P3 International P4460 Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor , grey

We got ours last night and got down to business. Serious home-economics business. The big ones I was worried about were entertainment center with Wii, stereo, etc. "on idle", a laptop station in another room that is often left on and then finally I just installed a window A/C unit in our bedroom to avoid paying for all-night whole-house A/C when we are only in one room (childless couple as you may have imagined). Anyhow, the entertainment center turned out to be costing us something like $15...per year. A buck and change a month. Not worth the hassle of fooling with, but I did put the Wii, amp, preamp and various disc players on a single switch on our uber-power supply in order that we can squelch even that. I did some preliminary stuff around the house...lots of stuff like *newer* cell phone chargers draw almost literally nothing. I think it was $1.76 per YEAR *when charging* for our cell phone chargers...a pittance at cents a month. When phones are not plugged in, our chargers drew only LED power...i.e. unregisterable as it was less than one-tenth of a cent an hour. So...mostly just confirmation that a lot of the potential "vampires" out there really aren't. BUT...WOW...in some cases, you must be careful... We stuck our Bunn coffeemaker in the thing. The numbers started ratcheting up...fifty dollars per year...seventy...one hundred and twenty...one hundred and fifty... OH MY GOODNESS... The Kill A Watt EZ works on averaging over time, I realized we had *just* turned this thing on and it was going from cold to "heat water up - QUICK!" mode...in other words, drawing lots of power. That said, while Bunn coffeemakers I believe make the best tasting coffee and quick, they do the "quick" part of that by leaving the water heater on standby mode, always heating the water up as it cools. Naturally, I have always wondered about how much that sucker costs per year. I think I will feed it some water and let it run for a few days to get an averaged yearly cost. Should be interesting and if Amazon lets me I will report back. Secondly, another issue: I plugged this thing into our turned-off Oster blender...this is one of the classic vintage style blenders, if that matters at all...and it was reporting something like $4.75 per month, IDLE. Weird. Then, after a bit, that number started dropping...and dropping...and dropping. Perhaps when it first starts, there is some big surge that runs through it that was taking a while to be diluted by the draw-per-minute averaging in the Kill A Watt EZ. Anyhow, I really think that thing uses nothing when plugged in and idle. *** The important point to the blender example is that there will be a temptation to perform quick-hit analyses on your appliances, but this is not always the best strategy. This thing will give an accurate yearly cost for something that draws consistently, but anything that has a weird spike when first plugging it in or that turns on and off in terms of draw, like a Bunn coffee maker's water heater or a window A/C unit that blows cheap fan constantly, but turns on it's power-consuming compresser here and there must be left on for a while to get that averaging going. That is the only way you'll get an accurate and realistic actual-use cost. *** Microwave was also basically nothing year-long when not in use...I think it was one dollar a year, maybe. It was apparently just powering it's little calculator-style LCD display, and that was it. The power gets sucked during cooking, but how many minutes per day are you doing that? A floor fan costed $11...per year...to run continuously. The way we were using it, it was probably costing us $4.50 a year...and to think I used to get upset if one of us left it on all day. HA! My InFocus projector (800x600 DLP projector) draws 1 cent per hour. Well, wow, that shocked me. I left that on for a while and it still reported 1 cent per hour. Good stuff! I am sure they will come out with LED projectors that use 1 cent per 10 hours, but until that time, I have no good reason to switch or upgrade...power is cheap. (Oh, forgot to mention, power is 12 cents per kWh where I live at the moment...price your own accordingly). Oh, that window A/C unit is - I think - about 8,000 BTU and came in at thirty-six cents per night. I am sure our A/C for the house was running at least dollar a night, judging by our bill, so this should save us 60% (36 cents instead of a buck) of about half of our bill (since 8 hrs we use A/C wall unit, 8 hrs we use whole-house and 8 hrs it is OFF completely during the day when we are gone). So 30% savings right off the bat...and that will pay for the A/C wall unit very quickly. In the final analysis, there wasn't much adjustment made. This thing did not really directly pay for itself monetarily, but in terms of peace-of-mind, it definitely helped. I think our major expense is air conditioning, and after two months of our bill jumping over 50%, I am hoping the use of the window unit solves our energy "crisis." I sure couldn't find anything else (plugged in anyways, hardwired is another story) that seemed to draw anywhere near significant amounts of power. The Kill A Watt EZ was worth it for me as a "peacemaker" - both with myself and with my wife. The peace-of-mind was easily worth the thirty bananas it costed, and the hour-day-month-week-year calculations are WELL worth the ten or twelve more bones you pay for the "EZ" model over the regular P4400...if I had to do it all over again, I'd still pick the P4460...well worth the hassle savings. The criticisms about it being hard-to-read and the solution to stick it on an extension cord (I used a power strip, which was perfect as it was short and highly portable versus a big bulky three-prong extension cord) are both spot on. Well done, P3, for a great product. Our "vampire hunt" didn't turn up any convincing vampires, but it did ease our minds about them and allowed us to better focus our energy saving...well...energies.

UPDATE(12-17-15): I thought I lost this, but I finally found it again. I attached it to a printer and forgot about it for many many many months. I definitely got a good data sample from the printer. This things still works fine even after being connected all that time. UPDATE(02-03-14): Still working - the energy savings ($$$) gained from habit/device changes based on the information the Kill-A-Watt Monitor provides has already covered the cost of buying it. In fact, several+ times over! As mentioned in the original review, this Kill-A-Watt Monitor model retains the statistics when it does not have power. Devices that don't use power when turned off will, of course, not power the Kill-A-Watt Monitor and not record any new data. Subsequently, when the device is turned on the monitoring resumes where it left off and the statistics reflect the "always on" energy usage (for the length of time indicated in the meter). When the monitor is connected to a device that uses power when it's turned off (vampire loads such as TVs, microwaves, paper shredders, etc) the statistics will continuously accumulate and will basically be a weighted combination of the energy used when the device is on AND off. Yes, I know this is obvious, but, it's a subtle but important point to recognize. To illustrate this subtlety, think about a microwave oven, a likely vampire device. Microwaves are not used 24 hrs/day (I hope not). If you monitor a microwave only when it's warming/cooking something (the oven is unplugged after each use) the $/year will be very high. This would not reflect the true operating cost because the monitor does not take into account when the oven is plugged in but turned off. But, if you monitor your microwave when it's plugged in all the time (it usually is), the $/year will slowly lower to a more correct value the longer you monitor it. This really shows your usage "habits" and not the always on cost. If saving some $ is your goal, the Kill-A-Watt Monitor saves you NOTHING by using it. YOU have to change your habits on how you use your electrical devices (or don't use lol) to realize the savings. You don't need to have one of these monitors to do that. However, it will certainly tell you where to focus your efforts by revealing the high energy loads you use. You may be surprised on the power usage of some devices too (good and bad surprises :-) ). If it takes buying a device such as this one to help inspire one to change habits/devices, then so be it. If your goal is basically to inspect the specifications of electrical devices (volts/amps/VA/W/power factor, frequency) the Kill-A-Watt Monitor works great. Original Review: I borrowed one of these a while ago and it worked well. I liked that this model retains the values when you remove the monitor from the equipment your testing. The money values (hour, day, week, month, year) are convenient enough. Just remember to hold reset to zero the monitor before testing another piece of equipment (the $/kWh rate you enter does NOT change when you press reset which is a good thing. I would hate to enter than every time before monitoring something). It's best to use a small (6" long) extension on the back of the monitor to make it easier to plug into your outlets when other plugs are in the way. Otherwise you'll have to remove all plugs in the outlet as the Kill-A-Watt will cover the other sockets.

The P4460 works great for its advertised purpose (such as determining power factor), but there are two things that keep me from giving it a 5-star review. First is the display - a backlit display with wide viewing angles would be a huge improvement. I know that a backlight would draw additional power and that would slightly skew the power consumption data from what is intended to be a very sensitive meter. However, electrical outlets are almost universally located in places that are hard to illuminate and hard to view straight-on, so there have been a lot of situations where I wished that the meter had a backlight for me to switch on in those situations. The second is the fact that the meter completely died after I had been running 1,300 watts of power through it for about 8 hours. Looking online, I see that it also died under heavy continuous power for other people as well. So, it is kind of an edge-case, but you should be aware of that risk. So overall, the P4460 is a pretty solid power meter, but I won't be replacing my dead one with the same model. I will be picking up a P4498 to see if the remote display helps deal with the P4460 display's illumination and viewing angle issues.

It is an excellent tool that gives you pretty much everything you need quickly so that you can run around the house testing different things. It has nearly every calculation that you might be interested in. It is very easy to discover surprises for vampires that you didn't realize, as well as figure out the actual cost of things you knew drew energy but didn't know in actual costs, such as how much that computer actually draws if you leave it on. It is a nearly perfect tool. There are a few things I might wish for, like a back light, extension cord, or longer tracking than 99:99. But you can work with all that. USING You just plug it in, and plug the device into it and it starts working. It is a little hard to use directly without combining it with a separate power strip or extension cable. For example, it is awkward to read and might not fit if you plug directly into the existing socket in a power strip or wall outlet. It is much easier if you buy a separate power strip, plug this on top of it, just swap in by the power trip extension and device into this. Then you can easily fit anywhere, can tilt and read more easily, etc. In poor lit areas, you will need to carry a flashlight to help read the screen. I just run around with a paper, pencil, and flashlight and write down findings while testing a number of devices in a row. Just swap out an existing plug, hold reset for 5 seconds to start fresh, and you're off and just monitoring the results. Measuring is actually very quick if you are just testing current operating state of things. It only takes a minute or so to swap out, check current wattage and cost, and move onto the next plug. I test items individually plugged into a power strip under a desk in less than 10 minutes -- swap each, power on, reset, cycle through measurements, write down finding, move on. RESULTS It immediately tells you current voltage, watts in use, amps, Hz, and a few more, and then projects the costs per hour, day, week, month, and year based on what it has seen so far. You can enter your own utility rate in case you run at a high bracket. It keeps a running total in KWh, total cost so far, so to isolate a new device you hold reset for 5 seconds. If you want the total cost while operating in a certain mode such as to isolate when running at full power you just hit the reset and it assumes costs from that point on and assumes if it keeps running at that it will project out. So you can easily calculate after resetting the cost per hour. For example, how much your computer uses while on and doing intensive work, versus sleep mode, versus turned off. It is nice to know how much per hour something costs so you might think twice how long you run it in that mode. Then you can leave it on for a day or two to discover the realistic cost such as how much it affects your monthly energy bill overall. For example, my water distiller cycles and while cost per hour is one thing, I want to know how much I am really consuming per day and per month. EXAMPLES For example, I learned my space heater uses 1100W at at my utility rate of 0.34/KWh I know it costs me 0.35/hr to use, so now there is a concrete cost that I know. My desktop computer consumes 100W while idle, but my laptop consumes only 30W while idle. My older computer speakers use 5W whether on or off it makes no difference with the power adapter plugged in. My external hard drive draws about 5W while off too. My coffee maker surprisingly uses 6W while off, 6.8W while on, which adds up to $17.80/yr just to sit on my counter while off. Now I will put it on a power strip. Under a longer test for something that cycles, my water distiller, it realistically costs $25/month, which makes me rethink how much I draw from it. I learned my new wireless printers each draw 3 to 4W while in standby mode, but 0W while off. I use them infrequently, so I might as well just turn them off while not using them. DRAWBACKS There are a few things that could be slightly better, but are all workable. 1. I had to build my own dongle by attaching this to a power strip for easier swapping & reading. (cheap & easy) 2. Need a flashlight to read in low lit areas due to no back light (no big deal really). 3. Long running tests sometimes reset, or automatically at 99:99 rather than remembering only the most recent 99:99. So if you check it shortly after it rolls over or resets, it will not be accurate. (but sometimes works) The biggest problem is #3. I wanted to get an idea of a weeks worth of actual use of my water distiller because the daily use varies and would even out over a week. But I checked it after it reset or rolled over and then only had 8:22 of history in which it had not even run in those hours making it calculate that it was free. But now that it is back up to 47:00 in history it calculates $25/month. I don't know for sure the cause of why it reset other than it was around 99:99, but this hasn't always happened. I have since tested beyond 99 in which it lists "142h". If it did reset at 99:99, I wish rather than a complete reset every 99:99 that it would just drop the oldest data and keep rating the most recent 99:99 once it reaches that much. For example, I can't possibly test my water softener for a month this way in which I have no idea when or how often that runs so that a 99:99 sampling will not be adequate. Or else it just sometimes resets on me near that time. But really this is minor. I use it much more often for spot checking things.

This is a great product to help you monitor electricity usage! It is accurate and easy to use after reading the manual. It has lots of features for its low cost. It provides all kinds of statistics regarding a products usage: Cost to use by year, month, week, day, and hour, Wattage used, amps, etc. It averages use over the period of time you have it plugged in. A good feature is that it holds the information until you reset it, allowing you to unplug the item and take it to a convenient location to retreive the readings. It can be used with most any electric item that plugs into a conventional electric outlet. It's easier to use if you use a short heavy duty extension cord between it and the wall outlet, preventing having to get down level with the outlet for readings. It will surprise you with some of the 'phantom' uses of products, such as electronis that are 'off' but still in a 'standby' condition and sapping electricity. You get your kw per hour from your electric bill and enter it into the unit and get accurate costs. Very well made high quality product. I inadvertantly ordered the P4400 model previously expecting it to record the cost of use. Be careful ordering, they look the same but the P4400 doesn't have nearly as many features, including the ability to input the cost of electricity in your area. I also ordered at the same time the Belkin Conserve monitor with the remote display. It's a good unit also, but doesn't have all the features of the P4460. It does allow you to plug the cost of your electricity into the unit. It is convenient to leave plugged in to a product over time like a freezer, as it will accumulate the usage for as long as you have it plugged in, averaging the usage over this time to give you a more accurate cost to use per month and year. This unit only gives cost per month and year, if you want week, day, hour, you have to calculate it from the month/year readings. It also has a feature I like that is shows with a moving bar when electricity is being used like a power company electric meter does. By the tripple or single bar, you can tell if the reading is real time or averaging. It begins to average after 15 minutes, and gives real time usage prior. Either of these units will give good results, but the P4460 is much more complex with a wider range of features. The Belkin has a simple 3 button screen that is very simple to use.

This works great. I was under the impression that this took a battery or two so it could keep the readings stored in its' memory when either the power goes out or it is unplugged to be moved to a new location, but it doesn't, it's built-in. The power has gone out twice since this has been plugged in, though very briefly, only like 5 seconds, it still kept the readings in place. My old unit, the P4400, which went defective on me, did not store the readings and all were lost the second the power went out. I have no idea how long the readings will stay in memory if there is an extended power outage or if I have to unplug it and leave it unplugged until it gets plugged into the new location, but I'm about to find out tomorrow when I go out of town and take this with me, it will be unplugged for about 20 hours. Will report back as to if it kept it stored or not. (edited, see below) All in all, it's been about 5 weeks and I really like this unit, it works just fine. UPDATE 1/31/15: I had this unplugged while in travel, it was o/a 24 hours before I plugged it in at my new destination and the previous readings were still stored in it so I know it'll keep the readings for at least that long. If I find out that it keeps them longer than that, I'll again edit this review to include my new findings. UPDATE 9/29/20: I changed my rating from 4 stars to 5 stars because this has been working just fine after all these years and felt it deserved that 5th star. I still wished it had a backlight to it which I believe was the reason for the original 4 stars. I do not keep it all the time plugged in anymore, and haven't for about 3 or 4 years now, so that contributes to it's longevity but I do use it here and there just to find out how many watts and/or amps one particular thing, or a combo of things, actually uses. Just updating this review to note that this still works perfectly fine like it did on day one. It is worth buying as it is a very useful tool to have on hand. If you care about how much electricity you use that is. There are many other positive reasons why you should own one of these so do your research and watch some videos to learn more and then buy one, you'll be glad you did.

I owned the original P4400 Kill-A-Watt until I loaned it to someone who never returned it. The original was an excellent unit but with a major flaw. This P4460 Kill-A-Watt EZ fixes the flaw and has a new very useful feature. The flaw in the original unit was that it didn't retain data after it was unplugged. It was aggravating to let it run for an entire day only to lose the accumulated data because someone accidentally unplugged it, or there was a momentary power failure, or light was too dim to read it. This new model solves this problem entirely. It retains all data until you hit the Reset button. The button needs to be held down for several seconds before it does the reset, making it much less likely that you'll accidentally reset it. A convenient feature that was absent on the original Kill-A-Watt but that has been added to the new one is the ability to enter the hourly rate that your utility charges for electricity. This isn't a huge advantage for me, because I'm logging all the data on a spreadsheet where I can automatically display total cost at the various rate tiers that Pacific Gas & Electric charges, but for many people it will be a huge advantage not to have to compute the actual cost for each reading by multiplying kwh by what you pay for each hour of electricity. The Kill-A-Watt EZ does it for you. For me, this is a must-have item. If you're concerned either about your utility costs or about preserving the environment, this could make a big difference for you. It's eye-opening to see how much power some electric devices consume, and surprising how efficient some are. This is a great way to determine how to reduce the power your home, office, or workshop is consuming. Many owners complain about the lack of a dongle that would make it easier to plug the Kill-A-Watt into a wall socket. I just use a short 14AWG extension cord rated for 1875 watts. A built-in dongle would be nice to have but it's not a major deal for me. Another complaint I see is about the menu on the new model. I think it's an improvement over the original. It's easy to use: - Hold the red "Set" button several seconds, then enter the rate your utility charges per kwh (you should be able to find it on your bill); after you select the right rate, press "Set" again to save it - After pressing the "Set" button, press the "Up" and "Down" buttons to set the rate. The digits change fast. - Hold the "Reset" button several seconds to set all readings back to zero (except the rate that you set with the "Set" button) - Press the "Menu" button to cycle through the Elapsed Time, Volt, Cost, Rate, and KWH displays For me, the new button layout and menu system is clearer to use than the older model's buttons. I've just received the Kill-A-Watt EZ last night so I can't attest to its durability, but I had no problems with my previous Kill-A-Watt and I don't anticipate any arising with this one. If any problems do arise, I'll update this review.

I purchased this meter to understand why my electric bill has become so high. I knew that I had lots of devices connected 24/7 that were each using small amounts of electric power, but didn't know whether that was my problem. Also, I have two refrigerators, but one of them is seldom opened. I didn't know if it was a major contributor to my problem. And finally, I have some devices that we use frequently which clearly consume a lot of power, like our television and home theater system, and I didn't know if watching that for several hours a day was causing a problem. The product provided answers to all my questions. What it does The meter plugs into a wall outlet, and then you un-plug the device you want to measure, and instead plug it into the meter. You immediately can see how much power the device is using at that moment in time. When you do this, you have to remember that some devices have a standby mode, where they are consuming some power, but are not consuming as much power as when they are being used. A good example is a TV set. It uses a little power all the time so it can read the "on command" from your remote control. Then, once turned on, the TV consumes a lot more power than in standby. So for many devices, you have to measure the standby power, and then measure the power again once the device is turned on. Almost any power meter can measure these two types of power. However what makes this particular meter so useful is that it can accumulate measurements over time, so you can figure out how much power a device will use, on average, over a cycle of many days. A good example of this is your refrigerator. You can wait until you hear it running and then plug it into the meter and read the power. I did this with the old fridge in our garage and found that it uses 248 watts while running. However, that is not a useful figure because, of course, any refrigerator cycles on and off during the course of the day. What you really need to know is how much power it uses over the course of 24, 48, or 72 hours. With the P4460 Kill A Watt EZ power meter, you can plug in an appliance, walk away, and come back in an hour, day, or week, and read the total amount of power used over that period of time. It is easy to then figure out how much power the appliance will use, on average, during the course of a month, and how much it will cost. To help you with the cost calculation, the meter lets you enter your energy cost in cents per killowatt hour (a figure you'll find on your monthly bill) and it will then tell you how much the appliance will cost per day, week, month, or year. This is pretty neat, although there is one flaw in this approach. The flaw is that PG&E (our electricity provider) has a multi-tier rate system where we pay very little for the first 90 killowatt-hours of electricity, then more for the next 30, even more for the next 60, and even more for everything after that. You'll have to come up with your own math if you want to figure out which rate to use. My solution was to use the most expensive rate because our bill always triggers the top tier (as I expect most people's bills will do if they own a home instead of an apartment). Thus, any new electricity usage will always be charged incrementally at the top rate. What it doesn't do This meter requires that you be able to plug the device into the meter. This means that you have to be able to get at the plug and disconnect it from the wall. By contrast, you can purchase a "clamp on" power meter that only requires that you be able to access a wire that feeds the device, and you then clamp onto that wire, without disconnecting the device, and the meter reads the power by reading the induced magnetic field from the wire. This is a much more elaborate way of measuring power, and these devices cost at least ten times what the P4460 costs. The meter also cannot help you measure anything that is built in. Thus, you can't measure the power used by all the lights in your kitchen (we have a lot of track lights which are quite clearly consuming a lot of power, but I can't measure this with the P4460). The Kill A Watt also cannot measure 240V appliances like your dryer or electric oven. Summary -- Is It Useful? So, having used this meter for a few days, was it worth the cost and is it useful? The answer to both questions is a resounding YES! I was able to find out that the almost ninety devices I have connected to the wall in this house use enough standby electricity (the amount used when connected, but not turned on) to cost me almost $40 per month. Some of the whacko "green" people try to tell me that I should disconnect these devices, but that is not practical. Do I really want to turn off my Internet modem, my router, my wireless access point, my fax machine, my telephone answer machine, my portable phone, etc. and only turn them on at the instant I'm going to use them? I suppose I could, but it would make them far less useful, and would be a total pain in the neck. However, I did find several devices that used a lot more standby power than I would have thought, and which I CAN turn off. A good example is the furnace. During the summer, I don't need to have these connected (I actually have two small furnaces, instead of one large one). I had never bothered to unplug them. However, the P4460 tells me that they are using 13.2 watts of power, all day, all night, every day. I found that at my electricity rates, every 5 watts of 24/7 power costs me $1 per month. Thus, by unplugging the two furnaces I am going to be able to save about $2.25 per month for about four months of the year. So, I have identified appliances that I can disconnect, without greatly affecting my lifestyle, and by doing so, I can save money. I'll certainly pay for this gadget within the first year, just by doing this. I am NOT doing this to "save the planet," because quite frankly what I do -- and even what lots of people like me doing the same thing -- won't make a hill of beans difference (take a look at how much electricity is used to create a pound of aluminum or roll a sheet of steel ...). I am an electrical engineer, and believe me, you don't change things by operating at the margins of the problem. Instead, I'm doing this because it is going to save money on my electricity bill. The cause may not be as noble as the fiction of "saving the planet," but it is far more real and -- this is the whole point -- far more MEASURABLE!

Kill A Watt es esencial para conocer el consumo eléctrico de los aparatos de la casa y de esta manera saber en que gasta la electricidad. Una de las cosas interesantes de este medidor, es que puede decirnos aproximadamente cuanto nos cuesta tener un aparato en uso por hora, día, semana, mes y año. Gracias al medidor pude encontrar que aparatos consumen energía cuando están apagados y así reducir el consumo fantasma. Con algunos cambios pude reducir 66kWh de consumo al bimestre, ahorrándome $185 pesos en el próximo recibo. (En mi caso 1kWh = $2.802) El medidor es muy fácil de utilizar, solo se conecta a la toma de electricidad y conectamos el aparato a "observar" en el contacto del medidor. Podremos ver casi inmediatamente cuantos Watts consume en tiempo real, cuanto ha consumido y cuanto tenemos que pagar por la electricidad usada desde que se prendió. Lo importante aquí es configurar el costo por kWh la primera vez que lo conectemos, de esta manera los "costos" sean lo mas cercanos a la realidad.

Perfect product..

NO ES DE PRACTICO DE UTILIZAR, HAY OTRAS MEJORES OPCIONES

great little device, accurate, easy to use, but it lacks the ability to display on demand current draw. you cant see instant usage, you HAVE to leave it plugged in and moniter over time. makes it hard to diagnose power issues if you have to leave it plugged for hours or days for just a single device or circuit

Muy bueno, aunque por desgracia (que no es culpa del aparato) el costo de la energía en México es variable, por lo que la función de cálculo de gasto, simplemente no sirve, pero da una buena idea. Me gustaría un poco más de autonomía en el aparato. Esto quiere decir, el display está encendido mientras el aparato está conectado. Cuando se desconecta, el display se apaga, así que puede ser complicado leerlo en ciertas condiciones. Ciertamente se puede conectar en algún lugar más cómodo y leer lo que decía, pero ¿por qué no ponerle una batería recargable pequeña para poderlo leer en la mano, después de que se desconecta?