Question about mortality of smart plugs

Hardware
1

Hi
over the recent years i had different kinds of smart plugs

  • 433 Mhz (german brand brennenstuhl)
  • zigbee (ikea)
  • wifi with esp8266 and variants
    • sonoff s20 and a10
    • some tuya based single plug, no serial exposed
    • “aofo” 4-plug strip, also tuya based, but exposed a serial

basically all the wifi one’s are dead, while 433 and zigbee work like a charm over the years
the wifi’s suddenly stopped working / stopped connecting to the network
the single plug’s button still worked to switch state though
the 4plug strip branded aofo started to wildly turn one plugin on and off

i drove the s20/a10 with espurna, the single tuya plugin with tasmota and the aofo with esphome
seems like the kind of firmware doesn’t matter

has anyone else ever had this happen to his smart plugs?

2

I’ve tried a few different wifi smarrt plugs. In my experience they are nothing but delayed ewaste. Most last just longer than their 12 months warranty. One or two of a batch will last a few years.

I have not been using zigbee for long enough to comment on their longevity yet but they run a lot cooler, which is promising.

The wifi types run very hot due to the higher power required for wifi modules and confined in such a small space the heat ages the components prematurely.

3 Likes
3

thank you for your answer
it’s good to hear that it’s not just me who has dead wifi plugs

i wish there were more strips, as the single plugins always take so much extra space, regardless of the base tech behind them

4

I’ve removed all my non-essential smart plugs I was just using for energy monitoring. I only use them where I actually need automated switching now.

5

I use three Shelly S smart plugs. One for 4 years, the rest 2 years. And I had no probs so far.

I believe their service life depends on load and type of load.
I’ve read some specific loads may kill such devices faster.

But as mentioned no one of my plugs was damaged. One was used for over two years as washing machine power measurement. and it works till today but moved to another task.

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6

My smart plugs are zigbee tuya and I have a few aquara plugs and some tuya based zigbee outets. Till now only one aquara plug burned down due overloading as its 10 amp plug and current was more than that. But it managed to switch electricity off before it burned down.
I use them form 2 - 3 years and till now everything is working fine.

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7

I never wanted wifi plugs because they consume a lot more energy than Zigbee, hadn’t considered longevity in the equation. Good to know.

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8

I only use Zigbee or Z-wave plugs that are UL-listed. I have a couple of Sonoff Wi-Fi plugs that I upgraded with Tasmota firmware a long time ago (probably woefully out of date at this point), but they work to this day about 5 years later.

I have found that it’s best to setup a 2.4GHz separate SSID for devices from my regular 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSID for everything else.

For some reason, my Lyric T5 termostat seems to have issues connecting to an SSID that supports both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz; even Honeywell recommends that and it seems to help with the Sonoff devices.

I have a single cloud-based wi-fi switch for the sole purpose of power cycling my laptop with the app if there is an issue for some odd reason and it shuts down.

My laptop is running as a hypervisor with HA as a VM, and the laptop supports power-on if AC is detected after being switched off to on.

9

Nope. Well yes it does, inductive loads can wreak havoc, but I had smart plugs on minimal resistive loads that weren’t actually switched (just for power monitoring). The hot little devices still died just out of the 12 month warranty.

10

thanks for all your input
for completeness:
i use my wifi switches to turn off suspected power hogs like modern gameconsoles and various lamps
none of those is more or less likely to make the smartplug die erlier or later

11

I have 433 Mhz plugs die , and one Ikea plug (after about 4 years service). None of my Wifi plugs died yet, but they are not used for switching, only power measurement…

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