Power Energy Meter,Electricity Usage Monitor Plug with High Accuracy,Large LCD Display Watt Meter Power Analyzer with Overload Alarm(15A 120V 1800w Max)

Simple to set up - easy to use. Bright back light with large number makes it better to read. The neon back lit light also passes as a guide light or night light. Makes it nice to know your energy usage without just relying on a piece of paper.

This is a very nice product. It is more durable/less cheaply put together than other similar power monitors. I have not had any real problems with mine yet. I like that it has a backlight that comes on when you press a button, making it easier to read. It keeps track of historical usage, and you can view this through the menus. The features are about as easy to use and understand as they reasonably could be, even though I still found them quite frustrating. But after using it for a while and re-reviewing the manual on several instances, I am finally getting the hang of it. Even though it seems like it should be easier to use, I can't really think of any obvious way to do that without making it a much more complicated device. I like that there is a setting to keep the backlight always off when it running on battery. I like that it contains a battery and does not lose the information it has tracked if the power goes out or if you unplug it from the wall.I think the backlight should stay on longer when you press a button because the screen can be hard to read without it on depending on your lighting and the angle of view, although not as hard to read as other similar products. I wish there was a feature to turn the backlight on and leave it on until turned off. I can see how they might think this could lead to battery drain, but it could be a feature that only works when not running on the battery. I guess they might worry that people could still leave it on by accident, but they still could have designed it to only stay on for 15 minutes or until manually turned off. Every time you have to press another button to turn the light back on, the act of pressing that button changes what is displayed on the screen or puts it into another mode. When cycling through the history, it doesn't stay on a particular day or month long enough before resetting back to the default view. I was adding up some numbers and it would always reset as I was reaching my hand toward the device to switch to the next day, so for me they chose a timeout time that was almost just barely long enough but not quite, which was very frustrating.It would be nice if there was some way to electronically pull all the data out of the device and view it in a database or spreadsheet. I don't necessarily want it to be super complicated, if they added mobile app integration or Wi-Fi access, it would just become too complex of a product and the quality inevitably would go downhill or many of the advanced features would be unreliable. I think something like the ability to plug it into a PC via USB and download CSV files off the device would be a better fit. Perhaps it could even remain plugged into the wall while doing this if you used a long enough cord. Working with that data on a PC would be much easier than trying to read it off the device by going through all the menus and what not. I guess one problem with that is it still might be collecting data as you are downloading the files, so maybe they could have an export option in the menu where it exports all the data is has collected so far into a directory on the device as CSV files, overwriting whatever was previously there. So as long as you don't perform another export while downloading the files, you would be fine.

Works great on my solar project.

Instructions hard to follow and no website where I can download more information. Screen lacks contrast and is hard to read and understand.

If there is a power failure, this unit turns itself off and does not switch back on when the power comes back. In my area we get short power outages all the time. This unit was being used on a chest freezer and after the first outage it shut off and let the freezer defrost for 10 days. All my meat is now on the verge of being ruined. I am appalled. I appreciate being able to turn the load on and off but the unit should NEVER have the ability to make that decision on its own. Ridiculous piece of equipment. Everything else seems decently made and simple enough, and it’s a good tool for an appliance that doesn’t need power all the time.

I can’t think of something.

Good so far

This product works very well when using it for a normal load. However, I bought it to monitor the output if a grid-tie micro inverter attached to my solar panels The micro inverter must see an AC signal from the power line in order to synchronize and turn on. When installed correctly, this watt meter prevents the inverter from seeing the line voltage, so the inverter will not start. Apparently, there's a relay that actuates when it sees power on the input side of the meter. Since the inverter doesn't produce power until it sees line voltage, the inverter won't start. I added a momentary contact switch between the line and load sides of this meter to get the inverter to see line voltage and start. Subsequently, it keeps running fine.