Just a quick post about things I’m finding about appliances I use around the home that are surprising me a bit..

Vizio 42″ LCD TV… wattage on the TV says it consumes about 700 Watts (maximum)… actual usage? 220 Watts!  That kindof surprised me (in a good way) since I thought normal usage would be way higher.  I guess the labels on some appliances really show maximum usage and not average usage.

In a similar way, my Mini Sony SRX-33 Laptop rated at 60 watts… is only showing about 20 watts on average use (i.e. typing on keyboard, surfing the web).  Pretty good results too.

On the other hand… my Dish Network DVR 622 used up 29 watts every single hour of every single day.. even if power was shut off through the remote! This is kind of misleading since I have always though the power button to at least shut down part of the system to save energy… doesn’t look like it though!  I know it needs to be on to be able to record shows but couldn’t they have designed the device to work on a timer to wake up on recording time or something so that energy use could be much lower?

This kill-a-watt meter is really coming in handy… how about you? What have you found out about your appliances?… :)