Video Transcript for An In-Depth Look at the SmartPlug RV Power Inlet

Hello, everybody. Clayton here at etrailer.com. Here at etrailer.com, we install, test and review, a lot of different products to help you as the customer make a more educated decision before your purchase. Today we're gonna be working on Grand Design Reflection Fifth Wheel Camper. We're gonna be taking a look at, and I'll show you how easy it is to install the smart plug power outlet. This is what our smart plug is gonna look like installed.

This is gonna be a 50-amp version. It's gonna be 125 volts by 250 volts. That's gonna cover a lot of different campers out there on the market. Now my favorite feature of our smart plug is gonna be our prongs. So you might be asking yourself, you know, "My plug works just fine.

Why would I wanna upgrade" But really this is an awesome upgrade to any camper or fifth wheel that you might have. Like I said, these prongs are extra long, so it's gonna be really easy to get our plugin. And as you can see, our plug is shaped a little bit different than the standard plug. Most of our plugs on the market, you do have to push in and then twist. So this is gonna be really easy to live with.

And since it is shaped this way, all you have to do is hold your cord up and plug it in. As I said, it's super easy. You just gotta push in and snap. And it has these nice tabs on the outside that make a really good click whenever you know you're got it plugged in. As you can see, it's nice and secure.

And here's the plug that we took off. Like I said, you have to push the standard rod on and twist it. So you can see those little tabs on here, and that's what catches it. But what makes our smart plug so much better, is there's a lot more contact area. You can see our plug where it actually is gonna twist and stop. There's only a little bit of that prong. So if there isn't any debris or anything on there it's really gonna limit the charging. It's just gonna take a lot longer. Also, it's just not gonna be easy to live with. And what makes the smart plug so much better than any of those other plugs out there on the market is gonna be the weather proofing. There's a really nice gasket on the inside of our cover. So whenever it's closed, it's gonna hug it really tight. You're not gonna have to worry about any dirt, or debris, and any condensation building up inside of our plug. Then when we have our plug actually plugged in, there's a gasket in this channel as well. So if it's raining, you don't have to worry about any water getting into your plug while it's being used. One really nice feature is this does have a 30-amp overheat cutoff. So if it is getting too hot, it'll automatically cut off. Our connecting pins are gonna be made out of a premium material. This is gonna be a nickel plated brass to ensure strong conductivity. A lot of the other ones on the market are just brass or they're nickel. So you're not gonna get that same power level through the pins. Then with these being a straight longer pin, it's really gonna allow us to get more contacts to those pins to increase our charging. So if you aren't camping in a traditional site, you're just gonna use the normal style plug. You know, also pick up this adapter here at etrailer.com. You simply just plug us into here. And this allows us to use just a standard wall outlet. And the best feature of the smart plug is how easy it is to get installed. A lot of 'em you're gonna have to drill new holes. But in this case, it lined right up. Now I can't guarantee that's gonna work for every camper, but in this case it did. So it's simply four screws and connecting our wires, pushing it up to the wall, and bolting it in. With that being said, I'll go ahead and show you how to get it installed. To start our installation, we wanna pull off the factory plug that our camper is gonna come with. In this case, it is a Furrion plug. But before we do anything, we wanna make sure that it's gonna be 50 amps. And we wanna make sure with our new smart plug if this one is rated at 50 amps as well. And in this case, it is. So we wanna make sure that we get enough slack out of our wire. We just wanna disconnect all of our electrical connections. Now it's very important to make sure that your battery disconnect is in the off position. 'Cause you don't want any power coming in or out of this plug while we're doing this. I'm just gonna grab a flat blade screwdriver. We'll just loosen up all our connection points. And the other thing you wanna keep in mind is that our new plug and our old plug are both gonna have four wires. You just wanna make sure that we're replacing it with the same thing that was on it. Just like that, we can set our old plug off to the side. So our plug is in a little bit different orientation than our wires we're in our original bundle. I'm just gonna strip back this sheathing a little bit just to give us a little bit more play with our wires due to the gauge of them. It's kinda hard to move them around. So you just wanna cut that carefully, making sure not to cut any of your wires. So right there should be about good. I'm just gonna bend that back out of the way. It's gonna give us just a little bit more room to play with our new wires. So we're gonna hook these up the exact same way that our old ones were. Black to black, red to red, white to white, and green to our paper covering. All we're gonna do is just slide these through our openings here, like so. And we can grab an Allen key. We're just gonna tighten these down onto that wire. Just like so. Just wanna give it a little tug and make sure it's nice and tight. We'll repeat that same process for our remaining wires. And I'm gonna grab our gasket material here. Just wanna hold it up to our original opening. And we already did check where our bolt holes are gonna line up. So that's gonna be really nice. We just wanna grab our gasket. We're gonna peel the sticky tape or the layer protecting it back here. Just gonna peel this off. It is kinda hard just 'cause this gasket wants to flex whenever you pull back on that material. Because our wire is going through it, you just wanna to kinda tear this here and you can work it off of that gasket. You wanna be careful not to touch the adhesive to anything. You just wanna double check orientation of our gasket. This is gonna be the bottom. So we do want the bigger opening facing up on our gasket. Now we just wanna grab our gasket, kinda move our wire out of the way, align our holes and stick it down. With that all stuffed down, I'm just gonna run our hands around it and make sure everything's good. And then you simply push our wire back into the opening, kind of spin it around. We just kinda wanna turn it and then get our screw lined up with that original hole. And then we'll just get our hardware started. Now honestly, it might be nice to have an extra set of hands just to kinda hold that steady while you're getting the hardware started. And it is a little bit off compared to our stock one. So we just wanna get them all started loosely. Then we can kinda move it around and adjust it to make sure it gets nice and flush to our camper. You can go ahead and tighten down our last screw. Now it might be a little off center, but as we tighten these down it'll kinda pull the plug into the right place and get it nice and flush to the side of our camper. Everything tidied up, we wanna make sure that our door opens and closes all the way and snaps nice and closed. In this case it does. So we're ready to plug in our cord, hook up to our power and enjoy a nice weekend. That's gonna conclude our look at an installation of our smart plug..