If you're far away from your Alexa devices, you can open the Alexa app and turn the smart plug on or off from there. Smart plugs for Alexa can give you voice control over any number of home devices, such as the speakers, lights, and printer in your home office, which you can run from your office chair. Plug it into a smart plug with a scheduling feature, set the cooker’s temperature controls, and set the plug’s start time or activate it remotely. Sensors in the casing detect temperature and humidity and allow you to set a schedule based on those readings.

An LED shows whether this smart plug is on, changing colour and blinking when setup is in progress or if there’s no network connection, for instance. You’ll want to make sure the plug has the features you want, such as electrical usage and an Away mode.

A smart plug lets you turn them on or off with your voice or app without crawling behind the entertainment centre. Ask Alexa to turn it off from another room or open the app and turn it off while you’re on the road. Guided by experts, we spend hours looking into the factors that matter, to bring you these selections.

If you own other Philips Hue devices, you’ll likely have the Hue Bridge – that is, the hub that’s needed to control the bulbs in most circumstances. Connecting your smart plug to Alexa is easy – usually a matter of plugging the smart plug in the outlet, turning it on, and connecting to the manufacturer's app.if you can plug your appliance into an outlet and it immediately turns on, it will work with a smart plug. If the manufacturer’s app doesn’t support this feature, you can group devices through Alexa to turn everything in a single location on or off.

TP-Link’s Tapo app is a simple way to set up this smart plug and it has plenty of features, such as an away mode which can turn devices off and on so that it seems somebody is at home or to create a countdown until gadgets turn themselves off. She said: "We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shoe on your foot, from a [physical education] teacher on YouTube earlier. Each smart plug is rated for a limited amount of power, usually stated in either amps or watts, which also limits the kinds of devices you can plug into it.Inexpensive models tend to come with inexpensive apps, which aren’t always the easiest or most efficient to set up or use.