A representative from Gosund reached out to me a couple weeks ago and asked if I would be willing to try out and review their smart plug. Of course I can't say no to free smart products so I agreed and had two of their smart plugs in the mail this weekend.
The plugs arrived in no frills packaging with a small user manual. I don't usually bother with manuals unless I have issues so I jumped right in to getting them setup. I do have one other smart plug from another manufacturer in my daughter's room to control her lights so I decided to install these in my son's room to control his two lamps.
Setup was pretty straight forward, I just downloaded the Smart Life App, registered with my email address, connected to my wifi network and discovered the plugs. It is a good idea to give each plug a descriptive name so you know what they are controlling. Next I needed to add the plugs to Alexa so we can control them with our voice. This process was fairly simple as well. I just needed to enable the Smart Life skill and link it with my Smart Life account and then discover the two plugs. The first time I went through this process it did not work. I found the issue was probably on my end, I missed the screen to link the accounts. Once I went through the process again the devices were discovered we were off and running.
To really make my son smile a set up a routine so when I say "Alexa, Goodnight [Son's name]", the routine turns off both lights and plays sleep sounds for 30 minutes to help him go to sleep. Pretty cool stuff for an 8 year old. Voice control is key for my kids rooms as they both have Alexa dot devices and I don't want them messing around in smart device apps changing my settings around.
The plugs also work with Google Home and IFTTT, I don't have a Google Home device so I was not able to test that out but from what I have read it works just fine.
The Smart Life app seems pretty advanced. There are all kinds of automations that you can setup based on temperature, humidity, weather, sunrise/sunset or time schedule. Pretty advanced for a free app. Most smart products at this price point don't have this level of sophistication. The only feature it lacks is energy monitoring, but most smart plugs that include this are three to four times the price and honestly would be overkill for a lamp with a 10 wat bulb.
So lets talk about the value you get for this smart plug. Do a quick search on Amazon and you will find that competing smart plugs are two to three times the price of one of these plugs. Get a four pack and you are paying way less that $10 a plug and once you buy one you are going to find a use case for more. I am already thinking of a couple other places in my home where I could use these plugs.
Overall great value for your money with these Gosund plugs. Check them out if you want to dip into smart automation without spending a ton of money. With the right automations you may even be able to save a couple bucks on your electricity bills.
