In case you didn’t know there’s been a war raging in the Australian Smart Home scene looking for the best smart Power plug/ outlet. The competition is vast, the battle lines simple, can you stuff two of these buggers side by side in an Australian powerpoint?
Until now the answer was a resounding no. All of the Smart Plugs we have purchased, as we’ve got a few, suffer from the same flaw, they’re just too big, way too big in many cases. However, the Lenovo Smart Plug is smaller, much smaller and in my testing fit side by side in various Clipsal, HPM and Delta double pout points.
As you can see the two plugs fit perfectly together, the single power button is on the top so it’s easy to tap the on-off button for physical control. The app pairing process is simple and adding them to Google Assistant or Alexa is painless.
From there you can enjoy fuller physical, voice and app control via the Google and Amazon ecosystems. What’s better is that they’re on sale right now down from the RRP of $29 AUD to $23.00 at Harvey Norman, $23.20 at JB HiFi, $23.95 at Office Works and $23.96 at The Good Guys. The only complaint some people may have is they sit a little low in the outlet, so if your power outlet is close to the floor/ counter there’s a small chance it may not fit in.
I found the Lenovo ones to be the slowest out of the lot. If it wasn’t bundled with their smart alarm clock (which is amazing) I would have returned them. My prefered smart plugs are the TP-link ones.
I know the power outlets vary between brands, but the Mirabella Genio typically aren’t a problem to put two side by side.
The Arlec Grid Connect plugs are other space offenders.
For my money I prefer the “Arlec” unit. It comes as a single or double outlet unit with the single for only $17 or in a twin pack for $36 from Bunnings. You might not be able to get 2 units to sit side by side in a standard GPO, but you can get one plus a regular plug next to it. Simple and fast paring too.
It seems to me like this is paid advertising. The best Australian smart plug is the aeotec smart switch you have in the picture but haven’t talked about. They also fit side by side and don’t hang down. They are compatible with Google home and Alexa you just need a hub as they are zwave devices.
Not only is this not a paid advert we bought these based on reader feedback about them. I have several aeotec smart plugs, and they are good, however, they do not sit side by side in all of my power points. As you said they are also z-wave, which I love but is very niche.
In China they use a power point design very similar to the Australian one, so possibly that’s how they managed a design that works for Australia.
Lenovo has been doing some good things lately, with the smart plug, the smart clock, and now the Yoga Smart Tab 10.1 with almost pure Android and far-field microphones for a Google Assistant ambient mode.
Lenovo and Motorola under their steward ship are certinatly doing great things.