As a new homeowner, I suddenly faced the realization of having to pay for heat and AC after years of having a landlord picking up the tab. For years I have paid nothing but electricity and, therefore, never faced a utility bill that was much over $50.

I became quite interested in a couple of products that would help me monitor and then provide solutions for the electrical usage in our house. The first thing I came across was the Kill A Watt; a gadget that monitors how efficient your appliances are. I figured that at the least this would help me see what was working well and what was struggling to do it's job and then, hopefully, lead to me why it was struggling.

The Kill A Watt allows you to plug the appliance into the device and then it will read how efficient it is working. The reading comes out on an LCD screen and will show kilowatt hours like you would find on your meter. You can actually break the kilowatt hours by hour, day, week, month or year. It will also monitor your usage by voltage, line frequency, and power factor. The device is about the same size as a light timer and can handle virtually every type of device that you wish to test.

The Kill A Watt works very well in telling me how efficient the various appliances are at any given time. What gave me a problem was figuring out how efficient the appliances were supposed to be. I could check the internet listings and/or the user's guides and see if they list how efficient the appliance is supposed to be. If I cannot find this information, I am left with nothing to compare the readings to and the Kill A Watt proves to be useless.

I would suggest finding this information before purchasing the Kill A Watt in order to have something to compare your readings to. Otherwise, you will have to spend a month or year building up a data base of your own.

Would I purchase the Kill A Watt again? Yes, I would. I like knowing whether or not my appliances are running efficiently for energy bill purposes and also for a reason you may not think of. If the appliance is not running at it's optimal efficiency, it may a precursor to bigger problems. In other words, if the maximum efficiency is not being met it could be a sign that you need to have the appliance serviced before running into a bigger problem that may mean replacing it. Consider this a purchase that will pay dividends immediately in the lowering of your utility bill and down the road in monitoring the "health" of your appliances.

Recommended: Yes