If you’re environmentally conscious at all, or if you’re just trying to save a few pennies on your electricity bill, you’re probably aware that a lot of gadgets suck up a surprising amount of energy when in standby mode.
Consequently, many people suggest that you should totally unplug these “energy vampires” when they’re not in use … but how seriously should you take that? Should you be totally unplugging your MacBook charger, or your iPad charger, when it’s not in use?
Over at How-To Geek, Chriss Hoffman wanted to know how much electricity his spare chargers were sucking up when not in active use. So he took a Kill A Watt meter, and tested chargers for the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Chromebook, Windows laptops, Android phones.
The results? All good. No matter what device you’re using, individually, each charger used 0.0 watts when not in use. And even when you plug six unused chargers into a power strip at once, the collective usage is barely 0.3 watts. That means if you left them plugged in all year, the maximum you’d pay in electricity would be a meager 79 cents… and that’s in the most expensive place for electricity in the entire country, Hawaii.
In short? Don’t worry about your Apple chargers. They’re not energy vampires. Your Apple TV, though, might be another story.
Source: How-To Geek
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
4 responses to “Is your Mac or iPhone charger an energy vampire?”
Your Air Conditioner is the worst vampire of all things considering since it runs 20 hours a day if it’s too hot or too cold.
If you need AC, you need AC. It’s not a vampire. A “vampire” is a product that you THINK is off, but still draws a considerable amount of power. Cable set-top boxes, for example.
People should call it energy “monster”, instead of vampire.
This is interesting. Thank you for sharing. We have all been told to unplug everything when we are not using it (TVs, coffee makers, chargers) it is nice to know that at least some things you don’t have to unplug. Honestly, I will pay the 79 cents!