Power Consumption of Consoles

I decided to make a small comparison of the power consumption of my consoles: Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360. I used Esic Power Meter PM498 for measuring. It's a simple device and you can only plug in one device at a time.

And directly to the results... Nintendo Wii takes the least amount of electricity, about 17 W and 19 W when using the dashboard (Nintendo Channels) or playing Animal Crossing (disc game). PlayStation 3 takes around 120 W and 154 W on dashboard (XrossMediaBar) or when playing Gran Turismo 5 (not installed on hard drive).

I have three different Xbox 360s, so I compared them together using an unregistered silver account, so I didn't have to transfer my profile from one console to another. I tried to make the comparisons as similar as possible, but because you can't use HDMI with the Xbox 360 Core System, I used VGA instead. The oldest Xbox 360 (Core System) uses the most amount of power and the newest one (Xbox 360 S) the least. Games installed on hard disk take less energy on all of my X360s.

After unregistered silver accounts I also used my online gold account to see any differences by comparing two games and the Video Library to the Dashboard. I chose an empty Video Library, because it doesn't have any animations increasing the power usage and I noticed it uses just a little bit less energy than the Dashboard. The popular Xbox Live Arcade game UNO uses energy a little bit more than the Dashboard. Halo 3 uses about 20 W to 40 W more power than the Dashboard depending on has it been installed on hard drive or not. There were no surprises, but now I have my own results I can look up, if I ever need them! Below is the more detailed information.


WII AND PS3

Nintendo Wii
- standby (offline): 1 W
- standby (online): 11 W
- dashboard (no disc in): 17 W
- dashboard (disc in): 19 W
- Animal Crossing (disc game): 18 W ... 19 W
- Sonic the Hedgehog (WiiWare): 17 W

PlayStation 3

- standby: 1 W
- dashboard (no disc in): 112 W ... 123 W
- dashboard (disc in, GT5): 120 W ... 130 W
- Gran Turismo 5, local race (not on HDD): 134 W ... 154 W


X360 SILVER ACCOUNT

Xbox 360 Core System (VGA)
- standby: 2 W
- dashboard: 145 W ... 147 W

- Halo 3, local campaign (installed on HDD): 161 W ... 176 W

- Halo 3, local campaign (not installed on HDD): 163 W ... 182 W
- installing Halo 3 on hard drive: 151 W ... 158 W

Xbox 360 Arcade (HDMI)
- standby: 2 W ... 3 W
- dashboard: 93 W ... 95 W

- Halo 3, local campaign (installed on HDD): 104 W ... 115 W

- Halo 3, local campaign (not installed on HDD): 126 W ... 130 W
- installing Halo 3 on hard drive: 99 W ... 105 W

Xbox 360 S (HDMI)
- standby: 1 W
- dashboard: 68 W ... 70 W

- Halo 3, local campaign (installed on HDD): 73 W ... 80 W

- Halo 3, local campaign (not installed on HDD): 80 W ... 96 W
- installing Halo 3 on hard drive: 74 W ... 76 W


X360 GOLD ACCOUNT

Xbox 360 S (HDMI)

- Dashboard (gold account): 71 W ... 72 W

- Video Library, empty: 70 W ... 71 W

- UNO, online match using avatars: 72 W ... 74 W

- Halo 3, local campaign (installed on HDD): 74 W ... 87 W