The Best Outdoor Smart Plugs For Holiday Lights And More

Tired for drudging out in the cold to plug your lights in? Automate your Christmas lights and decorations with these awesome outdoor-rated smart home plugs.

Nothing is more annoying than going outside to plug in your Christmas lights every night, and then unplugging them in the morning. Not only is it annoying to go out in the cold, but leaving your lights on all night isn’t the most efficient use of power (who’s really enjoying them at 4AM after all). Sure, you could use a simple remote-controlled plug like this one, but a smart plug will be able to fully automate your lights for you with a schedule and can even allow you to turn the lights on and off with your smart home assistants.

Here are some of the best outdoor smart plugs to consider for your Christmas lights, or any other outdoor light fixture or appliance.

Best Cheap, All-Around Option: iClever IC-BS06 Wi-Fi Smart Plug ($30)

If you’re just looking for a cheap and simple way to add smarts to your outdoor Christmas lights, the iClever IC-BS06 smart plug is a great way to go.

At only $30, it’s one of the cheapest outdoor smart plugs on the market, and better yet, it comes with two receptacles that can be individually controlled, so it’s like you’re getting two smart plugs for the price of one.

We’ve written a full review of this product, so be to check that out if you’re interested in buying it. But the gist is that it works with both Alexa and Google Assistant, and it’s IP44-rated, which means it’s protected from water splashes, so it’s good in the rain or snow.

The accompanying app does leave something to be desired, but if you set it on a schedule or use voice control with it, then you shouldn’t even have to deal with the app at all.

Buy on Amazon

Best Z-Wave Option: GE Z-Wave Plus Outdoor Smart Switch ($30)

Read the remaining 11 paragraphs

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is Microsoft Flow?

Image
As part of Microsoft’s push towards cloud and mobile apps, they’ve invested in several cloud-only additions to the old familiar Office apps. One of these is Flow, a trigger-based system for creating automated workflows. What Does Flow Do? If you’re the kind of person who reads How-To Geek regularly, you’re probably aware of the drive for personal productivity that’s been raging for pretty much the whole millennium. Flow is Microsoft’s attempt at giving you the kind of automation for notifications, alerts, data gathering, and communication that will help you spend less time on boring but necessary admin work and more time on interesting (and productive) things. Think of Flow as IFTTT , but with a slant towards the office rather than IoT or hardware. Flow allows you to create “flows” (short for “workflows”) that are based on trigger events. For example, you could create a flow that would download the responses to a Microsoft Forms questionnaire to Dropbox regularly, or post a messa...
Read more