Posted in: Pop Culture, Review, Technology | Tagged: NSPanel Pro, Sonoff

NSPanel Pro Review: Attempting To Make Average Homes Smarter

We were sent a NSPanel Pro kit with some awesome items to test around the house, and this is what we discovered during our review.

Being a gamer and a tech guy, it's always cool to see new innovations in smart home technology, especially systems designed to help non-smart homes. A lot of people around the world still reside in places where they pay rent, or the home isn't all that modernized and has issues being converted. So when companies like Sonoff come up with items to help out people in apartments and flats, or with older homes that aren't really designed to have smart tech integrated (or even forced into the design without breaking things), it's always cool to try it out. Recently we were sent the NSPanel Pro, along with multiple items, to test it out, and this is what we discovered.

So right out of the gate, let's talk about compatibility. The NSPanel Pro, which you see above, has been designed to operate in a couple of different ways. The most important of which is that if you decide to, you can cut out a hole in the wall and link it directly with the electrical in your home, or if you're not able to or not into destroying your place for a panel, it has a conversion accessory with the grounding receptacle (three-pronged plug) to allow you to plug it into the wall and put it on your desk. Which I was able to do in my apartment with the use of a small enclosure stand. The system works two different ways, as you can operate it from the main panel (seen above) or from a mobile app if you want to do it remotely without getting up. In theory, if you purchased enough of them, you could put one in every room and have complete control over all your smart home devices from any panel.

For the purposes of this review, we're going to stick to some of the items they gave us first before moving on to connecting other items to make them work. The first of which was a camera that was pretty easy to place and mount, along with a motion sensor, which you can see above. I was able to rig the system up so that when the motion sensor caught movement, the camera would flip on and show me what was happening in real-time in the area it was pointed at. This is a nice cheap security feature, but it also lacked a few things, like the ability to take snapshots or record video. It's great if I'm watching what's happening in real-time; it sucks if I'm not there and something is happening that I can't record. We were also given a smart light, which worked like a lot of LED lights of the same design, where I could control the brightness and color. But it, too, has a bit of lag in response. We were given a pair of smart electrical outlets, which was cool to test out if I wanted to turn a lamp on from the other room. This is the one item that worked immediately without lag and was very responsive to whatever I plugged it into.

As far as additional features, you would think a device that uses Wi-Fi for controlling items and is hooked up to the internet would be able to do a lot of things that, say, your smartwatch or smartphone could do. Unfortunately, this is where things get a bit wonky with it, as the NSPanel Pro has some features but not a ton. For example, it's nice that I can check the weather right there without having to glance at my phone. But it doesn't give frequent updates; it tends to lag. It's nice that it gives me security alerts, but they don't serve much purpose without being able to record or snapshot them. It's cool there's an intercom system, but not if I only have one. It's nice there's a thermostat feature with this reader you see below, which detected how everything was inside the house in case I didn't have a thermostat hooked up. But its weird to have a stationary reader in the house to detect something you would think the device itself would be able to pick up on.

Overall, the NSPanel Pro is a pretty nifty little device, but it doesn't do a lot at the moment for a device that boasts a lot of features. When researching this to see what I could do with it, I discovered there were a TON of features the company promised to have included in this item, and they have just never arrived or have quietly been deleted and forgotten about. Trying to use it with other smart home items (like smart bulbs and panel lighting from other manufacturers) was a no-go. Same for trying to link up my Smart TV. I even tried getting it to program simple speakers, and it continually had issues finding them. There's a lot of promise here, but the tech and the software just aren't ready yet. Maybe ina  couple of years, but for now, we have to pass on it.

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