Smart plugs are everywhere these days, and with good reason. They’re cheap, they’re small, they’re super easy to set up, and they can make just about anything you plug in work better. So why the hell is everyone designing them wrong?!
I have one smart outlet in my house. I installed it almost eight years ago before smart plugs were very prevalent. It cost about $60 for the outlet, and it requires my Insteon hub to be working (an additional purchase I’ve had to make twice due to hub failures). Back then, aside from the Insteon plug in dimmers my hub came with, I had no other options for smart plugs. Aside from being quite expensive, it was a bit of a pain to install, given the need to cut the power and wire it up, and since it’s just an outlet, I’ve all but forgotten about it.
When cheap smart plugs started to flood the market, I fell in love with them. You can get them as cheap as $5.99 on sale at Amazon, or even as a free bonus when you purchase another device during big sales. They’re portable, so you can take them with you if you move, or move them if you want to repurpose them. And they don’t require any wiring, which most people are not willing to do anyway.
In the past few years we’ve seen them shrink in size from a monstrous two outlet blocking behemoth like these TP-Link plugs down to a slim form like the offerings from Amazon and TP-Link pictured here. Some companies have even started rolling out dual outlet smart plugs, like these excellent Govee plugs, that turn one outlet into two.
One glaring flaw that all of the plugs I’ve mentioned, and almost all of the plugs available anywhere, is the fact that the outlet is on the front face!
Companies have worked hard to slim these down to about the smallest form we’re going to get, and they’ve made them as pleasing to the eye as they can, but for the most part no one wants to see them. When you lay out your furniture, chances are you go out of your way to hide power cables, and put things in front of busy outlets because they’re not aesthetically pleasing to look at. The problem is that almost all smart plugs are about 1″ to 1.5″ deep, and almost all plugs stick out another 1″ to 2″ from the socket. So if you mean to hide a smart plug behind your couch, you may wind up with your couch 4″ off the wall simply because you have a lamp plugged in behind it.
By simply switching the outlet from the front to the side face of smart plugs, companies can keep the same design while saving users about 2″ of space (or an up to 100% space reduction). I understand this has the chance to put a little more strain on the prongs sticking into the wall outlet, or on the wall outlet itself (physically), but if you’re plugging and unplugging something that much you’re doing it wrong.
While I’m sure that a lot of this has to do with manufacturing and existing standards, at least having the option from one or more manufacturers would be a welcome addition. I’d even pay up to a whole dollar more for a plug on the side.
In the meantime, in the spirit of being a problem solver and not a problem presenter, if you’re stuck with a situation where you need to save a couple of inches where you want to put a smart plug, try something like these short power cords, which will allow you to have your smart plug point in whatever direction you need.