If you’ve taken part in the Prime Early Access Sale, you’ve probably grabbed a lot of expensive electronics, albeit at great deals. Well, many folks often forget to think about things such as surge protection and smart control of their devices, which is where smart power strips, like this one from Amazon Basics, play a helpful hand. In fact, given that it’s only going for a discounted $22 rather than $27, it’s worth grabbing a few from Amazon.
Why you should buy the Amazon Basics Smart Plug Power Strip
If you want to add more granular smart control to your appliances and electronics without having to buy smart plugs for the wall, a smart plug power strip is a pretty innovative alternative. Since this is an Amazon Basics device, it connects with the Alexa app or any Alexa-capable device and allows you to control the power strip as a whole or individually. That means you can switch off plugs one, two, or three by naming them separately or saying, “Turn off power strip,” to have all the plugs turn off. The strip also has two USB Type-As for charging, although you can’t control them through the app since they’re always on.
Of course, you can also control the power strip manually using the individual on/off button for each plug and one primary on/off button for the whole power strip. This helps a lot when there’s a potential for a power surge, although thankfully, it also has a surge protector in case you aren’t around when it happens, which is a huge plus and a minimum that we’d expect for most power strips nowadays. Most importantly, the whole thing is easy to use and set up, as you’d expect from something that comes directly from Amazon and is highly polished.
All in all, the Amazon Basics Smart Plug power strip is an excellent way to give yourself some extra control and protection without paying too much, especially since Amazon is discounting its power strip down to $22. That said, it might be worth checking our roundup of best smart surge protectors for other options, and, of course, it’s always worth checking out all the Prime Day deals as they get updated.