Discussion: Remote-controlled smart sockets and the choice of Wattmeter for the Smart Home

Hi,
I would like to create a Smart Home. Currently I only have Philips Hue lighting, but it's slowly moving forward.

To start with I would like to buy some remote controlled sockets. I was thinking of buying some kind of Zigbee gateway. Some 2-3 sockets to start with. What sockets do you recommend? It would be nice if they had an option for e.g. a history of current consumption.

And a second question, somewhat related to the first. What kind of wattmeter? There are plenty on the internet for £50, £100 or £150. I need one for my own needs. I don't want the cheapest and worst. The question is, what kind and is there a point in buying one for, say, 200 zł? Will it be better?

If you want to play with smart home on your own and have a budget to upgrade / buy additional equipment, I would recommend starting with the purchase of e.g. dell wyse and setting up home assistant and basing everything on it (many configurations and possibilities of creating automation). Then you can add everything as you like, e.g. an energy monitor (I have a mew-01), intelligent sockets, switches, etc. You can add a zigbee dongle and base some of your devices on the zigbee protocol. I myself started with individual components but the most annoying thing became the fact that at some point I had several applications (all from a different parish). In HA you have everything in one place despite devices from different companies - this is a mega convenience. Not to mention the endless automations.

And what do you think of raspberry? Under some kind of NASA server, HA, etc.?