One of our favorite categories to cover and one of the most successful consumer topics, is the smart home. A never ending abundance of product to build out your perfect home experience with, spanning so many controllers/hubs. One of the most popular is Z-Wave thanks to the large alliance of companies that have come together to make their products universally compatible to the Z-Wave protocol, allowing various companies to work on the same hub (with also a vast number of hubs to choose from).
zoOZ is one of these companies, specializing in a selection of smart devices, including switches, plugs, sensors and more. One of these, is there Double Plug, a smart plug with two controllable outlets, as well as a USB port for charging.
Most smart plugs are limited to one controllable outlet. If it has a second outlet, it is usually “always on” and you may or may not be able to at least monitor its power consumption. zoOZ put an end to this by giving you complete control over the plug, opening up how many things you can do within a scene on your hub for a single plug.
The design of the plug is all plastic, with each outlet on opposite sides of each other. It is a bar-style smart plug spanning horizontally across your outlet. It features a single USB outlet on the face of the plug, which you cannot control remotely like you can the Edison outlets, however you can still monitor its usage from your hub (showing if something is plugged in or not).
Each outlet on each side is surrounded by an LED light that acts as a status light to show when each side is on or off, or if the plug in general is in pairing mode (and so on). There is a small button on the face of the plug that allows you to manually control the outlets, and it is quite intuitive to use. A single press controls the left outlet, and a double press controls the right outlet (on and off).
Connecting the plug to your Z-Wave hub is also quite easy. When you first plug the unit into an outlet, it automatically goes into pairing mode. Both sides will begin to flash blue simultaneously. So you have to trigger your hub to go into inclusion mode as well and all should be well. The process on each hub can be different, so you will need to consult the instructions of your specific hub if you aren’t familiar with adding devices.
If your hub offers you a list of categories and products to select from while attempting to include, it may not be listed as a known device to choose from. If so, you may have to choose a generic option (ie, “Generic Z-Wave Device” if using a Vera controller).
Clearly, we tried using the latest Vera hub and firmware, and that was what we had to choose to get it to include. The device then appeared as we named it during the process, along with three additional devices, labeled _Appliance Module, _Appliance Module1 and _Appliance Module2. The _Appliance Module and _Appliance Module1 are your left and right outlets, where the _Appliance Module2 is the USB port.
If you click on the original device you created, it turns them both on at once. If you click on _Appliance Module or _Appliance Module1, it obviously only triggers the one side you clicked on at a time. The _Appliance Module2 option shows an on/off slider, but it won’t do anything as you don’t have on/off control of the USB port (as mentioned). This will slide on its own when you plug a device into the outlet that is actively using it (ie, charging a smart device).
You will of course want to rename the other options to something more friendly. For now, we kept things simple by calling it by the products name, mixed with each virtual device’s function (plug, left, right, usb).
Controlling the outlets via your hub seems to work every time, and it will monitor the energy usage of the two side outlets, allowing you to know how much power your connected devices are consuming. Response speed will depend on a number of variables, such as the signal strength and speed of your network, as well as distance between the plug and the hub. We found that in general, there is a bit of latency when controlling it remotely, but it does power on and off within a few seconds at most.
So far, we have yet to see the plug drop from the network. It seems to remain stable and respond to every control. Great for integrating into your other scenes and you can plug just about anything you would normally plug into a general power strip.
Our Conclusion
It is a very clean looking product that won’t look tacky wherever you decide to use it, and it feels like it will last you quite a long time (it doesn’t feel cheap in other words). It is also only $37.95 (currently at least), which places it within or close to the price of other Z-Wave smart plugs in the market. So the fact that you have two outlets along with control for each (both at once or individually), along with energy monitoring of both, is a good sell. This makes this plug quite flexible for any situation where you might use it, and perfect for configurations where you may have two lamps (say, in the living room) and you don’t always want them both on at the same time. Especially if your controller offers support for Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant (which most do now). So it’s affordable, flexible, it works well, and it looks nice. Kind of a win-win all around.
| Buy from Amazon | |
Our Rating | Average Price* $37.95 |
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
Video (Interview):
Additional Images:
Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.
Don’t forget to subscribe for a chance to win cool prizes!
