This way you save on the power consumption of your television | Tech

The Dutch look average three hours and twenty minutes a day of TV, so the device is regularly switched on. In some households it is also used as cozy background noise, or to listen to music via streaming services such as Spotify during home working days. Then the TV can be used all day long.

That costs a lot of electricity and therefore money, but how much exactly? That of course depends a lot on what price you currently pay for your electricity, but the type of TV also plays a major role. If you are looking for an economical television, pay attention to the energy label. All stores must show this.

This label shows a letter from A to G and indicates roughly how economical the TV is. Below that you will find the number of kilowatt hours that the TV consumes per thousand hours of viewing. Even if you are not looking for a new television, you can look up this label to calculate what that device actually costs you.

The energy label can make a lot of difference, depending on your energy contract. Before the crisis, the average price of a kilowatt hour was still around 23 cents. If you now conclude an energy contract, you already have to charge more than 50 or even 60 cents per kWh.

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For example, the popular LG OLED55C1 falls into label G, with 106 kWh per thousand hours. With the label F, the Samsung QLED 4K55 is a lot more economical and consumes only 77 kWh in the same time. If you watch TV for an average of four hours a day, it will cost 35.59 euros per year under the old electricity prices with the LG. With the Samsung you will then lose 25.86 euros. With the current electricity prices, you can therefore easily double those amounts, and the more economical TV will save you almost 20 euros per year in this case.

Incidentally, the following always applies: the more you ask from your television and the harder it has to work, the more power it consumes. For example, a larger screen always consumes more than a smaller one, even if the device has the same energy label. Larger TVs may use more power to earn the same letter code. A higher resolution also results in higher power consumption. After all, there are more pixels that need to be controlled.

In addition, there are also various techniques that increase the power consumption. For example, on the energy label you can see the average consumption if you switch on HDR, a technique that provides more beautiful colors. The previously mentioned examples of LG and Samsung increase in that case from 106 and 77 kWh to 171 and 150 kWh respectively. Watching TV with HDR is therefore almost twice as expensive in some cases.

If you’re not watching TV with full concentration, it may pay off to temporarily disable these types of options. You can also reduce your power consumption by turning down the brightness of your screen. If you have the TV on as a background or if you only use it to listen to music, it’s better to lower the brightness. On some televisions it is even possible to completely darken the screen.

Many TVs also have an eco mode in their settings. What it does exactly depends on the brand, but sensors are often used to automatically adjust the brightness to the amount of light in the room. This is not only good for your power consumption, but also for your eyes.

By the way, your TV also consumes power when you’re not using it. A television is always on standby, ready to turn on when you need it. With newer TVs, however, that power consumption is so low that it’s almost impossible to turn them off completely. Some manufacturers even say that it takes more power to turn a TV off and on again than to leave it on standby.

If you have an older model, it might be worth pulling the plug from now on. If you have other devices that are in standby, such as the TV receiver or decoder, an extension cord with a red button can come in handy. You can switch everything off with one push of a button, so that power is no longer consumed unnoticed.

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