Nintendo Wii power consumption
Greenpeace have released their latest edition of their Guide to Greener Electronics rating Nintendo at the very bottom of the list of 18 electronics companies. It turns out that they’re bottom by default because Nintendo didn’t supply any data. So until Nintendo do supply some data, it’s not possible to tell how green (or not) they are.
Having been involved in trialling the Current Cost monitor recently, I’m interested in not only the company’s green credentials (which the Guide addresses) but the actual Wii’s green credentials, specifically its power consumption (which the Guide doesn’t seem to address). I think this kind of information would be useful to consumers - even if it doesn’t influence whether or not to buy the Wii, information about standby consumption etc would help consumers know whether they’re happy to leave the Wii plugged in 24 hours a day..
I’m interested to know because (like 6 million other people in Europe) I have a Nintendo Wii. So the other night I had a look at the Wii system settings. And found the WiiConnect24 option, which I hadn’t come across before.
In there, you can set your Wii to be:
- Always connected to the internet (via the wireless connection that you’ve set up previously) regardless of whether you’re using the Wii or not (when in Standby, the orange light shows)
- Always connected to the internet while you’re using the Wii but not when the Wii switches to Standby (when in Standby, the red light shows)
- Not connected to the internet at all, even when you’re using the Wii
By default, after you have set up the wireless connection and enabled WiiConnect24 (which is required to be able to visit the online shop etc and which I must have enabled at some stage), the Wii is set to the first option–connected to the internet always, even when the Wii switches to Standby when you’re not actually using it. A benefit of being always online is that the little blue light on the front flashes to alert you that you have received a message (from a Wii friend or from Nintendo) or that there is an update available for you to download. Personally, this is of no interest to me.
So, anyway, AndySC took his Maplin power meter to his Wii and found that when being used (green light), the Wii draws about 15 Watts, which isn’t too bad really - considering that a laptop can take anything between 20 and 50 Watts, I think. And you’re actually making use of that 15 Watts.
In Standby without an internet connection (red light), the Wii draws less than 1 Watt. Again, not bad. You could unplug it if you wanted to save that Watt but 1 Watt on Standby is pretty good (this is based on a meter for which 1 Watt is the minimum reading, I think).
The bit that seems silly is if you leave your Wii in Standby with the WiiConnect24 internet connection enabled to be always on, the Wii is drawing about 9 Watts of power (over half of what it draws when you’re actively playing on it). Okay, I can see that for some people being alerted with the flashing blue light when you have a message is useful. And maybe it’s useful to be alerted that there’s a new update available so that you can download it when you’re not actually wanting to play on your Wii. What I don’t agree with is having the always-on option as the default setting.
From a usability perspective, having everything enabled by default is good in that the user isn’t prevented from doing any of the things that they might want to do (like receive message or update alerts). But if that wasn’t enabled, would many people actually miss it? It’s not like they wouldn’t still receive messages and alerts - they’d just find out about them the next time they switch on the Wii to play - and, presumably that’s fairly regularly if they’re into using the messaging and updates regularly.
Okay, so 9 Watts doesn’t seem a huge amount of electricity, but even if I use my Wii for 8 hours a day, every day (which is a long long way from the reality), that’s still 16 hours a day that the Wii is sitting there doing nothing at 9 Watts. And it’s that ’sitting there doing nothing’ that really adds up against the environment and my electricity bill.
I discovered a couple of other features that require WiiConnect24 to be always on are the News and Weather channels but I think this requirement might be a bug - afterall, why should the Wii need to check the news and weather while you’re not using the Wii? When you open the News or Weather channel, I’m sure it checks for the latest information anyway. If anyone from Nintendo reads this, can you check this out?
So, the upshot is that while WiiConnect24 might be useful to some people, it’d be a bit more environmentally friendly to set it so that the internet connection is disabled when the Wii is in Standby. Let that red light glow!
I agree with Greenpeace that it’s important to know how environmentally friendly the company itself (Wii consumption aside) is so I’ll be interested to know what they conclude when Nintendo actually do provide them with data. Will Nintendo be able to overtake the dawdling Microsoft and Phillips?
Posted by Laura on 04-07-2008 at 01:07 pm
Tagged with: gadgets • green
7 Comments »
It’s interesting to compare the Wii with the other consoles on the market.
There are some neat graphs in this article :
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.htm
- showing the usage when you’re playing a game
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-4.htm
- showing the usage in idle and standby modes
The Wii does very well in both, but then it is a much lower spec system, so this is perhaps not a fair comparison.
It’s worth noting that this is a fairly old article now. I don’t know what impact some of the updates (and new channels!) will have had on the power usage.
That’s really interesting, although I knew the wireless was always on I didn’t realise you could disable that in standby. I’m not entirely sure whether I want to turn it off as I might have missed handy information like the free Web browser download a while ago (now £5 or something) as I don’t turn my Wii on very often at all. Having said that, 9W over some period of time might add up to £5
I think it’ll go off tonight…
One point about the news and weather channels is that I think they might display current news/weather on the home page so that’s why they might need to always use the wifi. Not sure though, never really used/looked at them.
Good work Laura!
BTW the “Maplin meter” referred to is this one:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=38343
They were £12 for ages, but they must have anticipated the surge of demand they’re going to see now Laura’s blogged about them, as they’re now £28
Mine wasn’t set to always connect to the internet when I received it. I chose to turn that feature on.
On the subject of what you get from WiiConnect24, yes you’re right the News and Weather channels get updates as well as the notification of messages/updates etc. In addition if there are new items in the Wii shop you get messages about that, which personally I like because I sometimes hear about games via the web and forget to go looking for them on my Wii.
Yes, when you start news and/or weather it _does_ indeed go and get an update, however one of the selling points of the Wii is that it is pretty quick to boot up and it’s fast to get into an app. That selling point loses some advantage if you force the thing to have to update whenever you open the news/weather apps.
It’s a “nice” feature to be able to say “what’s the weather like this week?” and spark the wii up, and get to the weather very quickly. If you couldn’t do that, or you had to wait for it to update then you might be more inclined to wake a PC up to get the weather report.
If all you want from your wii is “turn it on and play the game that is in it” then no, you absolutely don’t need the online service to be on all the time. If however you like the richer experience of having data readily available when you turn the thing on, and being in contact with people via the Wii, then it’s quite a neat service.
As an aside, I note that you have two currentcosts in your house, and I suspect they’re both on (the one downstairs was certainly on last weekend when I was over
). I consider the current cost device and the wiiconnect24 being comparable. Both provide up to date information without delay _if_ you leave them on. Both have a cost incurred in choosing to do that. Putting aside the perceived benefits of either device (my daughter would say the wii is more beneficial than the currentcost for example), and the difference in consumption, the fact is it’s one of those choices you make. You choose to have up to date electricity usage information so you can easily berate Tony when he switches on a kettle. 
Whereas I choose to have my wiiconnect24 always on so that I know when I can download and play crap 8-bit computer games on my telly 
I think you’ll find that the current cost meters each take about the same as a Wii in non-WiiConnect24 standby mode (ie ~1 Watt each).
And the whole point of the Current Cost thing is not to berate people about using electricity (like putting the kettle on) but about wasting electricity (like leaving lights on in rooms that aren’t being used).
And similarly my point about the WiiConnect24 is not that there’s any problem with you *choosing* to have it on 24hrs a day so that you can download and play crap 8-bit computer games on your telly - that’s your choice, as you say - but that if that’s the setting by default (as you say, you have to have enabled it in the first place but by enabling it it defaults to 24hrs instead of only when you switch the Wii on), it’s not your choice about how much electricity you use. I’ve no problem with what the users choose to use; it’s what the manufacturers make the default.
So there, Mr Pope!
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My main reason for leaving the Wii on standby with wiiconnect enabled is stranger than most; it keeps the USB ports powered. Connected to them I have a battery recharger for the wiimotes, a selection of USB chargers for my mobile phone, ipod, Nintendo DS and NiMH battery recharger. It acts as the PSU for a range of devices. Right now I have a “powermonkey” (portable battery pack) plugged into it that in turn allows me to recharge devices when away from home and also a charger recharging 4 AA batteries.