A few months ago my wife urged me to purchase a little gadget called a Kill-a-watt meter, it's a little thing you plug in line between the wall outlet and the power cord to see how much power something is pulling. Maybe not as fancy as some other models that can create charts, but pretty usable anyways.
When we got it we plugged it into a bunch of things and generally probably helped save a penny or two here and there. For example the TV/DVD/Alarm Clock all plugged into a power strip in the guest bedroom that nobody was using. So back in February I read this article via Kotaku regarding power consumption and the "next-gen" consoles that really got my thinking about the Xbox 360 I have. So I slapped the meter on it and these are the results I got.
Just having the Xbox 360 plugged into the wall alone, not even turned on, pulls 2 watts. That's 2 watts, 24 hours a day, 365 hours a year. Based on a kW hr price of $.07149 (the current from Com-Ed) that adds up to $12.35. That's 12 bucks I'm paying to have the privilege of seeing a yellow light on the rather large power supply. As a result of this I unplug it now when not using it, I like to think of it as if somebody offered me $10 for free...I'd take it, so why not do a little bit to avoid spending it.
So if just having it plugged in is costing us money how much does running it cost? Well again assuming a kW hr cost of $.07149, if I played it for 5 hours a day, 30 days a month, and for 365 days it would end up with a total of $180.15. That's with an average of it pulling 150watts.
Now playing video games is one thing, but Microsoft is pretty big on it's IPTV push lately. You an download HD movies to the Xbox 360, and even television shows like Survivor and South Park. Now while these often come with perks some people might now have (480p...no commercials) they still need to be viewed using the Xbox 360, which of course means it's on and consuming power. So the previous value of $180 dollars is still valid for watching television, I think 5 hours is a fair number to use. But what I was really curious about was the comparison between the Xbox 360's power consumption, and the power consumption of our Dish Network 522 Dual tuner DVR.
As it turns out the DVR pulls 32 watts at all times, on or off (to always be in standby so it can record shows), which means it has a yearly cost (using 5 hours per day as a base, and assuming it was turned off the other 19 hours in the day) of $41.18. That means it's more than 4x more expensive to watch television using the Xbox 360 as a DVR...which I think is huge news especially with the recent release of the Elite model (which I won't get into for other reason, aside to say that not having HD or wireless built in really makes the moniker elite seem moronic). Couple that with the fact that when comparing the usage of a typical TV remote to the controls on the 360, the remote will always win out as more user friendly, and you have what I consider to be a pretty big nail in the coffin.
Microsoft desperately wants the 360 to be everything, including a DVR, but have they really thought everything through? I've only really touched on the power consumption, and not even the level of BTU's the unit puts off. But what about one more final power consumption related observation.
Recently the 2007 spring update released a new feature that I was really excited about, it's called low power consumption mode, and coupled with auto shut off it's a long overdue option. Basically it allows you to start a download of something (game demo, TV show, whatever) and then shut the console off. The front light will blink once every 10 seconds or so, and your download will chug along merrily. Meanwhile your display is off, as is your controller. It all sounds perfect, but how much power does it continue to pull while in "low power mode"?
75%
The Xbox 360 still manages to pull 113 watts while in low power mode. Now if this is functionality that has been shoehorned in where it wasn't designed to be then great, hey anything is better than 100% power consumption. But really should they still call it "low power mode"....why not "reduced power mode" or something a little bit more...well less misleading? Of course I suspect that "medium-high power mode" got voted right the heck out.
