Here’s an easy way to get your smart home started

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AmazonFrom the Nest to the Echo, the tech industry really wants to get in your house. Yet, while there are a number of connected home devices that can be genuinely useful today, in many cases their costs of entry are just too prohibitive for people to take the plunge.

Not so with the Belkin WeMo Insight Switch. Yes, $50 for a plug isn’t peanuts, and the device itself has been around for a couple of years now. But if you’ve been wanting to give home automation a try, it’s an easy, effective, and, relatively speaking, affordable way to get started.

Using the Insight Switch is largely straightforward. You plug it into a socket, connect it to your WiFi network, and pair it with the WeMo app on iOS or Android. From there, you can remotely turn whatever’s plugged into it on or off, or set schedules for that thing to turn on or shut down at a specific time. You can have it notify you whenever a connected device is activated, too.

There are other smart outlets that behave in much the same way, but it’s still convenient knowing that you haven’t left the iron on upon leaving the house, or being able to fire up the air conditioner 15 minutes before you get home on a hot day.

Still, what makes the Insight Switch stand out is that “Insight” portion of its name. Once you get the plug set up, it uses the WeMo app to tell you how long a connected device has been on, how much power it’s eating up, and, crucially, an estimate of how much money it’s costing you, both on a per day and per month basis.

The Insight Switch holds up to 45 days of this data on its own, but you can export it all to CSV file if need be. If you monitor it closely, and you’ve been wasteful in the past, it’s not outrageous to say the plug could pay for itself over time.

All of this is bolstered by support for the aforementioned Amazon Echo and If This Then That (IFTTT) recipes. If you own the former, you can simply tell Alexa (Amazon’s Echo-bound voice assistant) to activate or deactivate a device through voice commands. It’s like The Clapper, evolved.

With the latter, you can use any number of combinations to tie the Insight Switch with other functions and services. You could automatically shut down a device once it exceeds a certain cost per day, for instance, or make your lamp blink on and off whenever you get a Gmail message. There are dozens more, ranging from the pragmatic to the goofy.

Like any smart home device, the Insight Switch has its quirks. As reviews from PCMag and CNET have noted, the WeMo app can be finicky. It might have trouble staying connected at all times, it’s not exactly fast, and more than a few of those IFTTT recipes really should be baked in on a native level. Plus, while the device itself looks good and works well, it’s still chunky enough to cover up both plugs on many outlets.

Nevertheless, the Insight Switch has the right mix of utility, playfulness, and cost-efficiency to overcome those problems. If you’re eager to start a smart home, it’s a simple way to do so.

Belkin WeMo Insight Switch, $49.98, available at Amazon.