Earth Day: Are Your Electronics Energy Hogs?

Fast Performance or Energy Savings: That Is the Question

When you make a major electronics buying decision, you traditionally think about price, quality and brand reputation. There's one additional criterion that few consider when out at Best Buy: power consumption.

The ongoing costs for one person to power a desktop PC, HDTV, laptop or LCD monitor -- even if the device turned out to be a high energy user -- probably won't blow anyone's budget. However, if many users opt for equipment that sips less energy, it could make a considerable difference to the environment and perhaps to a business bottom line. The question we ask you to consider is this: If it doesn't make a difference to your computing or entertainment experience, why not give an energy-saving device some consideration?

The PC World Test Center recently started testing new HDTVs, laptops and desktops and LCD monitors using the Watts up? PRO meter, a device that measures how many watt hours a product uses. A watt hour is an electrical energy unit of measure that is equal to 1 watt of power passing through an electric circuit over the course of an hour. The lower the number, the better.

In the following slides, we're going to show you which of the products we tested used significantly smaller amounts of energy than their peers and which racked up watt hours quickly. The numbers may seem small, but over the course of a year consumers could easily prevent hundreds of pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions from entering the Earth's atmosphere simply by making a more informed purchase, or by unplugging their equipment when not in use. In the final slide, we show you the power meter and tell you how we used it.