When we talk about a laptop’s electricity consumption, it requires fewer watts to charge compared to a desktop system thoroughly.
A particular number of watts cannot be stated as the electricity consumption varies depending on the laptop’s size, and the technology used. Usually, it consumes from 20 to 50 watts to charge, depending on the size.
The make of laptops is designed so that they are more power-efficient and run by charging the battery.
Laptops contain a more powerful battery card that uses an integrated graphic system and needs minimum electricity to charge fully. When you put the notebook on the charge, it consumes 10 to 20 percent more electricity.
Usually, it consumes around 60 watts for a 14 to 15 inches laptop when it’s plugged in.
When the notebook is put to charge, up to 70 percent of the energy is consumed to charge the laptop. While the rest of the 30 percent gets transferred, the charger and battery go wasted as radiation and heat into the environment.
What are the Factors on which Electricity Consumption Depend?
There are multiple factors on which the consumption of electricity depends. It also varies from old to a new version or depending on how much energy it may consume.
Technology has improved with each passing day and most manufacturers design notebooks that require the minimum energy possible to function.
So, it entirely depends on the brand like Asus, Lenovo, hp, and dell, and how latest the model is to ensure the required energy consumption. The notebook will consume even more electricity if it is connected to external hardware.
Look at the details mentioned below to know about the factors involved in energy consumption.
1. Type of Laptop
The laptop is an essential thing that tells how much Energy the particular laptop model may require to charge fully.
If you are using a fundamental model of any brand like hp or dell, it may require around 60 watts per hour to charge it.
On the other hand, gaming laptops and other high-end laptops, need more electricity for charging.
How many watts does a laptop use per hour? On average, some of the models may go up to 100 watts per hour. It is one of the significant reasons why laptops get heated so soon and require a cooling pad to deal with the heating issue.
The power consumption also gets affected when you put the laptop on a charge while using it.
2. Adapter Wattage
When we talk about the laptop power requirement watts when buying a laptop, it comes with a charger.
The charger adapter utilizes a specific amount of watts that it produces. If your laptop has a 60 watts adapter, it may consume less electricity than those with more than 80 watts adapter. The basis of energy consumed depends on the number of watts utilized in an hour.
3. Type of Graphics Card
When we talk mainly about gaming laptops, they contain a high-end graphic card installed in the body. Gaming laptops are usually the high-end kind of laptops. They have a high-quality GPU installed in them along with a high-quality CPU as well.
These laptops have a better display quality and a higher capacity for placing a battery.
These laptops have excellent output in displaying and functioning both at the same time. An excellent-performing graphics card requires more energy than a regular laptop to charge.
When the user is gaming, the GPU will display even better visuals, which means that higher energy is needed. Put these all together, and as a result, you will have an excellent output followed by a more significant amount of power consumption.
The powerful working stations and the gaming rigs utilize more electricity than regular laptops.
4. Type of CPU
The type of CPU also has a significant role in deciding the amount of electricity consumption. Suppose your laptop is accompanied by a low-grade processor or a CPU system.
In that case, it will need minimum energy to charge fully. Low-grade processors work precisely opposite to those of those gaming laptops with a high-end graphics card installed in them.
The reason behind less amount of energy consumption is quite simple. The primary CPU systems that slowly render the computing process requires less energy than those that utilize more electricity to provide a better and quick computing experience.
So it clearly tells that when you move from basic to more basic, it will utilize minimum energy followed by an average computing process.
How Many Watts Does A Laptop Use?
Generally, notebooks utilize less power than high-quality laptops. The utilization of power depends on the specs and the size of the display screen.
The minimum amount of power consumption can be 20 watts, and it may take up to 100 watts when running without a battery.
When you put a laptop on a charge while using it, it utilizes 10 to 20 times more power than in general. The estimated consumption of electricity is up to 60 watts for a 14 to 15-inch LCD laptop.
How much energy Does a MacBook Consume?
When we talk about a typical 13-inch Apple MacBook, consumes up to 61 watts on average. It can be clearly seen on the charger that a 15-inch MacBook utilizes 87 watts per hour.
How much energy Does a Gaming Laptop Consume?
How many watts does a gaming laptop consume? Gaming laptops consume from 300 to 350 watts on average. Gaming laptops are known as next-level laptops as they are best at almost every function they perform.
Of course, they consume a lot of energy and weigh much heavier than any regular laptop because they are equipped with high-end components. Gaming laptops have everything which can have an excellent result, from a long-lasting battery to powerful processors.
Calculate the Watts Utilized by a Laptop
Let’s calculate!
1. Manual Calculation
It can be easily assumed by checking a laptop’s charger about how much energy a laptop consumes.
For an even more accurate answer, you will be required to consider other things as well.
Let’s take an example of an Acer Predator laptop, and this laptop comes with a charger that utilizes 180 watts of electricity in an hour.
Some of the significant components tend to increase the overall utilization like GPU and CPU in it. Most laptops are supported by NVIDIA graphics, Intel processors, or AMD.
You can search for it on their official website about the energy consumption these laptops usually take
A CPU system usually consumes around 45 to 55 watts, while the GPU consumes from 45 to 80 watts. When these components get combined together, they consume up to 10 to 15 times more watts.
These are just assumptions to help you understand. They may vary depending on the type of component installed in a laptop.
When you increase the display screen’s brightness, it will consume more power. The power may increase from 10 to 11 percent more than it is used in general.
Other components have a significant impact on power consumption, such as SSD and RAM, etc.
2. Electric Calculation
For an accurate calculation, you need to use an electricity usage monitor. It is a device that is used over a power socket and can tell the exact amount of watts consumed while charging.
The best part of using electric usage monitors is that it includes every tiny consumption as the consumed energy comes from one socket.
This device can also be used for monitoring other home appliances. It is unnecessary to find all of it out, but if you feel like having an idea, it works in this case. The method to use the device is quite simple.
All you need to do is to stick the device on the socket wall and then plug the laptop charging adapter into it. It will start to read the amount of energy the charger is utilizing from the socket.
Please wait for a few minutes as sometimes it shows the default wattage initially. But within moments, it starts to read accurate watts being consumed.
An electric usage device uses its battery to calculate the amount of electricity used while charging the laptop.
Conclusion
How Many Watts Does A Laptop Use does not depend on one or two things? Instead, it depends on various factors such as the model, screen size, specs installed in the laptop, etc.
Usually, basic laptops, which are not as great as advanced laptops, consume less energy than high-end laptops.
Gaming laptops tend to consume a lot more power than regular laptops. They are equipped with robust components to give an improved user experience.
On the other hand, laptops for regular use and do not offer a rapid computing system tend to consume minimum electricity.
Other factors are counted to calculate watts’ accurate consumption, such as LCD size, software installed, graphic card, etc.
