All offline at once vs one stubborn plug
Smart plugs and bulbs going offline follow two patterns with two different cures. Everything died the day you changed the router? That is credentials: Wi-Fi devices cannot learn a new network name or password while offline — each one must be re-run through its app’s setup. (Installer trick that saves an afternoon: when replacing a router, give the new one the same SSID and password and the whole houseful rejoins by itself.) One plug drops randomly? That is signal or interference — keep reading.
Reboot the pair
Router first, then the plug (pull it from the wall, count five, back in). TP-Link’s own fix list starts exactly here.
Check the signal number
Kasa and most apps show RSSI per device: stronger than −50 dBm is strong; −50 to −70 is workable; below −70 dBm the manufacturer itself says the device may disconnect. A plug behind a metal appliance or in the far bathroom often lives past −70.
The 2.4 GHz rule
Nearly all budget smart plugs and bulbs are 2.4 GHz-only. If your network is 5 GHz-only — or your phone is on 5 GHz during setup and the router refuses to let the two bands talk — setup fails in that maddening “connect to the device’s hotspot” loop.
Turn off band steering
TP-Link’s documented advice for flaky Kasa gear: disable band steering / Wi-Fi optimization on the router (the feature that shoves devices between bands). It confuses cheap IoT radios into dropping.
Update, then last-resort reset
Firmware updates in the app fix real bugs. Only after everything else: factory-reset the plug (usually holding its button ~10 seconds) and re-add it.
When you own twenty of these
Two structural notes from crowded installs. Some routers ship with small DHCP address pools, and a modern house full of plugs, bulbs, cameras and speakers can genuinely run it dry — if new devices fail to join while old ones work, widening the DHCP range in router settings is worth a look. And hub-based gear plays by different rules: Philips Hue bulbs talk Zigbee to their bridge (which is wired to the router), so a Wi-Fi password change doesn’t touch them — one honest argument for hubs in device-heavy homes. If your smart home has outgrown its router, that is squarely our kind of service call: a proper network with real coverage makes every one of these gadgets boring and reliable, which is the goal.
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More guides: Alexa or Google not responding · Why your internet is slow · Our smart home installs
Quick answers
My plug worked for months, then started dropping daily.
Something changed in the radio environment — a new neighbor network, a moved router, a new appliance in the signal path. Check the RSSI number in the app and treat anything past −70 as the cause.
Setup keeps failing at the last step.
The classic 2.4/5 GHz dance: your phone sits on 5 GHz while the plug needs 2.4. Temporarily turn off 5 GHz (or stand far enough from the router that the phone falls to 2.4), run setup, then restore.
Do smart plugs slow down my Wi-Fi?
Idle plugs send trivial traffic. The honest cost is airtime overhead from dozens of chatty devices on 2.4 GHz — noticeable only in device-heavy homes on ISP-default routers, and fixed by better network gear, not fewer plugs.
Schedules stopped firing after a power outage.
Check the plug rejoined Wi-Fi at all, then check its clock/timezone in the app. Outages that reboot the router and plugs together can leave devices up before the network — a rejoin (or auto-retry over an hour) usually self-heals.