Friday March 29, 2024

P3 International 4460 Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor Review

Company Info: P3 International
Category: Gadgets
Price: $40.00
Rating: 4.0/5.0

Reviewer: Wayne Eggert
Date: July 19, 2008

Pros: Monitors electricity usage of an appliance and automatically calculates costs by day, week, month, year; Simple to operate; Useful for anyone with many electronics>

Cons: Fairly expensive for a gadget that just monitors electricity usage; Not great build quality


Overview
Ever wonder how much electricity your refridgerator was costing you to run each year and if it's time to replace it with a newer energy efficient refridgerator? How about the cost to keep that Playstation 3 or XBox 360 on standby 365 days a year? Maybe such thoughts never crossed your mind a few years ago, but as oil, gas & food prices rise, keeping monthly costs down has quickly become a growing concern amongst many American consumers. Additionally, if you haven't already heard, the rate cap on electricity is scheduled to be removed in 2010 -- which means electricity costs will rise for many Americans. P3 International brings us the Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Montitor, a simple way to monitor how much electricity your appliances are really costing you in the long-run and identify "vampire electronics" that are sucking up costly energy when plugged in, but not in use.



There are two different versions of the Kill-A-Watt -- the newer Kill-A-Watt P4460 ($40 street price), which is the focus of this review, automatically calculate estimates of energy costs by day, week, month & year and retains data during a power outage. The older Kill-A-Watt P4420 ($20 street price), will not retain data in the event of a power outage and will require you to do some (fairly simple) math to calculate energy costs. Otherwise both versions are nearly identical in terms of what they measure (line voltage, current, amps, kilowatt hours, etc). I chose the higher-priced Kill-A-Watt P4460 since I do have the occasional power outage and didn't want to lose data I had been accumulating. If you don't mind the inconvenience of losing data during a power outage, get the older model and save yourself $20 -- then calculate cost of energy.

Product Specs (from manufacturer's site):

Model: P4460
Operating Voltage: 115 VAC
Max Voltage: 125 VAC
Max Current: 15A
Max Power: 1875 VA
Weight: 5 oz.
Dimensions: 5 1/8"H x 2 1/2"W x 1 1/2"D



Features (from manufacturer's site):
-Shows the operating costs of your household appliances
-Accurate to within 0.2%
-Large LCD Display
-Calculates cost and forecasts by week, month and year
-Built-in battery backup
-Displays eight critical units of measure

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