By: The Bitbag |
If you’re looking to save on electricity, you may want to think about unplugging your gaming consoles when they aren’t in use. The latest generation of gaming consoles use up so much power that the consoles themselves may end up costing American owners up to $1 billion dollars in electricity in a year. This is according to a report by a New York environmental group. The big deal about it is that about 40 percent of the total power, which results to a staggering $400 million dollars a year, is most likely due to power being consumed by consoles when they aren’t even actively being used or when they are in standby mode.
In terms of the top three latest generation consoles, the biggest energy consumer is Microsoft’s Xbox One followed by Sony’s PlayStation 4 and then Nintendo’s Wii U, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The reason why the Xbox One ranks as the top power hungry console is due to its always on standby mode as it constantly listens for gamers’ voice commands. For the PlayStation 4, it’s because of its inefficient controller charging. These two consoles are designed to be turned on all the time, but can be powered off manually. Out of the three latest major consoles, the Wii U is said to be the most power efficient.
Ironically enough, these consoles consume more power in standby mode and when playing movies compared to when they are being used to play games if tracked over the course of a year. The main reason is due to the amount of time spent in standby mode in comparison to the time spent playing games.
Another reason for being power hungry is that the consoles aren’t dedicated streaming media devices, but instead are gaming consoles that come with a streaming ability. The consoles use up 30 to 45 times more power when playing videos compared to dedicated devices like Apple TV and Google Chromecast. When compared to the previous generation consoles, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 consume 2 to 3 times as much power compared to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
There has been a lot of improvement for gaming consoles, but this feature of always being on standby can hurt your electricity bill. The best solution would be to simply unplug the gaming console when not in use, but make sure to have it fully powered off.
