Electricity Usage Monitor

To start, because there are many of these for sale in many different price points, let me clarify that the 5-stars is for meters at this price point. If you are looking for the best quality meter available with every function, you'll need to look at companies like Fluke (and also expect to pay $2000 - $5000!). I highly recommend this product if you are looking for a meter to use at home that will measure the amount of electricity a particular device uses when it is plugged into an outlet. I've used it for a few weeks and it appears to be accurate for all the measurements it makes. It is of decent quality construction and I appreciated the inclusion of a short extension cord to make connections easier than needing to go straight into the outlet, or straight into the device (for odd locations or shapes, like a wall wart). Nice little freebie to make life easier and enough imo to put this above competing products. The buttons and functions all work and the display is easy to read. I'm confident in the quality because I have used it with high-power devices for long periods of time (longer than recommended once (by accident!)) There are a lot of competing products in this price range, so it was difficult for me to choose, but I'm glad I chose this. Upon receipt of the product, there was one little hiccup for me. I don't know a lot about electricity and there was one part of the instruction manual I found confusing. I moved on to other chores and hadn't thought much about it when I received a follow-up email from the Seller, Aaron, checking to see if everything was okay. I told him that I didn't understand one of the features and he quickly replied with an explanation of the feature. Being a little slow on this subject, I told him I didn't really understand, (still). Most sellers probably would have just offered a return or refund at this point, but Aaron really went out of his way in two more emails to help me understand and helped me learn how to get the most out of this product. So, in a market where there are a lot of choices and all of the products are of similar quality, features and price, I can recommend this one because of the great customer service. Let's face it, dealing with sellers of electrical devices on Amazon can often be frustrating due to language barriers and communication difficulty. That is not the case here and I received exceptional customer service and the product has worked exactly as advertised.

For me, a valuable feature is the ability to turn on/off the display backlight; I like to leave it on when testing, otherwise it will turn on when you select it and stays on long enough to get a reading then turns off. The light blue backlighting (when on) provides excellent contrast with the readings. The only negative comment about the display is the very small data identifiers (watt, cur, volt etc.) which makes reading them challenging more than a few inches away from the display. However in all fairness, this can also be said about many similar monitors. This monitor seems very accurate. I tested it using a resistive load (incandescent light bulb) of 100, 200 and 300 watts and the readings were constant so comparing the observed voltage, current and power correlated closely with the calculated power (voltage x current). If you are testing an inductive load such as anything with an electric motor, the displayed values were not as constant when viewed individually; they were constantly drifting within an expected range. If you attempt to measure reported verses calculated power under this circumstance, the observed voltage and current will not be correlated in time because you have to cycle though the selector buttons to read the values. The more the individual values vary the more the calculated power could vary and you might assume that it is not reporting accurately. Test it with a resistive load if you want to determine power measurement accuracy. It has other features that provide valuable information if you want to determine how much power a device is using over a protracted period of time, such as a refrigerator. From that you can determine the cost of the energy the device is using. Overall it seems to be put together well and I especially like the inclusion of a short extension cord that allows you to move it a bit closer to you when reading and as an aside, that also allows you access to both sockets on the receptacle when the monitor is plugged in. I found the instructions clear and easy to follow. If you are looking for a good electric monitor, I can easily recommend this model.

Did its job well. I was disappointed that I could not look at its history data to see at what hours it was drawing specific watts. This device simply AVERAGES the watts over time, but the user cannot look at the data himself. That's the reason I bought it. However, I just looked at the display screen from time to time and got what I needed that way. I know I could have bought a Smart Pug to do what I wanted, but I hate Smart devices. So, this is the next best thing.

Very handy gadget. Works every time--plug in get watts draw. Quite simple. Would buy again.

Tested some loads on both this and a real Kill-a-Watt, and find Poniie to have better resolution/accuracy for lower-power loads (< 100W). When I test my ICECO fridge/freezer, I get around 34Whr with Poniie, and ~40Whr with Kill-a-Watt. Based on my previous manual power tests, the ICECO runs close to 30-35WHr. All is not roses, though, as there is a glaring shortcoming in the Poniie to watch out for: It does not record total time, or average WHr directly. It only records time that power is being consumed--if you test something that cycles on and off, the time will not include the "off" cycles. So, you have to run a stopwatch while you take measurements, then divide the kWHr by the total time (normalized to 1 hour) to find your "true" kWHr number. Note, however, the time it records *is* useful for knowing how frequently something cycles on/off. (Note that a true kWHr indicates how many Watts a unit will pull over the course of 1 hour of operation. For equipment that cycles--TV, fridge, etc.--that has to be averaged.) The main reason I have this is to know what kind of loads and runtimes I can get on backup power, or to know if something is misbehaving. I am not interested in calculating costs.

Meter is pretty easy to use. As mentioned in other reviews, the accumulated time (in minutes) is calculated only during the time the load is on (so if you you’ll measure the consumption of a lightbulb, the time only accumulates when the bulb is ON). This by itself is a logical and useful feature but it would be nice if there was also a second accumulated time display for just when the device is plugged in the wall. Now you have to record the time the measurement started when measuring a load that does not have a small standby current. But altogether this is not too big of a deal. Nice feature is that it keeps the measured data in memory so they can be viewed at another location. Another Pro is the fact that it’s possible to keep the backlight on all the time. Very handy if the device is plugged in a dark area (eg behind my refrigerator) and you want to peek in from time to time to see the progress. Haven’t check the accuracy but based on the readings it does for frequency (varying between 59.98 and 60.02 as expected) that seems pretty good. Con: The actual reading displayed is in easy to read large fonts. The indication of what it is unfortunately not. The indication kWh, Amps, Cur etc are in the tiniest fonts. Why not make that larger, would be a great help for half the population that needs reading glasses. Pro: The supplied extra cord is very handy. Excellent idea! All together I’m quite happy with this and would recommend it. Long term I don’t know yet, only had it for a couple of days.

I bought this to determine overall power needs for devices at home when planning how to run them in a power outage. Especially useful with freezers/refrigerators that cycle power usage over time, to determine how much they actually need to run for a day. I also use them to evaluate my "solar generator"/portable power back devices, running something from them until empty to determine their usable capacity. This meter has a backlight, which makes the display easy to read, and a short extension cable that makes it easier to plug in and read. It does everything I want - except I wish it show peak wattage for the session (not just current/average), but I haven't seen one that does. Update: Since buying this meter over a year ago, I continue to use it often and recommend it to others. Much better to get this meter to see how much power you really need (max and overall WH) than buy a battery "personal power supply"/"solar generator" and find it lacks the power/capacity you need.

The Poniie PN2000 is an easy to use and simple device after you read the instructions and various customer reviews in order to figure out the menu settings. The device is well made, the digital read out is easy to read, and it works just as described. From the owners manual: The device can measure Watts (active power), Current (true RMS), Voltage (true RMS), Frequency, Cumulative Time (with hold over circuit memory), Electricity Consumption (with hold over circuit memory) and Power Factor (as Watts/Vrms*Arms). The important numbers to figure power being used by an electrical device are the "cumulative time" and the "energy consumption". You plug the meter in line with the device you want to monitor and then simply divide the cumulative time (this being the "stopwatch" time that the device is pulling power - if the electrical device is turned off for a while the timer does not keep adding minutes to the clock and picks up again when the device is turned back on, by the electrical consumption. The time is given in minutes so we find it easiest to figure out how many kilowatts were used by "the minute" and then multiply times 60 to get the power used in a kWh (kilowatt hour). For an item like a refrigerator that cycles on and off constantly you might want to leave the device connected for a lengthy period (perhaps 24 hours or longer) in order to get a more accurate power use profile as it cycles on, then off, then through a defrost cycle, and so on. Simple "on or off" devices might only need to be monitored for a half-hour or even less to find out the energy consumption. Unfortunately, like many of Amazon's sellers these days, the Poniie PN2000 seller sends the buyer e-mail asking them to write a review of their product if they like using it. E-mail from sellers requesting the purchaser write a review is what has ruined Amazon's best feature, and those reviews are always suspicious as not only no. Too bad that the seller doesn't have enough faith in their product and has to prompt buyers to write a review. To make it simple we divide the monthly electric bill total by the number of kilowatt hours used found on the monthly bill to get a per hour kW price, and then multiply that number times the kWh for the device we were monitoring (we're currently paying 0.12 cents per kWh).

Great power meter with lots of functions: Wattage, Current (Amperage), Voltage, Frequency, and others I'm not all sure of. I love seeing how much wattage I'm using in the moment and over time. It's able to keep record of that amount without power or needing batteries which I love. Comes with a 1ft 14 guage extension cable so you can use the meter anywhere you wouldn't normally be able to plug it in due to its size.

I mainly purchased this meter for the voltage and current (amps) readings. I rebuild vintage jukeboxes and there tube amplifiers. This is a great meter to hook up to an older variac to show how much voltage is being dialed in. It can be easily switched from voltage readings to amperage. A lot faster than hooking up two multimeters. The readings are very accurate. Great purchase. A handy meter to have.

seems to work great not sure on the accuracy

Gives you accurate readings of electrical consumption of any thing that runs on normal electrical current.

Thanks to this gadget, I now know how exactly much electricity (in kwh) my electric car uses each time its batteries are charged. Easy to use, clear display, different information display options available. I only wish it were weatherproof so I could use it outdoors without protecting it. But then it would prob be much more expensive. As it is I'm happy with it.