The $25 Shelly Plug Gen4 talks to Matter, Zigbee, dual Wi Fi, and Bluetooth, and tracks power down to the volt amp, but its settings surface pushes back hard on anyone who just wants a lamp on a schedule.
The Shelly Plug Gen4 costs $25, talks to just about every smart-home protocol at once, and can monitor an appliance's power draw down to the volt-amp. It can also bury a user in settings. The real question for any shopper is not whether the plug is good. It is whether they are the right user for it.
That is the central trade-off in CNET's hands-on review of the Shelly Plug Gen4 by staff writer John Carlsen, updated June 12, 2026, after a few days with a single unit. Carlsen came away calling the Gen4 the best fit for tech-savvy users, Home Assistant power users, IT departments, and small businesses such as short-term rental hosts, while warning that average home users are better served by cheaper four-packs from Govee, Tapo, or Amazon Basics at a similar total cost. That split is the story, and the hardware explains both halves of it.
On the power-user side, the Gen4 packs Zigbee, Matter, Wi-Fi with support for two networks at once and local control without routing through Shelly's cloud, and Bluetooth into a single outlet-sized brick, and it ships with access to Shelly's public script library for custom automation beyond the companion web app. CNET singles out three features that earn the "smart" label past simple on/off scheduling. A rear LED indicator runs in Power, Switch, and night modes driven by a built-in light sensor, with adjustable brightness and color. A power-management layer reports watt-hours alongside voltage, current in amps, and line frequency in an in-app energy dashboard, and can auto-shutoff when a user-defined wattage, voltage, or current threshold is crossed. A disable-able on-device "Detach Switch" sits behind an optional PIN lock, so housemates, kids, or guests cannot toggle the outlet by hand.
On the other side sits the settings surface. Carlsen is explicit that the Gen4's depth goes beyond what a typical reviewer, or a typical homeowner, will want to wade through, and that the device rewards users who are already comfortable tuning their own network. For a casual shopper who wants a lamp on a timer, the practical answer is the kind of sub-$10 four-pack CNET points to: enough capability, far less configuration, and a lower cognitive cost per outlet.
The subscription is the part that nudges this from a buyer's decision into a longer-term one. The plug itself is a $25 single-unit purchase as reviewed, and Shelly's Premium service runs 4 euros per month or 36 euros per year, gating offline notifications, weather data, in-depth monthly energy reports, and extra customization. None of that breaks the device for users who skip it, but it does convert a piece of hardware into a hybrid hardware-plus-subscription buy. CNET flags Premium as a feature gate worth understanding before committing, especially for anyone planning to lean on the energy reports as a long-term power-monitoring tool.
For a Home Assistant power user, an IT admin standardizing a small office, or a host running a short-term rental who wants per-outlet energy logs and PIN protection on guest-facing sockets, the Gen4 is a reasonable match. The multi-radio design avoids the usual buy-one-protocol regret, and the scripting path gives the device room to grow as the home setup grows. For everyone else, the better move is to spend less and configure less. Either way, the price of admission is not $25. It is the willingness to read the settings menu.