Wemo Outdoor Wi-Fi Smart Plug review: great for your annual holiday lights and outdoor living

The new Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Outdoor Plug is a weather-resistant option to control any outdoor accessories you may need to provide power to. The most obvious use of this is holiday lights, be it Christmas, Chanukah, or any other winter holiday you want to light up the exterior of your house for.

Throughout the rest of the year, there are, of course, many other applications. We have filament bulbs strung above our deck in the back yard. Spotlights on lawn decorations or house fixtures are also common. Path lights or other accent lighting is fairly probably as well for an outlet like this.

This is good because while the Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Outdoor Plug is arguably more useful during the holidays, you can use it year-round with some outside the box thinking.

The device itself is comprised of black plastic with a short cable protruding from one end. It can be plugged into an outlet and hang down for two devices to be plugged in. Each of the two female plugs on the Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Outdoor Plug has a rubberized cover that can fold down to seal the plugs from weather or debris ingress.

Square in the center of the device, below the Wemo wordmark, is a single power button. It lights up in the center, so it is easy to see in the dark, making sense because it is typically when the sun is down that you may try to physically turn on the power.

Atop the device, just behind where the cable meets the body, is a mounting hole. This would allow you to plug the cable into the wall outlet then hang the Wemo plug from a screw right next to it. By hanging it down this way, you prevent water or debris from getting inside the two plugs. Regardless, this still comes rated as IP44 weather resistance. That means solid objects larger than one millimeter and liquid splashes from any angle are prevented from entry.

Smart home control

The Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Outdoor Plug works with Apple's HomeKit platform, as well as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant — but we are less interested in those.

It is easy to configure with HomeKit, which can all be done through the Home app with no need for the Wemo app to operate or use the device. This is one of the significant benefits of HomeKit.

Wemo's HomeKit pairing code is attached on the back, making it easy to access. If you do mount it, it is easy to lift and recheck the code if you need it. Alternatively, we always recommend keeping a copy of your HomeKit pairing code in the HomePass app.

Once set up, you can toggle the outlet on and off from the Home app and Siri. This works, just as with all HomeKit devices, via any Siri-enabled Apple device. Be it your Apple TV, your HomePod mini, your Apple Watch, your Mac, or your iPad.

If you have a Home Hub — Apple TV, HomePod, HomePod mini, or always-on iPad — you can schedule these outlets too. You can schedule them to turn on at specific times of day, based around sunrise and sunset, triggered off of a HomeKit motion sensor, or when you come and go.

In our case, we connected our Christmas lights on our porch to the Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Outdoor Plug. We scheduled them to turn on 30 minutes prior to sundown and then turn off just around 1 AM — no point in leaving them on the whole night.

We also tied these outlets to our other HomeKit outdoor lights. We change our outdoor Hue Lily Spotlights to paint our white brick home in red and green light around this time of the year. They all come on and off together and can be controlled jointly via Siri. If we want them on a bit later one day, we can say "turn on the outside lights," and Siri will do just that.

Should you buy the Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Outdoor Plug?

We're very fond of the Wemo Wi-Fi Smart Outdoor Plug for what it does. Wemo devices have historically been very reliable, and the outdoor outlets have so far been reliable as well. It is also just in time for the holidays, and our front yard is cheerfully lit and automated.

It has a compact size, dual outlets, an easy-to-find physical button, and of course — HomeKit support. HomeKit makes it effortless to control our lights, automate them, and tie them into all of our existing outdoor lights from our patio lights for entertaining or our holiday lights in the front yard. All come together thanks to Wemo's latest product.

The only minor change we'd like to see is independent outlet control, but barring that, Wemo is spot-on.

Pros

• Smaller design than others
• Illuminated power button
• Dual outlets
• Full support for HomeKit
• Wi-Fi connectivity
• Weather resistant
• Mounting bracket

Cons

• No independent outlet control

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Where to buy

The Wemo WiFi Smart Outdoor Plug is available on Amazon for $39.99