In today’s post, a simple insect killer. When I say simple, it has a couple of things my old fly killer didn’t – indeed it LOOKS a lot better than the last one.
When I say “fly” I mean of course flying insects and here in Southern Spain, some of the most troublesome are much smaller than your typical fly. This “Mosquito Killer” from Gearbest looks GOOD and uses UV LED lights as against older fluorescent tubes. It has a light sensor so as not to utterly waste time running during the day when the insects have better things to look at – and has a fan to ensure that once the gnats are daft enough to look in, they can’t get out.
This definitely appears to put my previous Chinese insect killer to shame visually. The ad says “Free shipping to the UK”. You’d need to check for other countries, mine was shipped to Spain.
Smart Home Mosquito Killer Link
I received no English documentation at all, so just as well the unit is completely self-explanatory. There is an on-off push-switch on the top centre, also a covered light sensor (in case you want to test it during the day time, you can leave this cover on) – and a connector on the back centre. I have lots of old USB supplies lying around as do many folks. The unit consumes 0.3 to 0.5 amps – so any old USB power adaptor should do.
The unit came well boxed, can’t complain about the packaging. The fan is very quiet such that you need to be closer than maybe 1 metre away to hear it, depending on your ears. The unit weighs around half a kilogram and is 13x13x18cm high. The unit is apparently available in black or white – I just went for black as I figured it might look better when covered in dust.
Insects are supposed to get sucked in at one extreme but there is no electrical death-trap as such (thanks for the feedback, guys).
Update June 1 2019: I left this turned on for a couple of weeks and it turned out utter rubbish – looking and sounding just fine but not actually doing anything. Looks like it is back to the old style electrocution units. It came from the apparently now defunct (Sept 2021) Gearbest.
We’ve had one of these for a while. It’s completely useless. In the past year it has captured several insects, but never an actual mosquito (not surprisingly, they tend to ignore the pretty light when there’s an on-tap supply of warm blood in the room).
Cost/performance wise, a rolled-up newspaper is a much better bet.
I’ll follow that up – it is sitting glowing nicely in the dark, in a few days I’ll know if it is catching anything and I’ll report back.
I’d prefer the laser zapper that Nathan Myrhvold & my late acquaintance Jordan Kare developed. So much more coolerer.
these devices are for indoor uses, they don’t kill the insects with nasty fumes released, but just suck them and take them isolated so they die because are blocked under the air flow
I have something that works in a similar way. They just die of starvation / dehydration. If I stop the fan, they won’t get out because of the design. It’s just when I clean it that they may fly away. I usually take out the bottom part, and drown the insects that are still alive before cleaning it up.
Look’s the bizz.. 😉 worth a try i think. Only recently i read the human blood suckers like mosquito’s detect them via our smelly CO2 😀
They are apparently dehydrated by the continuous airflow from the fan – however make sure it is on permanently otherwise any that haven’ yet died will fly straight back out
Good point Steve, I’ll leave it on 24-7 while deciding if it does the job.