Bits Limited LCG-3MVR Energy Saving Surge Protector with Autoswitching Technology, 10-Outlet

Saves my PC from using 50watts all of the time. Purchased two of them, both work great. UPDATE: After reading several negative reviews, I wanted to add a few things. 1. I now have 3 of these, the newest is 6 months old and they are all working great. 2. On calibration: The power usage in the on state for the control device needs to be significantly different than the off power usage for the control device to work properly. For example, a cable box that draws 40watts on and 35watts off will make a very poor control device. A computer that draw 12watts off and 100watts on will make a great control device. Consider that when choosing a control device. (Kill-a-watt is very helpful in determining this) 3. On failures: Power strips fail, often from surges. If your strip failed, contact the manufacture. It should last a year at minimum. However, it does contain a switch and and power reading circuit, so it may fail at some point. 4. Always on devices: The strip is designed for computers. You turn your computer off, the speakers and other items go off too. There are many other uses, but keep in mind that it does not work for power hungry always-on devices like a cable box, DVRs, Roku or DirecTV control box. Those devices are always on, they take several minutes to boot up when power is restored. Same goes for a large number of TVs. If your device is an always on device, you can't use it as a control device or hook it to one of the switched outlets without some frustration. That simply will not work well. Using a switched power strip on those types of devices will GREATLY increase time-to-on and in the case of a DVR, will result in missed recordings. This can be a big negative when you need to turn things on and let them boot up for 10 minutes before you watch TV. Make sure that the way you plan to use the device is how the device is designed to be used. Get a Kill-A-Watt and look at power usage when you are planning to use a power strip like this. The Kill-A-Watt is a great tool and helps in other areas as well.

My gaming PC is water-cooled with radiator, fans, water pump and flow meter, all external. I wanted an easy way to power on these water cooling components as soon as the PC powers on. This power strip fulfills this need easily and inexpensively. The power strip on its own, notices when there is sufficient power draw and immediately enables the switched portion of the power strip which in my situation enables the cooling system on startup with no delay. This power strip has a sensitivity adjustment but I did not need to adjust it, the power strip literally worked out of the box. A WiFi activated power strip is not a good choice for enabling an external cooling system because of the delay time. First the system has POST, and boot the OS to a point that WiFi can initialize but then the app that uses WiFi must start and communicate with power strip which in turn enables the cooling system. This can take considerable time and is to be avoided; the cooling system must start when the system first powers up and without delay to avoid overheating, it can't wait for WiFi (and what if WiFi doesn't start?) I could have built something like a relay enabled by USB voltage from a USB port but even that is a bit slow (bios still has to run far enough to enable USB). I also could have routed power from the PC main power supply through a bulkhead connector in the chassis but that is an accident waiting to happen (short circuit). One minor complaint is that the power plug for the power strip has a 45 degree plug which I greatly dislike. So I cut off the plug that came with the power strip off and installed a sensible plug and a ferrite filter as well.

I wish I knew this product existed years ago. I've had my TV ( Westinghouse LVM-42W2 42-Inch 1080p LCD Video Monitor ) and surround sound receiver (Sony STR-K995) connected to each other since 2007. My TV's remote control was always horrible to use and even when using various universal and learning remotes the TV's IR sensor was never receptive enough for the remote to reliably power it on and off. Most recently I've been using the RF remote that comes with the TiVo Roamio where the single TV Pwr button attempts to toggle the power on both the TV and receiver simultaneously. This often resulted in attempting to turn on or off the TV and receiver together and the TV wouldn't respond. This made powering on or off the system a several-minute dance of attempting to get the receiver and TV to power on and off in unison before I would get up off the couch and manually press the power button on the side of the TV. Enter this power strip. I plugged in the TV into one of the switched (green) outlets and plugged in the receiver into the control (blue) outlet. I reprogrammed my TiVo remote so that it doesn't even try to control the TV at all. Now I simply turn the receiver on and off via the remote and the TV does the same automatically. I can't express how satisfying it now is to see these components finally work in unison. While my receiver supports HDMI-CEC, both my TiVo and TV do not, meaning I had no way to for one device to control the power of the other device until now. I also plugged in the power for the subwoofer into one of the switched outlets, so hopefully that will save me on some electricity since previously the subwoofer was on 24/7, even when I wasn't watching TV. The only downsides I would point out are: 1. For my purposes there are too many green (switched) outlets and not enough red (aways on) outlets. I have my cable modem, Apple TV and TiVo in the red outlets right now, but I want to move my Slingbox into this space and I'll need to add a second power strip or multi-tap to support it. I have 4 unused green outlets on this power strip. 2. It's pretty large, and therefore is hard to hide in a small enclosed space. It's currently slightly visible sticking up behind my TiVo and receiver in my entertainment center under my TV. 3. For what this product does it's a little expensive. I bought a $20 Sony learning remote years ago that solved this same problem, although I stopped using it because I preferred the TiVo remote. TiVo's learning remote is $50, so while this solution is cheaper, I would expect it to be half the price. I didn't buy the cheaper version ( Smart Strip SCG-3M Energy Saving Surge Protector with Autoswitching Technology, 7-Outlet ) of this power strip because I needed more red outlets (see #1 above).

I've got one of these so far and I'm about to get a second. Works great for the TV entertainment stuff - I plug the TV into the "master", then I plug the Wii, Wii-U, Gamecube, VCR/DVD, BluRay, and HDTV antenna-amp into the switched outlets. I also have a sound system, PC, and cooling fan plugged into the non-switched outlets. I put the sound system on a non-switched so it can be used for radio without the TV on and the computer can't be on a switched plug because it has to shut down gracefully - but the computer has it's own power-saver settings to shut down after idle. Without this the game systems, VCR/DVD, and BluRay players were drawing around 200 watts combined when they were all "off"; according to my Kill-A-Watt. Now they turn on/off with my TV, the only downside is I have to wait about 30 seconds while the players and game systems "boot up" before I can use them - but that's not bad because the TV takes ~15 seconds to warm up so by the time I've selected my inputs and turned things on it's all ready to use anyway. My only wish is that they had a version with even more switched outlets without needing any other splitters. I could see if we got another game system ever having to put a power-splitter on one of the switched ports and I also didn't have room to connect the Wii-U charging pad to a switched outlet (though luckily it seems to use ~1 watt when it finishes charging anyway so I'm not that worried) EDIT: Still working well, but I realize I forgot to measure the power strip's consumption (the LEDs and "smarts" in it use power). With the relay off and nothing plugged in, the power strip's "brain" draws about 3 watts standby. Substantially more than my smart-plugs, but still not nearly as much as the devices its turning off.

Wish I had read about this piece of crap before I spent $30 on this crap. This is nothing but a glorified surge protector. Moreover, it is useless. Now let me explain. I bought this under the assumption that, per the title, that it intelligently autoswitches off devices when not in use. It does not do that!! Rather, i was shocked to discover that instead of auto switching by detecting if the device was off, well instead all it does is switch off your other devices only when one of your devices is off (when it is plugged into a stupid "control" outlet). What a piece of garbage!! So for example, if I turn off my computer (the "control") then I can't watch tv? What bull s#&*t!!! Ok so you say put that into one of the "CONSTANT" outlets (the red one)? Well then why the hell should you pay $30 for this if I plug the devices into outlets that NEVER SWITCH OFF??? It does NOT have any "SMARTNESS". In other terms, this is not digital - it is ANALOG. In other words, it only MANUALLY switches off devices. AND ONLY WHEN YOU HAVE ONE DEVICE TURNED OFF. A much better way to make this MANUAL OFF power strip (it DOES NOT "autoswitch", this is MANUAL; the title is A LIE), the better way would be to put a switch on each outlet to manually toggle on or off to cut the power to each device individually. That would be more useful than this crap! So in other words, what it does is nothing at all unless you turn off of main device, and is dependent on you not needing any other devices if that one device is off. And you have three devices to plug in WHICH NEVER TURN OFF, which means YOU MIGHT AS WELL PLUG THEM INTO A REGULAR POWER STRIP, since those three red outlets DO NOT SWITCH OFF EVER. I have these devices, and the number next to them is what each device uses, checked with Kill-A-Watt: LED TV - 30w PS3 - 110w Computer - 100w to 200w dependent on usage LED Monitor - 10w Mini Fridge - 105w Printer - 0w (it's off 99% of the time) The ONLY way to use this "smart strip" crap is to use my PC as the "control". Because if I use anything else then it's going to shut off my PC which I can't have happen. So in other words, THE SMART STRIP DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR ME. MOREOVER, I plugged everything (except mini-fridge) into a normal power strip (not even surge, just a cheap $5 power strip from Target that I bought 10 years ago), and plugged that into Kill-A-Watt. GUESS WHAT?? NO mythical "vampire drain" (ok it's not entirely a myth, but devices are made better nowadays and rarely drain uneccessary power. Vampire drain was a concept which mattered a lot last decade, but by this decade no longer is a relevant factor.). In fact, when plugged into my $5 power strip, my devices use ZERO watts used when devices are off! Summary: With everything plugged into a basic power strip and everything on, I use around 330w to 400w. With everything off, I use around ZEROw. (NOT using this smart strip crap! This is with an old $5 power strip). In other words, you're paying $25 extra FOR NOTHING! Return this and just use your normal power strip (or surge protector). You're NOT saving any money with this piece of junk!! =========================== All that said, there are benefits to this device: * It works as a surge protector (but not worth the price if all you want is a surge protector). * EMI/RFI filtering to 52dB (although you get this in a good surge protector that is less expensive than this, just the same). * The manual off of devices plugged into the green plug when you turn off the device plugged into the blue plug, does indeed work. (At least at first. Other reviewers said it stopped working after a short time like weeks or a month.) * It looks fancy. * It feels fancy. * MAY be useful IF it continues working forever only IF you have a device or two which are draining power unnecessarily when off. Check it with Kill-A-Watt to be sure. Probably will not apply to you. However it still gets one star because I wouldn't have bought this crap if I had realized in advance that there is NOTHING AUTOMATIC ABOUT IT! Instead I would have just bought a good surge protector, and for only half the cost of this crap.

I use this in my home office and love how it automatically controls power to my monitor, speakers, and charger based on my main device. It’s easy to set up, and the master-controlled outlets work just like advertised. I wish the cord was a bit longer, but otherwise, this is a great investment for energy-conscious users.

This is a surge protector that doubles as a way to combat "vampire power," which sounds really cool but actually just means that your electronics are using power even when not turned on or in use. It's simple to use: you simply decide which devices you want to always be on, which one you want to control your remaining devices, and which devices you want to only have power when needed. I imagine that most people use these for TVs, so I'll explain how I set mine up: Control Outlet: TV Always On: Router, Cable Box, Nintendo Switch (for charging when the TV is off) Automatically Switched: Sound Bar, Roku, Blu-Ray Player For devices like my sound bar and Blu-Ray player, they receive power immediately after the TV is switched on, and then I can turn them on. The Roku can be a little finickier; it turns on automatically, but it takes a minute to warm up, and once it does it can sometimes commandeer the TV through its HDMI-CEC function. This isn't a major problem and only seems to happen a small percentage of the time, but I haven't quite figured out why. Additionally, I found a couple of the outlets to be too close together for the unnecessarily large plugs that some of my devices (mostly the router and cable box) use. I like that they spread out four of them for this reason, I just wish they were all spread out a little bit instead of six of them being clustered together on one end. Overall, though, I think this is a really simple device to use to lower your electric bill a little bit and also lessen your environmental impact.

Well I bought one of these for my home entertainment center which has a tv, VCR, ps3, cable box, xbox, super nintendo, stereo, electric fireplace, and USB charging station. The device works exactly as advertised, but what is not advertised is that not all devices will work well with it. Case in point, my cable box and ps3. These devices are always on waiting for a remote signal to wake them up, so I thought they would be perfect candidates. Problem is, the cable box goes through a 10 minute startup routine when it gets power again, and the ps3 won't respond to the remote turn on feature. So immediately I found out that my most guzzling peripherals won't work with it. Then I realized that I might want to use my stereo with the tv off, so couldn't slave that. Ditto for the USB charging station, and electric fireplace. That left my VCR, my super nintendo, and my xbox. It works great with the VCR and she's, and I haven't yet tested on the xbox. So in the end, the only real savings are for the VCR and snes. Not really worth the money, but it did allow me to condense power strips and the outlets are spaced nicely to allow for power bricks. So the real problem with these devices is that other devices don't support the behavior yet. Perhaps electronics manufacturers are waiting to include safe power-off features to protect the power companies the same way automobile manufacturers won't make engines as efficient as possible to protect oil companies? Great concept, but usefulness is extremely limited.