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Streaming TV devices—such as aRokuor aChromecast—are plugged in and always ready.
When your TV turns off, it uses less power, but what about the streaming devices?
How much energy do they use?
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There are a lot of different streaming devices in many shapes and sizes.
Some are larger “set-top boxes,” while others are small “streaming sticks.”
The power consumption varies by machine.
Let’s see which ones use the most.
Related:7 Roku Features You Should Be Using
The Data
The world of streaming devices is vast.
Most companies that make devices in this category have numerous options.
We picked out a few of the most commonstreaming devicesyou might have.
The other thing to consider is what you’re doing with the equipment.
Streaming a 4K HDR movie from Netflix will use more energy than watching a YouTube video.
I used asmart plugto measure the wattage for aChromecast Ultra,Chromecast with Google TV, andRoku Ultra.
For theApple TVandFire TV, I was able to findsourcesfor theinformation.
(The “~” character denotes an approximate amount.)
The Google TV has a full-blown operating system, whereas the Ultra is just a dongle.
The Fire TV 4K was also comparable to the bigger devices.
How Much Does it Cost?
Let’s put some dollar signs on all these numbers.
Idle power usage is very important for devices you don’t use all the time.
That’s less than $0.50 per month.
Still, it’s interesting to seehow much power our daily devices are using.
