If you’ve taken part in the Prime Early Access Sale, you’ve probably grabbed a lot of expensive electronics, albeit at great deals. Well, many folks often forget to think about things such as surge protection and smart control of their devices, which is where smart power strips, like this one from Amazon Basics, play a helpful hand. In fact, given that it’s only going for a discounted $22 rather than $27, it’s worth grabbing a few from Amazon.
If you want to add more granular smart control to your appliances and electronics without having to buy smart plugs for the wall, a smart plug power strip is a pretty innovative alternative. Since this is an Amazon Basics device, it connects with the Alexa app or any Alexa-capable device and allows you to control the power strip as a whole or individually. That means you can switch off plugs one, two, or three by naming them separately or saying, “Turn off power strip,” to have all the plugs turn off. The strip also has two USB Type-As for charging, although you can’t control them through the app since they’re always on.
Of course, you can also control the power strip manually using the individual on/off button for each plug and one primary on/off button for the whole power strip. This helps a lot when there’s a potential for a power surge, although thankfully, it also has a surge protector in case you aren’t around when it happens, which is a huge plus and a minimum that we’d expect for most power strips nowadays. Most importantly, the whole thing is easy to use and set up, as you’d expect from something that comes directly from Amazon and is highly polished.
All in all, the Amazon Basics Smart Plug power strip is an excellent way to give yourself some extra control and protection without paying too much, especially since Amazon is discounting its power strip down to $22. That said, it might be worth checking our roundup of best smart surge protectors for other options, and, of course, it’s always worth checking out all the Prime Day deals as they get updated.
Few things ruin a quiet evening faster than a robot vacuum roaring through the living room. Most of us end up pausing the cleaning run, which defeats the whole purpose of owning one. Matic thinks it has the answer with its new Serene robot vacuum, and the big selling point is how little noise it makes.
The Matic Serene runs at 52 decibels even when cleaning at full power. To put that in perspective, Matic compares it to the hum of your refrigerator. It is available now for $1,695, which is $200 more than the original Matic’s current price.
Outdoor security cameras are not always practical if you live in an apartment or rental. Drilling into an exterior wall may be off-limits, while pointing a regular indoor camera through a window can create another problem once reflections start showing up after dark.
Baseus is trying to solve both issues with the new PrimeSentinel W1, a $69.99 security camera designed specifically to monitor the outdoors through glass. It mounts directly to a window without drilling and uses a 4K Starlight sensor with an F1.0 aperture for full-color monitoring during the day and at night.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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