Your meter keeps spinning after the television goes dark, and the cause is not a fault. Nearly every gadget with a clock, a network chip or a remote-control receiver pulls a thin trickle of current all day. Add a set-top box, a console, two televisions, a router, a laser printer and a drawer of chargers and you are often running 40–80 watts continuously — about the load of a ceiling fan that never stops.
Below: how to find the real figure in your own house, and which menus keep hardware half-awake.
Which devices keep drawing power after you switch them off
Standby load is not spread evenly across a home. A handful of device classes account for most of it:
- Set-top boxes and DVRs. Older cable boxes with a built-in recorder are the worst offenders at 15–25 W, because the disk and tuner stay live so scheduled recordings can start.
- Games consoles. An Xbox Series X in Instant On mode holds roughly 10–13 W so it can fetch updates and wake on voice; switching to Energy Saver drops it near 0.5 W. A PS5 left in Rest Mode with USB charging and internet standby enabled sits around 3–5 W.
- Televisions. Modern panels are frugal: 0.3–0.5 W is normal, and EU ecodesign rules cap standby at 0.5 W. The cost comes from “quick start” or “instant on” options that keep apps preloaded, which can push a set past 10 W.
- Laser printers. A printer in sleep mode can hold 5–15 W to keep the fuser warm. Inkjets fall to 1–2 W.
- Chargers with nothing attached. Genuinely small — the EU limit for external power supplies sold since 2020 is 0.1 W at no load.
The pattern is simple: anything with a spinning disk, a live network connection or a promise to wake instantly is the expensive kind of off.
Measure the draw instead of guessing at it
A plug-in energy meter settles the question in an afternoon. The P3 International P4400, sold as the Kill A Watt, costs around 2,500–3,500 taka delivered and reads watts, volts and cumulative kWh. If you would rather leave something in place and read it from your phone, a TP-Link Tapo P110 smart plug runs about 1,600–2,000 taka and logs consumption in its app.
Method: plug one device into the meter, switch it off the way you normally would, and leave it for a full day. Take the kWh total and divide by 24 to get the average draw in kilowatts — 0.29 kWh over a day means roughly 12 W continuous. Multiply the daily figure by 30 for the monthly kWh, then by your tariff. At a residential slab near 9 taka per unit, 12 W costs about 79 taka a month.
Test them in this order — the set-top box, the console, the printer, then anything with a remote that still feels warm an hour after you switched it off.
Change the settings that keep hardware half awake
Most of the waste is a checkbox rather than a purchase.
- Xbox: Settings → General → Power options → Sleep mode & startup, then pick Energy saver. Updates run at power-on instead of overnight.
- PlayStation 5: Settings → System → Power Saving → Features Available in Rest Mode, and disable both “Supply Power to USB Ports” and “Stay Connected to the Internet”.
- Android TV / Google TV: Settings → System → Power & Energy → Energy Saver, and turn off Instant On where the option is offered.
- Windows PC: Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Power Options → Choose what the power buttons do, then untick “Turn on fast startup”. A shutdown that is really a deep sleep still draws 2–5 W.
- Laser printer: open its web interface, go to Settings → Sleep/Auto-off and set auto-off to one hour instead of “never”.
What deserves a timer and what must stay live
A smart strip earns its place when the load is above 5 W and the kit is genuinely unused for hours. Console, television and soundbar on one strip is the classic case: everything dies together at midnight and comes back with one button.
Never put these on a timer: the refrigerator, a router or mesh node you depend on for remote work, a DVR with overnight recordings, a medical device, or a heat-pump thermostat that has to hold its schedule. Inverter air conditioners also draw 3–8 W in standby to keep the receiver and clock alive, and cycling the compressor contactor to save that is a bad trade.
Run the payback numbers before buying hardware
Multiply your measured wattage by 8.76 to get monthly kWh (730 hours divided by 1,000). A 25 W set-top box left on all year burns about 219 kWh, roughly 1,970 taka at 9 taka per unit, and in summer it also heats the room your air conditioner then has to cool. A 2,000-taka smart plug that kills that load outright returns the money inside twelve months.
If your measured total comes to more than 60 W, adjust settings first and shop second — in most homes the menus alone remove a large share of the load for nothing. The US Department of Energy treats 1 W as the purchasing threshold for standby power in its federal low-standby guidance, which is a reasonable target to hold your own hardware to.
For the switching side, see our guide to cutting your bill with smart plugs and timers. If you are retiring old equipment rather than just switching it off, read how to dispose of old electronics and batteries safely instead of parking a 20 W box in a cupboard.