EIGHTREE Smart Plug vs Amazon Basics Smart Plug with Night Light & Motion Sensor: A Real Comparison

The EIGHTREE gives you four plugs for basically the same price as one Amazon Basics unit. The Amazon Basics gives you one plug with a motion night light built in. That's the whole decision, right there.

Quick specs

	EIGHTREE (4-pack)	Amazon Basics
Price	$20.88	$22.99
Rating	4.5/5	4.1/5
Units in box	4	1 (with 2 outlets)
App	Smart Life (3rd party)	Alexa only
Google Assistant	Yes	No
Standout feature	Cheap per-plug	Motion night light

Where the EIGHTREE wins

Four plugs for twenty bucks means you stop rationing them. I put one on the living room lamp, one on a space heater in the office, one on the aquarium light, and I still had a spare sitting in a drawer for whenever the next "I wish this thing turned off by itself" moment came up. That fourth plug ended up on my coffee maker after a month of forgetting to switch it off before work. When plugs are this cheap you use them for dumb little things you'd never justify at $23 each.

The round mini design actually delivers on the "doesn't block the second outlet" claim, which a lot of smart plugs promise and then fail at. On my kitchen double outlet I've got the EIGHTREE on the bottom and the toaster still plugs in up top. And because it runs through Smart Life, it plays nice with Google Home. My house is half Nest speakers, half Echo, and the EIGHTREE answers to both. That mattered more than I expected once I realized the Amazon plug flat-out ignores Google.

Setup was fine. Bluetooth found the plug, I named it, done. Not magic, but no worse than any other Smart Life device I've fought with over the years.

Where the Amazon Basics wins

The night light is the entire reason to buy this thing, and it's genuinely good. I put it in the hallway outside my kid's room. Walk past at 2am, it glows soft for a few seconds, then fades out. No fumbling for a switch, no blinding overhead light, no stubbed toe on the doorframe. The motion sensor picks me up from a reasonable distance and the light is dim enough that it doesn't wake anybody. If you've got a hallway, a bathroom, or a stairwell that's a hazard in the dark, this solves a real problem that a four-pack of dumb plugs never could.

It also has two individually controlled outlets on one unit, so you can run a lamp and a fan off the same wall spot and toggle each separately from the Alexa app. And the "zero-touch" Amazon setup is real — order it linked to your account and it shows up in the Alexa app already knowing who you are. No pairing dance. For a house that's all-in on Echo, it's the smoother experience by a wide margin.

The honest differences

• The EIGHTREE is four times the plug for the same money, but the Amazon Basics does something none of the four can do — light up a dark hallway on its own. I'd pay the extra two dollars for that one feature in the right spot, and refuse to pay it anywhere else.

• Amazon's setup is smoother if you live in Alexa's world, but the moment you own a single Google speaker, the Amazon plug becomes a dead end. The EIGHTREE talks to both. My mixed-brand house made that a dealbreaker, not a footnote.

• Smart Life is a clunkier app than the Alexa app, and I won't pretend otherwise. It buries the "link to Alexa" toggle under Me > Third-Party Services, which is exactly the kind of nonsense that makes people give up. But once linked, it just works and I never open it again.

• The Amazon plug's 4.1 rating vs the EIGHTREE's 4.5 is real, and I think the motion sensor is why. Motion night lights either love your hallway or fight you on false triggers and timing. The plain plug has fewer ways to disappoint you.

• The EIGHTREE's compact round shape doesn't block the second outlet, while the Amazon Basics is a chunkier wall-wart that eats the whole receptacle since it's got two outlets and a light packed in. In tight spots behind furniture, size actually matters.

Which one I'd buy

I'd buy the EIGHTREE four-pack, and it's not close for my situation. I got four working smart plugs spread across the house for the price of one Amazon unit, they answer to both Alexa and Google, and I never had to think about whether a plug was "worth it" for some minor task. That last part changed how I use them — cheap plugs get deployed on things you'd otherwise ignore.

But I'd push a specific person toward the Amazon Basics without hesitation: someone who's fully committed to Alexa, doesn't own a single Google device, and has one particular dark spot in their home. A hallway. A nursery. The top of a basement staircase. If that's you, the motion night light is worth more than three extra plugs you don't have a use for, and the zero-touch Alexa setup will feel like the plug configured itself. In that narrow case, the four-pack's value pitch means nothing, because you only needed one, and you needed it to glow.

The person who'd disagree with me most is the smart-home purist who hates third-party apps on principle. They've got a point. Smart Life is not the app I'd design, and "no 3rd party apps or hubs" is a legitimate selling point if you want everything living inside Alexa. For them, the Amazon plug is the cleaner ecosystem even at a worse price-per-outlet. I just don't weight tidiness as heavily as I weight having a spare plug in the drawer when I need it.

For most people furnishing a house with a few connected devices, buy the four-pack. Grab the Amazon plug only if you've got a hallway that keeps trying to trip you in the dark.