Why You Can Trust CNET Nyrius Smart Outlet review: This smart plug fails to impress with form or function
The Nyrius Smart Outlet suffers from spotty connectivity, clunky design and broken features.
Smart plugs and outlets, as I've mentioned before, are the foundation of a smart home. They retrofit everyday electronics like lamps to transform a household from a fragmented group of things into a unified space. But different products work for different people. Just as a city dweller whose daily destinations are within blocks of his or her apartment might not need a very good geofencing lock, a person looking only for remote-control electronics might not need a more versatile but expensive smart plug.
Nyrius Smart Outlet
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Certain plugs, though, I have a hard time recommending to anyone. The Nyrius Smart Outlet is one of those. It can't integrate with other products -- even other Nyrius products. The Bluetooth connectivity is spotty, and some of the features work only sporadically. Its design is clunky, and the price is too high. At $40, the Nyrius is only 10 bucks cheaper than the far superior Belkin WeMo Insight Switch and $20 cheaper than the high-potential iDevices Switch. For most people, I'd say skip this offering.
Setup
If you've paired Bluetooth tech with your phone before, setting up the Nyrius Smart Outlet will be a breeze. Most other smart plugs, like the Belkin WeMo Switch, use Wi-Fi or perhaps Z-Wave to connect with user devices. Bluetooth is easier to set up, because you don't have to sync the Outlet with your home network -- just your phone. Basically, plug in your Outlet and activate your Bluetooth, and you'll be able to access all of the Nyrius Smart Outlet features almost immediately.
Once I set up my Nyrius Smart Outlet, it only took a couple of minutes to familiarize myself with the corresponding app, Nyrius Outlet. The app's interface is spare and the three primary functions of the plug are immediately apparent. While this simplicity is welcome, I was surprised by the app's exclusivity. Unlike applications created for flexibility and integration, like WeMo's or SmartThings', the Nyrius Outlet app deals only with Nyrius Outlets. That means even other Nyrius products require a separate app.
Part of the appeal of smart technology is ease of use. In theory, it should be more efficient to tap your phone a few times than to manually control all your electronics. But if you have to pull up separate apps for each product, you lose that efficiency. And even if you were to outfit your home exclusively with Nyrius Smart Outlets, you still would have to activate each one individually, since the app offers no group commands.
Overall, despite a relatively simple interface and setup, the Nyrius Smart Outlet suffers from the app's exclusivity and inefficiency.
Design and features
The design of every smart plug or switch aims for a different effect. The Belkin WeMo Insight Switch features a functional aesthetic that aims for unobtrusive. The iDevices Switch uses a sleek, white plastic face and colorful LED strip to distract from its blocky form. The Nyrius Smart Outlet somehow combines the worst elements from its competitors.
Put bluntly, the Nyrius Smart Outlet is ugly. If plugged into the top of a standard wall outlet, its bulky matte-white body covers both inputs completely. The oblong shape is also distracting, and the light on it is barely visible. From a distance, the tiny rectangle could be mistaken for a spot of dirt on the plastic background.
Whereas the lights on the iDevices Switches communicate particular messages, and are generally free for personalized coloring, the Nyrius light is nondescript and simply indicates that the Outlet is plugged in.
Not only is the design poor, but the features are weak, too. The Nyrius Smart Outlet enables you to turn your lights on and off through your phone, and you can set up schedules for those commands. But beyond those basic functions, you can't do much. No light dimmer; no energy tracker.
The Proximity feature is a cool idea: when you enter Bluetooth range, your Smart Outlet will automatically turn on. When you leave, your Smart Outlet will switch off. GPS-dependent geofencing can be finicky, so Nyrius has hit on a creative close-proximity geofencing solution. But the Proximity function runs into problems at every turn.
First of all, the app must always run in the background to use the Proximity function. Even when I kept the app on, the switch rarely registered my phone leaving the Bluetooth range, and it sent me a push notification requesting access to the switch half the time when I re-entered range. The most annoying part of the Proximity function stemmed from the limited Bluetooth range. Bluetooth is a close-proximity protocol, which meant walking around inside the CNET Smart Home, I was constantly entering and exiting Bluetooth range. That's right: the lights in the living room were constantly switching on and off, and my phone was constantly buzzing with push notifications.
If the Proximity feature worked well, I'd be happier about the Nyrius Smart Outlet. But for now, its limited features are not worth $40.
Conclusion
At a glance, the Nyrius Smart Outlet might seem like a better deal than its competitors. But with its poor design, limited features and hit-or-miss performance, it can't earn its own $40 price tag.
Although the Bluetooth approach to a smart outlet might seem to avoid the complications of involved smart-home integration setups, it perpetrates the problems those complicated setups are made to avoid. Because of the performance issues, I can't recommend the Nyrius Smart Outlet to anyone, except maybe apartment dwellers on a tight budget. But with Black Friday approaching, why not wait, get some cheaper remote control options and skip this Smart Outlet altogether?