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PS4, in pieces [Image credit: iFixit]

When the kickoff preliminary report on side by side-generation console energy use came out in December, we highlighted the fact that Sony and Microsoft might both be able to essentially better their performance in short order. Fast forwards five months, and the National Resources Defense Council has released an updated version of its report with more than historical data and a full prepare of estimates for how much power each console consumes. Is Microsoft still the ability-hungry elephant in the room?

In a word, aye. Just there'south some very interesting additional data on why that'southward then — and some inexplainable issues with electric current console power consumption. First, let's await at the table for the PS4, Xbox 1, and Wii U:

Console power

This nautical chart shows the power consumption of all 3 consoles in their various operating modes. The PS4 is evidently far head of the Xbox One in all categories — so why is MS losing the annual power consumption race? Two reasons: First, it draws almost 2x the power of the PS4 in standby mode, which is where the consoles will spend the vast majority of their time. Second, if operated in the MS-recommended TV mode, it means yous're powering up the Xbox 1 console just to sentinel television. In that mode, the panel chews through 72W of power.

Streaming power consumption

The NRDC is, I think, right to point a finger at simply how much power these consoles use for unproblematic tasks — but is it a function of AMD'southward engineering? Our tests suggest not. We've got an A4-5000 Kabini whitebook on-hand from AMD — this is a system that runs a custom BIOS and doesn't appear to be particularly aggressively power-optimized. It also includes a 1920×1080 screen, so our wall power measurements include the toll of driving the display equally well. Total ability consumption for the entire laptop while decoding H.264 1080p video? About 15W with the display at maximum effulgence and 11W with the display at one-half brightness.

While the Xbox One and PS4 apparently contain a great deal of custom logic and much larger GPUs, even the Wii U draws more than 2x the power of our mobile Kabini. If we presume a headless A4-5000 could decode H.264 at 7-8W, the new consoles are drawing 4x – 10x as much power to handle substantially the same task.

On the other hand, there'south notwithstanding reason to exist optimistic. The chart beneath shows how game console power consumption has tended to better over each generation every bit new console flavors are released.

Console power consumption

Annotation that both the PS4 and Xbox 1 come up in well below the launch consoles for the PS3 and Xbox 360. There's room for improvement, just these designs are more power-efficient than their predecessors were at a similar phase of development.

Should you care how much power your console uses?

The NRDC reports always leave me of two minds. On the i hand, it'due south never a bad thought to wait at the energy efficiency of the devices yous purchase, especially if you're a heavy TV watcher and want an Xbox One. There's no particular reason why an HDMI pass-through requires 72W of ability. Similarly, the PS4'due south continued stand-by power is either 3W or viii.5W depending on whether or not you enable USB charging — regardless of whether a device is currently charging or non.

What'south the value of that five.5W? To a person with a PS4 on 24/7/365, about $8.67 a year at 18 cents per kWh. Of course, multiply that times a few one thousand thousand PS4s over a few years, and yous've got a fair amount of money. The National Resources Defense Council tries at several points to compare total power usage to major cities or multilple power plants, but precious few Americans are going to exist convinced that because millions of consoles add together upwardly to significant power consumption over several years, they should alter their behavior at present.

Simply one thing that stands out is that it definitely should be possible to improve these positions — and for that reason alone, it'southward worth doing. Less power consumption means less system racket, and less power spent cooling that oestrus. Thus far, Sony and MS haven't improved the situation  — hopefully such updates are on the way later this year.