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I’ve had my AppleTV since they launched it and true to other modern high tech gadgets, there’s no real off switch. If you want to switch it off you need to do so at the wall outlet. Unlike a DVD player it needs to boot up and then sync content so that’s not very practical. The solution? Hold down the Play/Pause button and just like the iPod the AppleTV shuts off and you can quickly wake it up again by pressing the play button again. So where’s the problem? It’s basically sleep mode like a computer right? Erm… NO! It no longer gives out a signal to your tv and the little white LED on the front shuts off, BUT IT’S STILL RUNNING AT FULL POWER. It seems to be a fake “off” or “standby” mode. How do I know this? I have one of these:

This £20 gadget displays the current wattage being used by the appliance of your choice. Apart from the live wattage display it can also count how many electricity units (that’s kwh) the item has consumed since you plugged it in and even display the running cost if you take the time to key in how much a unit costs (just check your electricity bill). So what of the AppleTV? While playing a streamed movie the AppleTV consumes around 26 Watts. In “standby/sleep” mode it still uses 24 Watts. My own tests have shown that in standby mode my DVD player uses 0.00 Watts (ie so little it doesn’t register) and my old VHS Video Recorder uses 9.6 Watts. So the AppleTV uses a lot more which is surely a step backwards? While 24 Watts isn’t in itself a big number (it would typically add about £20 per year to your electricity bill) it’s still more than my 32″ LCD TV uses in standby mode (19.2 Watts) and they get a bad press for that with environmental campaigners begging us to switch them off at the outlet instead. I’m pretty sure Apple can do better than this…

Filed under: Gadgets
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