Shelly Plugs or Schneider Electric Wiser?

[escnor]

I have an issue, I'm not sure how good Shelly plugs are but they're like 1/3rd of the price of an Wiser plug, and I have been hearing bad things about Shelly about their Wifi being rather poor, anyone care to collaborate about that?

One Wiser is like 50€, while one Shelly Plug S is ~19.25€.

I would also like to know how good Shelly's are in seeing <10W usage too as Wiser plugs I don't think will actually see that minimum amount of usage and with the increasing electricity prices I want to figure out how much my things are using it?

[PhilHornby]

Do you currently have Wiser hardware?

I wouldn't buy into the Drayton/Schneider Wiser eco-system just for the power usage monitoring capability of their 'Smart Plugs'. (These seem to be rebadged Heiman Zigbee plugs - and so always needs a hub of some description.) The Shelly plugs appear to be WiFi-based, and so shouldn't need any additional hardware to make them work.

The Wiser Smart Plug happens to function as a Zigbee-repeater (and the only one allowed into the closed Wiser system - this is the real reason to buy it. Its power switching /monitoring is largely academic, because you have to position it in the best place for it to be a Repeater, not where your mains appliance happens to be...

For pure power monitoring, the TP-Link TAPO P110 seems well regarded (and is probably cheaper than the Shelly). I've no personal experience of them though.

[njknh]

I think there are different versions of Wiser plug. The UK version has the Zigbee range extender capability, but not, as far as I can tell, a power measurement capability (there are a couple of these in my parents Wiser system and I can see no power measurement capability in the app). I have however seen references to a european Wiser plug which is a different design that includes a power measurement capability, but not the range extender capability.

I have no experience of the Shelly plugs. I have a number of Tapo P100/P105 wifi plugs and I find these to be reliable. I have not tried the P110/115 plugs that include the power measurement capability as they are physically bigger, which is a problem for me. I have a separate power meter that can measure average power consumption over a period of time - I used that to individually measure the power consumption of devices.

I am somewhat suspicious of the accuracy of all such power measuring devices. My d-umb electricity meter reads lower that the power meter figures (perhaps another good reason for not getting a smart meter). I read somewhere that many power measurement devices struggle to accurately measure the power consumption of devices that use switching power supplies (which most electronic devices now do).

The weak point in many smart plugs seems to be the relay - these are probably more likely to fail if you are switching high current or inductive loads.

[robertwigley]

The Wiser UK plugs do have power monitoring. It just doesn't seem to be exposed inside the Wiser app. You can see it using the Home Assistant Wiser integration.

Regarding power monitoring smart plugs that are not tied to the Wiser ecosystem, I use these with Zigbee2MQTT, a Conbee II stick and Home Assistant and have found them to be very reliable.

[PhilHornby · Accepted solution]

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@njknh wrote:

I think there are different versions of Wiser plug. The UK version has the Zigbee range extender capability, but not, as far as I can tell, a power measurement capability (there are a couple of these in my parents Wiser system and I can see no power measurement capability in the app).

I think Schneider were giving away free devices in the early days (pre 2020); maybe they were different and your parents have those?

Originally, the app didn't show the power usage that was exposed by the API, but it does these days :-

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That seems a reasonable answer for a kettle (mains voltage 236V at the time). It didn't like that load though and kept powering itself off! (The Smart Plug is marked 13A on the rear).

[robertwigley]

So it does! @PhilHornby I had not noticed that it was shown in the app. 😂

[njknh]

Yes you are right, my parent's UK Wiser plugs do show a power figure in the app - I had obviously been looking in the wrong place!