P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Appliance Tester

Works as described. Great gift for the gadget freak who has everything and/or the person that just wants to know what is draining their electricity. Great buy for the money
 
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The device is easy to use and does what it says it will do, but I found it harder to do the simple things. If you have a receptical hidden behind a freezer (like I did), getting a reading is near impossible. As soon as you unplug the device, all the readings are gone. Having a small rechargable battery inside so that the display would remain for 30 seconds or so after unplugging the device wouldmake this device a "5".
 
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This device will tell you how much electricity the devices around your house consume. It's one thing to know your TV uses 260 watts while it's on, but I wasn't expecting it to also be using 150 when it was turned "off" (off of course being a relative term here lol). You'll walk around plugging all of your things into it, but if you're like me, it's the "off" state that will surprise you (computers only use 15-20 watts when turned off, so why does that TV need 150! lol).. Very nice device to have around when you're trying to figure out what in your house is the biggest electrical pig.
 
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The Kill-a-watt P4400 does do many helpful things such as checking the quality of your power and the power usage for any given appliance, although the latter can be easily obtained on the manufacturers tag on the back of the appliance. However, it has some signifigant shortcomings and an outright prevarication in it's advertising. When it says, above in Features, "Calculate expenses for day,week, month and year.", don't be fooled thinking the kill-a-watt does those calculations. You do them separately with your own calculator, paper and pencil. Also, you better not have anything plugged into the same outlet that you plug the Kill-a-watt into, because the poor design of the unit is so wide it prevents the other outlet from being used. Oh, and since most outlets are about a foot off the floor and the kill-a-watt has a hard to read LCD display without any LED light to assist reading, be prepared to get on your hands and knees to read the display. And don't think you can pull the kill-a-watt out of the outlet to read it, because it instantly goes blank and loses all your cumulative data. You can solve all three of these poor design failures with a good extension cord. Just remember to get a 3 pronged (grounded)cord that is heavy enough to take the load you're testing and long enough to reach a convenient, well lighted surface where you can easily read the display. In summary, the kill-a-watt P4400 will show you a lot of interesting information, but you should also buy a good extension cord, a calculator, and brush up on your math skills to get the best use out of it. If your math skills are rusty, a better buy is the Kill-a-watt EZ, model P4600, which does all the calculations for you and has an internal battery to retain your cumulative data in the event of a power outage or accidental plug disconnect. Sadly, it too hogs both outlets and doesn't have an LED to easily view the display, but it's a real step up from the P4400 because of the calculation feature and, so, a much wiser buy.
 
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I've used it on everything from computers to humidifiers. Just plug it in (with your appliance plugged into it) and it starts working. Gives you information about current, voltage, KWH (the units that your electric company uses to charge you) and more. It can give you immediate readings or averages (for things like refrigerators that turn on and off). It has a 15A current maximum so check your major appliances before you try to test them with this meter. Overall, I love it. Easy to use and gives you valuable information that can lead to savings on your next electricity bill. I think it will pay for itself over the first three months of savings.
 
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The Kill-a-Watt is a great device to gather instant readings on how much electricity is being consumed by various devices around the home and around the office. It is easy to use. The device has several readings that make it easy to see electrical consumption over time as well as at a given moment. It is much easier to use this device than to "do the math" each time you use want to estimate electrical usage of a device. For items that do not run constantly, like the refrigerator or the toaster oven, this is a great device that will obtain those periodic readings and equate the usage for you instantly.
 
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I wanted to know how much power that several devices use. The Kill-a-Watt indicated how much power my computer, window a/c unit and other appliances use. I'm using it now to accumulate how much energy the A/C unit is using. It's as easy to use as it looks and works great too.
 
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This nifty gadget does exactly what it is supposed to do and at a price that can't be beat. My only suggestion for improvement is that if it could retain it's data during a power outage.
 
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I have had two of these for about three years now. Radio Shack used to sell them for $50. They are simple to use and provide very good information on the power feeding a device, and information on the power that the device is consumming. As long as the device to be measured has a standard (120 Volt, 15 Amp Plug), the Kill-a-Watt will work. In the directions, it states that it cannot be used to measure non-utility power (generators, UPSs, Inverters) but I have tried it out on all of these and it seems to work OK. ~~~The advertising on the package seems to indicate that the use of this device alone will save you money, but that is not the case. This device measures power consumption only. If you want to save money, you have to turn stuff off or unplug it. This device will only make it possible to know how much you are going to save by doing that. ~~~Here is what you can measure with it (all measurements are updated once per second). ~~~Voltage (Volts RMS) of the incoming supply. ~~~Current (Amps RMS) that the device is drawing. ~~~VA (Volt-Amps) for the load, this is simply RMS Voltage multiplied by RMS Current. UPSs have a maximum VA rating, and you can use the Kill-a-Watt to determine if the load is acceptable. ~~~Actual Watts consumed at that moment by the device being measured. ~~~Frequency (Hz) of the incoming supply. This should always be 60 for utility power, although the unit, because it never rounds up, will display 59.9, probably becuase its internal clock is a fraction of a second off from accurate. I found this helpful for measuring generator frequency, which indicates if the RPM is within specification. ~~~Power factor for the device being measured. This is an important attribute of AC power, the phase difference between voltage and current. The VA multiplied by power factor results in Watts. ~~~Cumulative power used (KWhr). Plug this unit into the wall, plug the device you want to measure power consumption for into it, and leave it in for some period of time, and this unit will measure the total power consumed. Indispensable for measuring power used by things that don't use constant power (e.g. refrigerators). ~~~Time (Hours:Minutes) A running total of the time that the unit has been plugged in. Helpful for determine average power consumed (Cumulative Power divided by time). ~~~One small drawback is the characterisic of the unit to never round up when providing a measurement. If a device uses 1.99 Watts, it will report 1. If a device uses 0.99 Watts, it will report 0. ~~~In summary, this thing is a great tool to accurately determine how much your electrical appliances are costing you to operate each month.
 
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