Tapo P316M

A useful upgrade for a crowded cabinet

P316M's best feature is control over each of its six AC outlets. You can put speakers, a lamp and other suitable equipment on different schedules without buying a smart plug for every socket. Individual buttons remain available on the strip, and the flat mains plug is useful behind furniture. At the checked $47.99 Best Buy price, that is an appealing package for a cluster of devices.

The shape is less convincing elsewhere. A roughly 14.2-inch strip with a 37-inch cord belongs near a wall outlet; it does not solve a long cable run. If you only need two switches, the US P110M two-pack costs $23.99 and also measures energy. For one lamp without metering, P125M costs less again. Buy the strip when its layout is useful, not to collect spare smart sockets.

The USB ports are the weak point

Three USB-A ports sound like a convenient charging station, but they stay on and cannot follow the AC outlets' individual schedules. The exact hardware datasheet and installation leaflet specify only 12 W shared across them. That makes them incidental charging ports, not a good reason to replace a capable modern charger.

Using your own AC charger needs care too. TP-Link warns that 60–75 W adapters without power-factor correction can cause damaging inrush current. That is a frustrating restriction for a product marketed at desks. The strip's 15 A total limit does not override these appliance-specific limits; check the connected equipment rather than assuming any combination is suitable.

Better metering, with a qualification

Each AC outlet has energy monitoring, and Home Assistant can receive power and energy values through Matter. That is a useful advantage for someone already tracking household consumption: the strip can report on several devices from one location. Tapo supplies its own graphs and tariff estimates as well.

The qualification is accumulated energy. TP-Link's product discussion includes reports of totals that fail to update or appear unavailable, even when live power readings work. Updated firmware is sensible, but we would not buy several strips on the assumption that long-term energy dashboards will work flawlessly. Check one first if that is the main purpose.

P316M earns a place as a compact collection of controllable, metered AC outlets. Its USB charging and reporting caveats make it a more conditional buy than the long feature list suggests. Alexa users should also expect to use Tapo's service for separate outlet control rather than assume native Matter exposes the full strip.