TP-Link’s Kasa HS103: A smart plug with solid network connectivity

With Amazon’s smart plug teardown “in the books”, our engineer turns his attention to some TP-Link counterparts, this first one the best behaved of the bunch per hands-on testing results.

Two months back, I introduced you to several members of TP-Link’s Kasa and Tapo smart home product lines as successors to Belkin’s then-soon and now (at least as you read these words, a few weeks after I wrote them) defunct Wemo smart plug devices. I mentioned at the time that I’d had particularly good luck, from both initial setup and ongoing connectivity standpoints, with the Kasa HS103:

An example of which, I mentioned at the time, I’d shortly be tearing down both for standalone inspection purposes and subsequent comparison to the smaller but seemingly also functionally flakier Tapo EP10:

Today, I’ll be actualizing my HS103 teardown aspiration, with the EP10 analysis to follow in short order, hopefully sometime next month. What’s inside this inexpensive device, and is it any easier to disassemble than was Amazon’s Smart Plug, which I dissected last month?

Plain is appealing

Let’s find out. As usual, I’ll begin with some outer box shots of the four-pack containing today’s patient. You may call the packaging “boring”. I call it refreshingly simple. As well as recyclable.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist including that last one Read Original