I found out about Sonoff and what they do when I started looking around how to do cool stuff with an Arduino. Making a smart switch with Arduino is not hard and it’s a cool little project that people can try but why do it when you can buy one for less than $10 and have a better interface for the app instead of a 90’s looking webpage with a button.

As far as I know Itead is a company that makes smart solutions for your home. The sonoff basic is, as the name says, a basic solution of a smart switch. You wire it up to your lamp, wallplug, or any other thing you want to turn on/off remotely and there you go. It’s not the most nice looking thing and if you have no idea on how to wire a regular switch you might mess it up but it does the job. This basic model is what I bought for $7.5 with shipping fees and so far I am really impressed.

The Sonoff Basic is a solution that fits mostly anything but I wouldn’t recommend it for your normal house lights. It has to be wired directly on the line and it uses a relay to switch on and off things. If you want a smart switch for your regular ceiling lights you can buy a different version from the Itead website that replaces your normal wall switch. I find the best use for this basic version on desk lamps, fans, led light strips that don’t have a remote or that you might wanna turn on and off with your phone. As far as quality goes it is well built, very responsive (as long as you have a good wifi connection) and really easy to install. All you need to do is wire it up on the lamp or whatever you want, press and hold the button to connect it to WiFi through your phone and that’s it. You have a smart switch. The responsiveness of the switch is actually impressive. The app even has functions to connect it to your Amazon Alexa or other smart stuff you might have, it has a timer and a schedule function. Also the clicking sound of the relay inside makes it so much more enjoyable if you’re passionate about electronics just a little bit.

I personally use it for my desk lamp which I turn on/off really easily from my bed now and the only disadvantage I found is that in case you don’t have your phone near by and still want to turn it on you need to press the small button on the sonoff device once and it acts like a switch. The button is really small and if you have your cable hidden somewhere can be hard to reach.

It is definitely worth the money even if you’re not that much into smart home stuff and it’s definitely fun to play with. I see myself buying more of these devices and replacing my wall switches with some smart switches like this in the future therefore I really thing this product can be a good buy for everyone.

About the phone case. I did buy a cheap phone case from AliExpress for my Huawei P9 Lite. This is more of a general opinion and not really a subjective review for a certain case. It is a slim one since I had a flip case before and it made my phone really chunky and hard to put in my jeans pockets. In terms of protection it won’t do much, probably works only against scratches but the quality seems really good for the price. It was around $2-3, the button covers are easy to press and the cuts are actually really well done. So if you’re wondering if you should buy phone cases from AliExpress I think you should. I mean they’re cheap anyway so if it doesn’t work you won’t lose much. I won’t leave any links for these products in this post since I strongly recommend you buying the Sonoff from their official website or any of their distributors.