Tapo P304M

Four useful switches for the price of a strip

At the checked £29.99 price, P304M makes a persuasive case for a UK desk or media cabinet. It combines four separately controlled sockets, energy monitoring and surge protection in a 26 cm body. That is about £7.50 per controllable outlet, with one mains lead instead of a row of adapters.

The useful part is being selective. A desk lamp and speakers can follow an evening schedule while another socket stays on. Each outlet has its own button, too, so reaching the strip still works when opening an app would be excessive. This is the sort of unglamorous smart-home purchase that can earn its keep every day.

Good value only if it reaches

The 1.5 m cable is the biggest practical compromise. It may suit a wall socket directly behind the furniture, but it leaves little freedom when the nearest outlet is farther away. It must connect directly to a grounded wall socket, so adding another extension lead is not the solution. Separate UK smart plugs make more sense when the devices live in different parts of the room.

There is also a shared 13 A limit across the strip, with lower limits for particular appliance types. The installation leaflet lists 600 W for a PC, for example. A four-socket body does not make this an unrestricted power supply for a demanding workstation.

The graphs should answer a question

Energy monitoring gives P304M a useful second job: compare how much the connected equipment uses while active and idle, then decide whether switching it off is worth the interruption. Tapo adds tariff estimates and graphs. Buy it to learn something about those devices, rather than assuming the strip will pay for itself through electricity savings.

The energy view is less appealing if you want to live entirely inside Apple Home or another Matter app. We would buy on the basis of Tapo's metering tools, not assume the same readings and history will appear everywhere. Update the strip before trusting its totals; earlier firmware had consumption-reporting faults.

Alexa users should also plan on Tapo's linked service for individual outlet control, rather than buying it for native Matter integration alone.

For several nearby UK devices, the price and separate controls are compelling. For one lamp, or a room that needs a longer cable, the tidy-looking all-in-one design loses its advantage.