I recently had the opportunity to try out a 4-pack of the Gosund Smart Plugs available on Amazon – and I was not disappointed. In my Gosund Smart Plug Review below, I’ll go over setup and performance of the Gosund Smart Plugs. I’m using Samsung SmartThings and Amazon Echo products for control of my smart home. I found the Gosund Smart Plugs I reviewed integrated easily with Alexa for voice and mobile control.
Disclaimer: Gosund sent me a 4-pack of Gosund Smart Plugs free of charge. I advised the Gosund rep ahead of time that I would try the plugs out, and then write an honest review: good or bad.
What Is The Gosund Smart Plug?
The Gosund Smart Plug is an easy-to-use “smart outlet”. Like many other smart outlets on the market, this smart plug allows you to control whatever’s plugged into the outlet via your mobile device or voice assistant. You can also turn devices on or off using the switch on the side of the plug.
Whether you’re just getting started with your smart home, or wherever you might be in your home automation journey, smart plugs are a key element. You might argue that they offer the most flexibility of any smart device, as they allow you to add automation or voice control (on or off) to anything that plugs into a wall outlet.
After physically installing the Gosund Smart Plug in your desired outlet, you use one of Gosund’s recommended apps to connect to the smart plug. From there, you can add the app as an Alexa Skill. And once you’ve connected the app with Alexa, you can turn on or off any device connected to the smart plug using Alexa and your Amazon Echo products. The Gosund Smart Plug also works with Google Home and IFTTT.
How To Setup The Smart Life App On An Android Phone
In the little manual that came with the Gosund Smart Plugs I reviewed, there were two QR codes present for Gosund’s recommended apps. The two apps Gosund recommends are Smart Life and GO SMART. You can use the links or the working QR codes below to get the apps:
- Android Google Play Store:
- Apple App Store:
I scanned Smart Life and got everything setup and working, so I did not try out the GO SMART app. If you’ve used the GO SMART app, let other users know your experiences in the comments at the bottom of the page.
Getting Ready To Add A Gosund Smart Plug In The Smart Life App
First, install the Smart Life app on your phone. Once you register for an account with Smart Life, go ahead and add your first device. From within the Smart Life app, go to Setup -> Set up your rooms, and add a room.
At this point, make sure your phone is connected to your home WiFi network (more on this below). Then, click Add Device. At this point, I plugged my first Gosund Smart Plug into my wall outlet.
In the little folded manual that comes in the box with the Gosund smart sockets, it says you should now add an “Electric Outlet” within the app. When I added my devices (June of 2019), however, the Smart Life app didn’t have an “Electric Outlet” category listed.
In the Smart Life app, I clicked Add Device. Then, on the “Add Manually” menu, I selected “Socket” on the Electrical Engineering tab. Then, I clicked “Confirm that the light is blinking rapidly”.
Make Sure To Connect Your Phone To WiFi
When I first got to this point in the process, my Android phone wasn’t connected to WiFi. Smart Life took me to my WiFi Settings and asked me to connect. After I connected to my WiFi network, I pressed the back button until I was back in the SmartLife app.
I’m not sure if using my Android’s back button messed me up, but in the Add Device menu, Smart Life would not automatically populate the WiFi network. It offered the option to “Turn on permissions” in order to do so. I tried to tap that option, but that didn’t seem to work. I backed out and attempted to Add Device again.
Now that I was connected to WiFi, Smart Life automatically populated my WiFi network. I then entered my WiFi password. So: learn from my mistake! Make sure you connect your phone to your home WiFi network prior to this point.
By now, enough time had passed that my smart plug’s attempt to connect had timed out. The Gosund Smart Plug was blinking red every few seconds. If you let it go to this point, you’ll have to do what I did to reset the smart outlet:
I pressed and held the On/Off button on the side of the device for about 10 seconds. With this button held, the smart plug started quickly blinking blue again. I was now able to retry the Add Device process.
Finishing Setup Of Your First Gosund Smart Plug
In the app, I clicked the confirm button again, and let the progress bar go all the way until it hit 100%. Once the new Gosund Smart Plug is added to the Smart Life app, you have the option to name the device. I named my device appropriately – for example, “Living Room Corner Lamp”, or “Skyler’s Lamp”. I then set the room in which the new device would be located, and clicked “Completed”.
That was that! Of course, I toggled the switch on and off a few times from the app just to make sure that it was working. I unplugged my newly setup smart plug and brought it into the room where I wanted to locate it, plugged it in, and then plugged the lamp that I wanted to automate into the smart socket. A few seconds after I plugged everything in, I was able to turn the lamp on and off using the Smart Life app.
Adding Additional Gosund Smart Plugs
Interestingly, I had two different experiences when adding two different plugs:
For the first one, the app didn’t really show any signs of life on the progress bar until I was close to 100%. I did notice, however, that after I started trying to pair the smart plug with the app, the smart plug would stop blinking its blue LED and would blink its red LED once. The LED light on the smart outlet then stayed off until the app reached 100%.
For the second plug, at about 5%, the smart socket’s LED light stopped blinking blue. At around 7%, the smart socket’s LED light turned red. It stayed red after that point. The app’s progress circle continued to advance to about 22% then quickly moved through to 100%.
How To Add the Smart Life Skill To Alexa
Once you have a Gosund Smart Plug setup in Smart Life or GO SMART, you’ll want to integrate the app with your voice assistant. Setting up the Smart Life skill with Alexa is very easy. In the Alexa app on your phone, click the Menu and then tap Skills & Games. Click the search icon (the magnifying glass) and then type “Smart Life” and click search. Alternatively, you can click the link below:
The Smart Life skill has the blue home icon you see in the frame above. From within your Alexa app, tap the Smart Life skill, then Enable To Use.
Enter the phone number or email address and password that you used to register your Smart Life account. Click Link Now, then Authorize Alexa to access the app. Once you link your Smart Life account, close your browser window. For me, as soon as I added the Smart Life skill, Alexa automatically discovered the lights that I had set up. If your plugs are not discovered automatically, then Discover Devices and let Alexa search for and find your new devices.
Your new smart lamp setup should now be ready to use in Alexa. You should be able to ask Alexa to turn your device on or off. I typically say something like: “Alexa, please turn on my living room lamp”.
A Final Note For Those Using Amazon Echo Products
Although this is true for many plugs and outlets, there was one last feature that I was excited about. Once your plugs are set up in Smart Life and Smart Life is linked to Alexa, you can change the device type for your new plugs to Light.
When you define a device as Light within the Alexa app, you can use it with Alexa Guard. Alexa Guard has a feature called Away Lighting. From the Alexa Guard page:
With Away Lighting, Alexa automatically turns your smart lighting on and off to make it look like you’re home while you’re away. Alexa uses machine learning to determine the right lighting activity for your home based on lighting usage across customers. Just set Guard to Away mode and Alexa will do the rest.
From the Alexa Guard page
Again, Away Lighting and Alexa Guard are features of Amazon Echo products. But, they’re features that I’m excited about, and the Gosund Smart Plugs reviewed in this article are compatible.
I Hope This Gosund Smart Plug Review Helps!
If you’re considering the purchase of a smart outlet, I hope this Gosund Smart Plug review will be helpful for you. I found the smart plugs that Gosund sent me were easy to use and have been very reliable:
My bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from my wireless router. I have one lamp on each night table, and each lamp has an Alexa-enabled smart outlet supplying its power. On one side of the bed is an Amazon Smart Plug. On the other side is one of the Gosund Smart Plugs.
Due to the distance between my room and my router, I’ve actually had the Amazon Smart Plug lose its wireless connection occasionally. My Gosund Smart Plug, however, has worked every time (so far) when I’ve asked Alexa to turn that lamp on or off.
So, all-in-all, I’m very pleased with the performance of the Gosund Smart Plug, especially when you compare its cost to other devices on the market.
Additional Information On The Gosund Smart Outlet
For information beyond the scope of this Gosund Smart Plug review, you can check this product out on the manufacturer’s website at the following link:
Gosund Page For The Smart Plug 4-Pack
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