Not to be confused with the Energy Eggs that are homeopathic healing stones, the EnergyEGG from Treegreen is a wireless appliance control system that promises to switch off unused appliances when you leave the room.

Interested to see how the gadget works and whether you should bother, we set one up in the office to find out.

The EnergyEGG consists of two parts: a socket that you plug your appliance into and a sensor that can be positioned anywhere in your room - up to 30m away from the plug - to monitor your movement.

The set-up process, some five steps, isn't as complicated as it sounds and really just involves pairing the two devices so they can talk to each other. You multiple plugs can be controlled via the same sensor.

Once you've plugged in that standard lamp, TV, radio, or whatever else you are wanting to turn off automatically when you leave the room, you're set to go, it really is that simple.

The Egg part of the package then monitors your movements, working out whether you are just sitting at your desk, on the sofa, or playing dead.

Once you leave the room it is clever enough to realise there is no one in there and turns off after whatever time you've set in at the base - anywhere between five and 30 minutes.

When you come back in the room the devices you have plugged into the system can be turned back on via an on/off switch on top of the egg - basically acting like a remote control.

In our tests the energyEGG works as it says it does with no problem. We had the timer set to five minutes and - waiting outside our office door to check - the light turned off at when we had set. Walking back into the room before the five minutes is up cancels the timer.

The energyEGG also coped in our house with our dog when we placed the sensor on a high shelf so as to not pick him up walking around during the night.

The sensor is designed only to turn off devices, and it would have been nice to be able to be set it to turn on automatically as well. You can't do this.

The energyEGG is a simple device doing what it says it will, and doing it well. If you are someone who forgets to turn things off when you walk out of the room, then this is for you. However, without the auto-on feature we are struggling to see what device you would really want to plug this into.

Televisions, Sky boxes and other appliances like that, all now have auto-switch off functionality if left unused for a set length of time.

That means you are likely to use it for a lamp, and in that case you would maybe want it to come back on after you left the room, and at £40 this is a tad expensive for just trying to fix your forgetfulness.

 

What do you think? Do you want a device that switches your gadgets off, and if so what would you use it for.