It’s time to go from a regular home to a smart home! Smart plugs can be a good start for you to begin making your home smarter than the average abode.
The convenience of making our homes smarter comes at a cost, though, and that would be internet usage.
How much data do smart plugs use, and should you expect any impacts on your internet?
Fortunately, you won’t have to worry about smart plugs causing any impact on your internet, as they use very small amounts of data, but that doesn’t mean you’re totally in the clear.
I will cover in more detail below how much data smart plugs use, and what you could expect as your home gets smarter.
How Much Data Does a Smart Plug Use?
A smart plug isn’t a very hefty data user, you could expect it to use about 50 megabytes per month.
This is a tiny amount of data when you compare it to something like a smart hub that could use over 100MB per hour!
Smart plugs only use data when they are instructed to, so they don’t sit there and constantly use data. When the time comes, they will perform quick and simple functions, and then they wait for their next command.
What Can Be Expected With Smart Plugs?
Smart plugs are going to be an exciting addition to your home, but what can you expect after you get them plugged in? There are a few things to look forward to after you get your first smart plugs.
The advantages of smart plugs are:
- They can make a lot of your technology usage more convenient
- They will give you a stronger feeling of security when using your devices
- You can use more smart devices
Smart plugs can be really helpful to have in your home, and if you aren’t already really into the technology, getting smart plugs could spark a whole new interest for you!
Convenience
Smart plugs will add a lot of convenience to your life.
You could set schedules for lights to turn on and off to help wake you up in the morning and turn them off after you leave, too.
Even better, you could set it up and get your coffee warmed up before you are even out of bed.
Security
Smart plugs can also make your life more secure as well. You can monitor the activity, energy usage, and outlet temperature for your smart devices.
These smart plugs can be a lot more useful than just plugging things in and turning them on and off with convenience.
More Smart Devices
Whether we like it or not, getting smart plugs will probably lead to getting more smart devices.
Adding all these smart features to your house can be fun and exciting.
It’s a whole new layer of customization you could add to your home that everyone could have fun with, whether you’re looking to just add a lot of convenience to your life or you’re just interested in technology.
How Much Internet Does a Smart Home Use?
There are two different things to think about when considering how much internet a smart home uses. For the internet to work you need data and bandwidth, these both perform different functions that are going to make your home smarter!
In the United States, the average amount of internet data per home per month is 268.7 gigabytes.
That is going to vary between different homes. There are a lot of devices that use hardly any data until given a command, and only use a small amount to complete it. Then you have some devices that while in use will hog up all kinds of data.
Internet Speed For Smart Homes
An internet plan with 50-100 Mbps should be plenty for your smart home.
This amount of bandwidth will allow up to 4 people to be streaming, gaming, browsing, chatting, and still leave room for your smart devices too!
The internet speed you will need is going to vary on a few factors. The factors that could affect how much bandwidth you will need to include:
- Amount of people in the home
- Amount of devices that are going to be used
- What kind of activities the internet is going to be used for
The more people, devices, and activities you plan to have on the internet, the more bandwidth you will need.
If you don’t have the correct amount of bandwidth, then you could expect some negative impacts on your internet quality.
Before I cover how much data and bandwidth that you need, it would help to know what the difference between data and bandwidth is.
Data
Data are the magical waves that allow us to connect our devices and applications to the internet. Without data, your device wouldn’t be able to receive any information.
Anytime that you do anything that requires an internet connection, you are going to use data. For example, you will use data when:
- Capturing video on security or doorbell cams
- When you ask your home assistant to perform a function
- While streaming music, movies, or TV shows
If you have a lot of smart devices, you can expect to see a lot of data usage. Especially with cameras and video streaming!
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is your internet’s data-carrying capacity.
All providers have different plans for you to look into. If you’re going to have a lot of smart devices in your home or you expect to be using a lot of data all at once, you will want to increase your bandwidth.
Activities that use bandwidth would be anything that needs to use data for some time. These are activities like:
- When your doorbell and smart security system captures and shares video
- Streaming music, movies, or TV shows
- Playing online video games
You shouldn’t need to be concerned about your data usage on your home internet but it could be important for you to look into bandwidth rates.
As you start to overload your bandwidth, your internet will become slower and laggier.
Bandwidth for Smart Homes
It is recommended that for every 10-12 smart devices you add to your network, you will want to add 5 Mbps to your plan.
You will want to add 5 Mbps for each camera that you put in as well. Generally, 50-100 Mbps will be plenty of bandwidth for your smart home and cameras.
Data Usage for Smart Homes
We use a lot of data these days, we use about 40 times more data today than we did 10 years ago!
It’s almost impossible to avoid using data anymore; everything including our cars come with the internet now!
If you have a home you are turning into a smart home, you will be using a lot of data.
Which Smart Devices Use the Most Data?
You don’t have to worry as much about the constant use of data as you do heavy use of data. The smart devices that will cost you the most data are going to be the ones that stream videos. These would be devices like:
- Doorbell cams
- Smart home security cams
- Any devices that stream videos or music
Doorbell Cams and Smart Home Security Cams
Since smart devices have become increasingly popular, so have devices like doorbell cameras and home security systems.
One problem with these devices is that they are serious data suckers!
If you’re going to include these in your smart home, you might want to make sure your internet plan will allow the needed bandwidth for all the data usage.
Depending on the stream time and the resolution of your cameras, you could be looking to use as low as 18 gigabytes and up to 300 gigabytes.
We could keep the amount of data we use low, but that means minimizing video time and lowering the resolution. If higher resolutions and more video time are required, then you could expect higher data usage.
Video Streaming Services
So, we have our security and doorbell cameras on here.
But this could apply to any smart TV or system that could run a streaming service, like Netflix, or video service like Youtube. You can expect anything that streams video to be a bandwidth bandit.
Different services consume different amounts of data, on average you would expect to use as low as 15 gigabytes and up to 160 gigabytes per month.
Here is a table to compare some popular streaming services data usages at the lowest and highest resolution:
| Streaming Service | Data Usage |
| Youtube | 562.5 megabytes used at the lowest resolution.Up to 16 gigabytes at the highest resolution. |
| Netflix | You could stream at as low as 1 gigabyte per hour when streaming on low resolution or up to 7 gigabytes per hour at the highest resolution. |
| Prime Video | With Prime video, you could stream 480p video at as low as 800 megabytes per hour or up to 6 gigabytes per hour when streaming at 4k. |
Like we said, anything involving video is going to be a bandwidth bandit! So, the more video streaming your smart home and devices are doing, the more data you are going to be using.
Music Streaming
Music streaming isn’t going to use nearly as much data as watching videos and streaming movies is, but all the hours spent jamming out could add up to a good chunk of data.
Most music streaming could be expected to be between 128 to 320 kilobits per second.
Let’s talk a look at the data usage of a few popular music streaming services.
| Streaming Service | Data Used |
| Apple Music | Apple Music streams at 256 kilobits per second this would add up to 115.2 megabytes per hour. |
| Google Play Music | With Google Play Music you can stream music at 320 kilobits per second or 144 megabytes per hour. |
| Soundcloud | Soundcloud uses the least amount of data at 128 kilobits per second or 57.6 megabytes per hour. |
| Spotify | Like Google Play Music, Spotify will be using 320 kilobits per second or 144 megabytes per hour when streaming. |
Although music isn’t a heavy-duty data depleter, all the minutes and hours will keep adding up.
Will Using A Lot Of Data Slow Down Your Internet?
Your internet isn’t going to slow down just because you went over a certain amount of data, but it might slow down if you are using too much data at one time.
A lot of home internet providers will offer unlimited data, but they won’t provide you with unlimited bandwidth.
So technically, yes, using lots of data can slow down your internet but only if it is overloading your bandwidth.
How Will Bandwidth Slow Down Your Internet?
Like we talked about earlier, bandwidth is the data-carrying capacity of your internet.
As you increase the load on your bandwidth, it won’t be able to carry all of the data that you are wanting to upload.
You can’t have a smart home without it having the needed brainpower!
Before you start stocking your house up with all kinds of smart devices and cameras, make sure that your internet plan will provide you with the bandwidth you need.
It’s not just slow internet that you could expect either, the more you overload it, the worse the problems get.
What Other Problems Can You Expect?
At first, you will start to notice slower internet speeds and a laggy experience, but once you really start to overload your bandwidth, there are a few other problems you can see.
- You could have problems accessing your network
- You may experience failed login attempts
- You could even see account lockouts
There is no need to run into any of these issues, they are all preventable by just checking how much bandwidth certain devices and services use and choosing the right plan for your home.
Let’s not forget about our friends on a budget! Not everyone could just afford to go with a 500 Mbps plan to cover everything and more to come.
So, what can you do if you still want to use these devices but can’t afford all that bandwidth?
We have good news for you, there are multiple things you can do to conserve your bandwidth.
How Can You Conserve Bandwidth?
What would be the smartest way to run a smart home? To run it as efficiently as possible of course!
There are quite a few ways that you could conserve your bandwidth, and we will cover a few easy things you can do to get the most out of your bandwidth.
Some of the things that you can do are:
- Monitor your data usage
- Stream videos and movies in a lower resolution
- Make sure to fully close background applications
- Try to download instead of streaming
Now that you know some of the ways that you can conserve your bandwidth, let’s dive deeper into each one.
Monitor Your Data Usage
You may not feel like you are using a whole lot of data, but with all of the devices and applications that we have in our lives, it’s easy to forget how much we have to go on.
You could check your internet provider’s app to see what devices and applications are the data hogs slowing down your connection.
After you determine these, you could decide where you need to put limits.
You would be surprised to see all of the data that you didn’t know you were using, between the background apps, updates, browsing, and streaming it’s hard to keep track of how much we used the internet.
Stream Movies and Videos at a Lower Resolution
It’s always awesome watching movies and videos in that stunning 4k quality, but that quality comes at a price.
That price is usually about 7 gigabytes per hour or 15.5 Mbps.
If you have other devices that you need to have operated while you stream, then you will find you need to lower the resolution to be able to keep everything else running.
Close Unnecessary Background Applications
Sometimes, just swiping an application closed doesn’t completely close it.
You may need to go to your settings to check if that application is set to also run in the background. If it is, then it can be worthwhile to turn off background access.
You would be surprised to see how many applications are set up to perform functions in the background.
There can be so many updates and functions going on that you didn’t even know were happening.
So if you notice that your connection has been slow, then take some time to check your settings and find out what apps are running even while you are not using them.
Download Instead of Streaming
If you have something you plan to watch multiple times, it could be well worth your time to download the file.
When you download a file, you will only have to use your data to access the file one time rather than using a whole bunch of data repeatedly.
This is something that will be especially useful for music, you may not watch movies on repeat, but there is a good chance that you have a few songs that you could jam to on repeat for hours.
Data usage by smart plug: Final Thoughts
As far as data usage, your smart plugs are going to be the least of your worries, the amount of data they use is minimal compared to some of the other devices that you could get.
There are a lot of options out there for unlimited data plans for your internet, but you need to be aware of the amount of data that you are going to be using all at one time when setting up your smart home.
As far as the whole home’s data usage, you could expect that to be high and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that amount to increase, that’s why bandwidth is important.
With all of the technology coming out and how much more intertwined our lives are becoming with that technology, the internet and data could become almost as essential as water.
