P3 International P4460 Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor

I bought this gadget and love it. I have since used power strip to turn off things that are just sucking up a few watts here and there by being on standby. I highly recommended if you are interested in saving a bit on your power bill.

I highly recommend this item. The only thing wrong with it is you need a small, grounded, high amperage (15A) extension cord as the P4460 plugs directly into the wall. Otherwise, this is a very useful piece of equipment that worked right out of the package. Being able to calculate daily, weekly, and monthly electrical costs of a particular appliance is extremely informative as well.

After hearing all the hype on TV about how much energy all my chargers were using just sitting there, I decided to find out for myself.

The Kill A Watt is easy to use. Just input what your electric rate is and you can find out instantly what that charger costs (when charging or just sitting there plugged in). Turns out my chargers only used pennies a year when not being used and only a little more when charging. Not worth the trouble to keep unplugging them.

You get the cost by hour, day, week, month and year. For a device that cycles on and off just leave it plugged in for say 24 hours and you can see what was actually used and a projection for any of the time frames above. I found out our small freezer was only using $6.84 a month, well worth the savings and convenience of having a freezer.

The only drawback is that the monitor plugs directly into the wall which can make it a little hard to read. The easy solution is using a short (3 prong) extension cord to get it away from the wall. Even if you do unplug it the data is retained until you press the reset button.

Pressing reset does not erase the rate...easy to change ...as the rates go up and up.

This unit is really easy to use and with the calculations it performs you just plug it in and leave it. For most products you only need to have this plugged in for 24 hours to get a good average. Other things like tvs that get more usage on the weekends needs to be plugged in for about a week. I didn't find the screen hard to read but a 3' outlet strip works well for easy access.

Terrific product.
PROS: Easy to use yet as much detail as you want. Provides hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual costs with the push of a button. Have used for weeks determining costs on Frig, Freezer, TV, window air conditioners and computers. Helpful in making appliance decisions. Allows you to enter local price per kilowatt, which is critical in comparing to new appliances. Before you compare to Energy Star ratings look at what price per kilowatt was used in their calculation and match to yours. Locally we pay $.1602 (16 cents per KW - most rating labels show 6-10 cents). This device saved me from buying new appliances that I thought were a problem but are not the problem.

CONS: Can only do typical 110-120 volt appliances. Cannot do 208-240 volt such as your clothes drier and range/stove.

NOTES: I am copying all appliance data from P3 into spreadsheet to have a 90% picture of all my electricity usage (minus hot water heater, range and drier). Then I can start a more intelligent approach to electricity cost management. Every homeowner should have and use one of these P3 Monitors on a regular basis. Highly recommended.