TP-Link Tapo P110 Smart Plug UK Review

The TP-Link Tapo P110 is the smart plug that makes the most sense for most UK households looking to start monitoring their energy use at the appliance level. At around £12 per plug it costs almost nothing relative to the insight it provides, yet delivers per-plug energy monitoring, remote switching, scheduling and integration with voice assistants and the broader Tapo smart home ecosystem. It is the lowest-friction entry point into appliance-level energy awareness available in the UK in 2026.

Where a whole-home monitor like the Owl Intuition shows total household consumption, a smart plug shows exactly what a specific appliance is consuming – the tumble dryer, the gaming PC, the electric heater in the spare room. Buying three or four P110 plugs for your highest-consumption appliances costs less than £50 and gives you genuinely actionable data on where your electricity spend is going, without any installation work beyond plugging in and connecting to WiFi.

Overview and first impressions

The P110 is a compact white unit that fits a standard UK 13A socket without blocking adjacent sockets – a practical detail that cheaper smart plugs often get wrong and one that matters significantly if you are fitting several in a multi-socket extension or a kitchen worktop socket. The build quality is solid for the price point, with no flex in the casing and a satisfying click when plugging in. A small LED ring indicates status – white for on, orange for off – which is readable from across a room without being intrusive at night. The plug body runs cool during normal operation even with high-wattage appliances connected, which is reassuring for a device that will typically be left plugged in permanently and unattended.

Setup takes under five minutes. Download the Tapo app, press the physical button on the plug for a few seconds and follow the in-app setup process to connect to your WiFi. No hub is required – the P110 connects directly to 2.4GHz WiFi, which is standard on all UK home routers. The Tapo ecosystem is large and well-supported, with the same app controlling plugs, bulbs, cameras and other Tapo devices under a single interface. For households already using any Tapo product, the P110 simply slots into the existing app with no additional setup overhead at all. The physical button on the plug also works as a manual override regardless of the app state, which is a useful failsafe that some smart plugs omit.

The physical button on the plug also works as a manual override – you can switch it on or off by hand regardless of the app state, which is a useful failsafe that some smart plugs omit. The plug body itself runs cool during normal operation even with high-wattage appliances connected, which is reassuring for a device that will typically be left plugged in permanently and unattended.

Specifications and scores

How it performed in our tests

We tested four P110 plugs across a tumble dryer, gaming PC, electric heater and television over two weeks, monitoring each appliance independently and cross-referencing the app readings against actual meter data to verify accuracy. Accuracy was the priority metric – comparing the Tapo app’s reported consumption figures against the actual meter reading increase with only those appliances running. The P110 was consistently within 3-5% of actual consumption, which is excellent for a device at this price point and more than sufficient to make meaningful comparisons between appliances and track usage trends reliably over time without needing lab-grade instrumentation.

The real-world insight from two weeks of monitoring was significant and immediately actionable. The tumble dryer consumed an average of 2.1kWh per cycle at our current unit rate – far more than most households estimate, and easily the biggest single controllable energy draw in the home once you see the numbers. The electric heater in the home office proved to be consuming over £1 per eight-hour working day, amounting to around £22 per month for a single appliance. Neither figure was obvious before monitoring and both led to immediate behaviour changes – different drying habits and a switch to a more targeted heating solution for the office – that reduced those costs noticeably within the first fortnight.

App and scheduling

The Tapo app is one of the better smart home apps available at any price point – clean, fast and well-organised. The energy monitoring dashboard shows current power draw in watts, today’s consumption in kWh and estimated cost, and a 30-day history graph that makes it easy to spot trends and unusual usage patterns. The interface makes it straightforward to compare consumption across days – a spike on a Tuesday that does not appear on other days is immediately visible and easy to investigate. The cost display uses your actual tariff rate once entered, making the pound-and-pence figures genuinely accurate rather than an estimate.

The scheduling function allows timers, countdown switches and recurring schedules to be set per plug. For households on a time-of-use electricity tariff such as Octopus Go or Agile, this enables useful automation – scheduling the dishwasher, washing machine or EV charger to run during cheaper overnight hours costs nothing to set up and compounds in saving every single day it runs. The smart home energy monitoring data the app provides sits alongside the scheduling controls in the same interface, making it easy to see whether behaviour changes you have made are actually having the intended effect on consumption.

Away mode randomly switches connected plugs on and off to simulate occupancy, which is a useful security feature for holiday use. The Tapo app also supports automation routines that link the P110 to other Tapo devices – for example, switching off a plug when you leave home using your phone location, or triggering a schedule based on sunrise and sunset times rather than fixed clock times, which is useful for outdoor lighting or greenhouse heating. These features go well beyond what most users will need but cost nothing extra and are available to anyone who wants to explore them.

Performance and limitations

The P110’s limitations are proportionate to its price point. The energy monitoring covers electricity only and at the individual appliance level – it does not aggregate across multiple plugs automatically, and there is no whole-home view within the app without manual calculation. For a comprehensive picture of household energy use you would need either a whole-home monitor or enough plugs to cover all significant loads. For most households, fitting four to six plugs on the highest-consuming appliances provides the most useful data at the lowest cost.

The WiFi-direct connection means performance can vary with router signal strength in distant rooms or properties with thick walls. All four test plugs connected successfully and remained connected throughout the two-week test period, but WiFi-related dropouts are more common with this approach than Zigbee-based systems. Most households will not experience issues, but it is worth positioning the plug as close to a router or mesh node as practical in a larger home, and worth knowing for older properties with solid internal walls where 2.4GHz signal can attenuate significantly.

Final verdict – is it worth it?

The TP-Link Tapo P110 is the easiest recommendation in smart home energy monitoring. At £12 per plug it costs almost nothing relative to the insight it provides, and the Tapo app is genuinely good – well above what you would expect at this price point. Fitting three or four plugs to your highest-consumption appliances takes an afternoon and gives you accurate, actionable data on where your electricity spend is going that most households find immediately eye-opening and immediately worth acting on.

It is not a whole-home solution – you need a plug per appliance and there is no aggregated view across them all in the app without manual arithmetic. But for the specific job of understanding what individual appliances actually cost to run day to day, it does that job accurately and reliably at a price that makes any reasonable return on investment near-instant. One discovered overnight standby drain or one meaningful habit change around tumble dryer or electric heater use typically recovers the purchase cost within a month or two of monitoring data.

For a comprehensive home energy strategy, combine a handful of P110 plugs on high-consumption appliances with a smart meter for whole-home visibility – together they give you the most complete picture of your electricity consumption available without professional equipment or ongoing subscription costs, and each complements the other by covering the gap the other leaves.