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Leo Laporte A technology journalist, author and broadcast personality. His specialties lie in computers, the Web, video games, digital music and consumer electronics. |
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Amber MacArthur An experienced Web content and usability strategist, Amber is also a tech journalist who specializes in Internet, software, and gadget trends and tips. |
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A look at how LCD and plasma compare for power consumption
The reason for this is the different ways that plasma and LCD bring the picture to the screen. With a plasma screen, each pixel element is an individual light source that is illuminated as needed. LCD, on the other hand, always has a backlight running, and rather than lighting up pixels, an LCD monitor will BLOCK them, so the light doesn’t get through. That means a relatively steady power consumption for LCD screens, while plasma varies wildly depending on what happens to be on the screen at that given moment.
CFH Labs got in two large-screen televisions of roughly the same size, one LCD (40-inch) and one plasma (42-inch), and hooked them up to a pair of Kill A Watt electricity meters. We then tested the power consumption of these monitors under a variety of conditions, including several solid colours (white, black, red, blue and green), TV static, watching a DVD with a lot of white backgrounds (Atanarjuat), and watching a DVD with a lot of black backgrounds (Battlestar Galactica miniseries). We also tested the two screens overnight, tuned to the same station. Both screens used out-of-the-box colour and brightness settings.
As prevailing wisdom suspects, the plasma monitor consumed more energy under all of the different real-world viewing tests, but the Battlestar Galactica test showed the difference narrowing. Under the solid colour testing, the plasma ate up more energy than the LCD screen except when displaying a solid black screen, where the power consumption of the plasma screen plummeted to about a quarter of its usual use. The plasma screen used the most energy showing a screen with TV static on it, because there’s a lot of white, and it’s rapidly moving.
For part two of the test, we reset the plasma screen to “super savings” energy mode, and then adjusted the brightness of the LCD screen to match.
Kill A Watt
www.p3international.com
$30
The Kill A Watt is designed to show you how much power you’re using on any particular outlet, by sitting between the outlet and the item you’re plugging into it. The Kill A Watt measures the voltage, amperage, wattage, Hz and kilowatt hours. We used the Kill A Watt to measure the power draw of our large screen televisions, to see which ones were more efficient, using the watts (current power draw) and kilowatt hours (cumulative power draw over time).
Samsung SP-R4212
www.samsung.com
$1,800
Consumption rating: 280 watts
The SP-R4212 is a 42-inch plasma display, and while it’s HD-ready, it’s only a 480p display (852x480 pixels). That means 1,226,880 individual pixel elements to turn on and off, each of which requires power. Theoretically, that would mean that an all-white screen would consume the most power…but is that the case?
Samsung LN-R408D
www.samsung.com
$3,299
Consumption rating: 285 watts
This 40 inch model has a slightly smaller picture than our 42-inch plasma, but it comes with 720p resolution (1366x768).
Samsung plasma:
standby: 1 watt, 0.06 amps
black screen: 65 watts, 0.58 amps
white screen: 256 watts, 2.23 amps
red screen: 232 watts, 2.02 amps
blue screen: 231 watts, 2.13 amps
green screen: 208 watts, 1.80 amps
static: 311 watts, 2.71 amps
Atanarjuat (2 hr 30 min): 0.69 kilowatt hours
Battlestar Galactica (2 hr): 0.49 kilowatt hours
CNN (overnight): 4.3 kilowatt hours
Samsung plasma (super power saver mode):
standby: 1 watt, 0.06 amps
black screen: 65 watts, 0.58 amps
white screen: 203 watts, 1.76 amps
red screen: 191 watts, 1.7 amps
blue screen: 190 watts, 1.67 amps
green screen: 180 watts, 1.56 amps
static: 251 watts, 2.21 amps
Atanarjuat (3 hr): 0.64 kilowatt hours
Battlestar Galactica (3+ hr): 0.67 kilowatt hours
CNN (overnight): 3.97 kilowatt hours
Samsung LCD
standby: 10 watts, 0.17 amps
black screen: 200 watts, 2.55 amps
white screen: 199, 2.58 amps
red screen: 199 watts, 2.57 amps
blue screen: 198 watts, 2.57 amps
green screen: 198 watts, 2.96 amps
static: 264 watts, 3.23 amps
Atanarjuat (2 hr 30 min): 0.57 kilowatt hours
Battlestar Galactica (2 hr): 0.49 kilowatt hours
CNN (overnight): 3.41 kilowatt hours
Samsung LCD (lower-brightness mode)
standby: 10 watts, 0.17 amps
black screen: 196 watts, 2.50 amps
white screen: 195 watts, 2.52 amps
red screen: 196 watts, 2.51 amps
blue screen: 196 watts, 2.52 amps
green screen: 195 watts, 2.51 amps
static: 235 watts, 3.0 amps
Atanarjuat (3 hr): 0.65 kilowatt hours
Battlestar Galactica (3 hr+): 0.72 kilowatt hours
CNN (overnight): 3.84 kilowatt hours
old Samsung plasma:
Windows Longhorn screen: 192 watts, 1.63 amp
Windows longhorn, mostly whit: 291 watts, 2.49 amps
Windows Longhorn, mostly black: 114 watts, 0.98 amp
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