Today I’m going to take a closer look on the Shelly Plug S which I’ve recently purchased. This is available here.

Now, as I am a huge fan of the smart home, home automation, IoT and such, I once in a while buy random smart items to test in my home.

Originally I bought the Shelly Plug S so I could monitor energy consumption of various things in my home, because I’m that kind of a guy and those bland things excite me.

And the Shelly Plug S does accurately monitor this with great results. It also stores the data up to 12 months in the Shelly Cloud. (which is free and included in your account).

The main features of the Plug S are (as specified on the manufactures page):

  • Mobile app control
  • Wi-Fi connected
  • Power Metering
  • Weekly Scheduling
  • Follow sunlight
  • Up to 2500W

Adding a new device is way too simple to dive in an in-depth tutorial.

You plug in your Plug S to some wall socket, simply select “Add Device” from the settings menu from within the app, follow the on-screen instructions and you’re done.
What I’ve done here in the photo below is that I’ve added a room (Kitchen) and added my new Shelly Plug S to said room.

Mobile app control

As you can see, there is my plug live in the Android app in my phone.
The button for enabling power throughput is extremely quick, even though I set the plug up with cloud connectivity enabled. It also offers standalone mode if you only want local connectivity.
I’ve had no issues whatsoever with the app and the app itself is beautifully designed and easy to navigate.

Wifi connected

Even though there is probably some bluetooth pairing present during the inital setup of the Shelly Plug S, it operates on a wifi network seamlessly (only 2.4ghz). I myself have a specific vlan in my home to handle all IoT devices so they’re isolated away from the regular subnet, it also simplifies the tracking of the individual smart device.

Power Metering & Weekly Scheduling

These features were the main reason behind me buying the Plug S. As stated earlier I’m a statistics kinda guy and I like knowing how many watts my appliances use on a daily basis. Shelly did not disappoint, and when an integral unit in my floor-heating at home went bust, I had to get the heater that we use for camping to heat up our rooms at regular intervals.

It uses just under 2000 watts and the Plug S handled that perfectly. I could even rely on the weekly schedule to turn the heater off. Because I didn’t want to go to sleep and accidentally forget to turn the heater off.
Yes, I stayed up the first three nights just to be sure the scheduled power-off kicked in. Which was a waste of time as it was prompt down to the second. A++ for that feature.

The rest …

I did not test the “Follow sunlight” as I live in Iceland and it is the middle of winter so sunlight is …… limited.

My Verdict

I would like to make it known that this review is not sponsored in any way and my honest verdict is affected by nothing but my own experience with this particular product.

Having said that, I love the Plug S from Shelly an I intend to buy more. They also offer many other products, from led bulbs to security related products. (that I might be reviewing soon) 🙂