IKEA smart plugs have been my smart plug of choice since I started using SmartThings 2 years ago for 2 main reasons
1 they are cheap
2 they work well as zigbee repeaters
However.
I’ve had about 10 of them and I’ve just had a 3rd one fail with the relay oscillating at high speed, the second to go in this fashion.
Am I just unlucky or do these plugs have poor reliability and short lifespan?
Are there better more reliable zigbee plugs I should consider at similar/moderate cost?
what is the age of the IKEA smart plugs? I have 3 which are 2-3 years old and none have failed.
Probably around 20 months old for the ones that failed
The Tradfri plugs were certainly cheap, which is why have lots. I largely stopped buying them because I only have so many places where the lack of a local on/off button is tolerable, and also the UK ones are basically built upside down as the LED is obscured by the plug flex and the reset hole is on the bottom and hard to access when sockets are at skirting board level.
I’ve had lots of problems with them as repeaters in the past, though they’ve been pretty well behaved since I’ve made a point of updating the firmware.
The prevailing view I’ve seen expressed elsewhere is that they actually suck as repeaters and the dedicated IKEA repeater is far superior if repeating is what you need. That’s the reverse of what you tend to see here.
I’ve had the failures with the relay going bonkers a few times.
I wouldn’t actually recommend any IKEA stuff be used outside of the IKEA ecosystem. It seems well supported in that environment.
As alternatives in broadly the same price range, I’ve tried the round plugs that identify as eWeLink SA-003-Zigbee but I don’t like the lack of credible safety certification and I’ve had failures with those. I’ve also used the Sonoff S26R2ZB which are a bit more respectable but mine had the known problem firmware release making them lockup every few weeks. I do have one still in use as I needed a quick replacement for a clicking IKEA and it seems to have found a place where the bugs don’t kick in.
Innr were my last purchase but we are talking about a near doubling of costs for those and I had to power cycle one of those the other day as it had stopped working.
Hi @Declankh , can I ask about the failure mode. (postscript: sorry, just reread your post).
I only had one Ikea smart plug which failled by switching itself on overnight and dropped out of the Smartthings zigbee mesh. It was about 2 years old.
I reset it a few times, and it worked for the rest of the day. Next morning it was broken again (powered on but unreachable). I just retired it in the end.
Like all Ikea Tradfri, it had a nice price point but I do not buy this model anymore.
Cheers, Aidan
Failures I’ve had are one just not responding or going offline. The others were the oscillating relay issue.
I don’t use them purely as repeaters and usage ramps up at Christmas when I use them for decorations. I do like the IKEA stuff in general and their white spectrum bulbs are nice and bright but I’ve had one of those fail too.
Update on this: I bought two zigbee smart plugs today in Lidl (silvercrest brand).
They were reasonably priced at 11.99 and have the unexpected bonus of power monitoring which isn’t even mentioned on the packaging.
Time will tell how reliable they are but they paired easily with SmartThings