This new Power Meter from AceWest arrived simply but adequately packaged in a plain white box. This is fine but does reduce the appeal of the item as a gift, although perhaps this is not the sort of item often given as a present.
Inside the box was…
This new Power Meter from AceWest arrived simply but adequately packaged in a plain white box. This is fine but does reduce the appeal of the item as a gift, although perhaps this is not the sort of item often given as a present.
Inside the box was the Power Meter itself together with a comprehensive User Guide which might have been improved and made easier to read with a more attractive layout and design.
The purpose of this device is to give you a real-time and cumulative reading of the power usage of devices plugged into it. It will work with devices that draw up to 13A of current, which should cover almost all domestic devices. You can install power meters that record the whole house power usage by connecting to the Consumer Unit/Fusebox but they cannot show the power consumed by individual devices. This portable meter can be moved from socket to socket to test the power used by any household device with a plug.
The Meter itself is rather larger than I was expecting at just over 6" in height but this allows it to fit the large and easy to read 2.36"x1.85" non-backlit LCD display screen. Build quality seems fine. The meter is robust and well made and seems built to last. On the front is the large LCD screen with beneath it large and easy to find proper clicky buttons for Function, Cost, Up and Down. There is also a small reset button (nice to see one that is easy to access for a change) and below the button set the single UK three pin pass-through socket. The Meter uses a single 3.6w rechargeable battery which the User Guide seems to imply is replaceable but I can see no way to do this without disassembling the device.
You can just plug a device into the meter to at once see how much power it is using but to get the most from the meter you need to program it with your current electricity tariff which then allows the meter to show you how much in money the connected device is costing you to run. It has a memory function to preserve the tariff and other data..
