- Most televisions have an energy saving mode, the idea is to consume as little electricity as possible.
- But the big question: Is it pure marketing or do they really serve to save energy?
We live in difficult times and saving electricity is a perfect way to get more comfortable at the end of the month. We quite like to watch our series or movies on Netflix and we spend hours after hours doing it. Is it possible to save something on the electricity bill? A lots of televisions they come with a Energy save mode. But is it worth it? Does it really make any difference? This is what we are going to check in this article.
But what is the energy saving mode in televisions?
The picture modes of a TV are preset in order to adjust the screen to different levels of saturation, contrast and brightness. Luckily, these things can be manually adjusted if necessary, but the modes make this easier.
The energy saving mode in televisions is prepared to optimize the settings to save energy. The most obvious and easiest way to do this is to dim the screen. Power save mode is generally going to be dimmer than all other modes.
So, whether it is energy saving mode or ecological mode, it means that our TV should use less energy. But is this really true? Is the difference significant?
Analyzing the data
We already have a small part of this clear, now we are going to use a smart plug that is capable of measuring power. In this case, three different televisions were used, all with their respective modes available. All three had a power saving mode, vivid mode, and a standard mode.
In these data we can find interesting things. The first would be the power saving modes generally speaking if they use less power than the standard setting. The vivid ones are not that they spend much more than the standard configuration, which means that it adjusts the color a little more and not so much the brightness.
Two of these televisions have the famous theater mode, which had a similar effect in terms of energy consumption with respect to the energy saving modes. The larger 4K TV uses less power in this mode. Why? It’s just that cinema modes often dim the screen for dark rooms.
Likewise, certain differences between the modes are not too significant. Smaller Full HD TVs don’t show a noticeable difference between modes that theoretically save energy and those that don’t. We have seen the notable difference on large televisions and with 4K resolutions.
Really matters?
We cannot deny that the energy saving mode is really working and fulfilling its function. Not surprisingly, after all we see the screen dimmer and this requires less power. So it’s not just something to sell more TVs.
Let’s pretend that our electricity rate is €0.18 per kWh and we have a 4K TV very similar to the one in the example. We turn on our TV for about four hours a day in energy saving mode, which would be the same at €1.90 per month. Using the highest power mode, this would translate to roughly €2.50 per month.
So we’re saving a little bit of money at the end of the month. But is it a noticeable difference so that it is worth having it activated? Obviously, this will depend on us. For example, if we have a fairly large 4K television, the difference will be noticeable, let alone if we have two televisions at home.