supply your whole house with power during a black-out, but I don't see much else. Plus, I'd have to guess that it's tough to set up(probably requires an electrician), and costs a lot.
anyone else seeing the battery gallery link for $13.99 but not able to actually find it at that price?