One of the problems with some of these services is that they can respond negatively to repeated disconnections \/ router reboots (depends how the ISP implements DLM), which could make your line slower and as such it’s best to keep them connected 24\/7. In other words, you’ll probably get away with saving power by switching them off at night, but don’t do it too often.<\/p>\n
But how much does the router itself cost to run and what other factors may influence this? We attempted to find out.<\/p>\n
Electricity Costs<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nThe cost of electricity differs depending upon how much your utility supplier charges for each unit consumed and the router’s own usage. The power consumed by your router will also vary based upon what features you have activated on the device (e.g. firewalls, WiFi<\/a> etc.), the performance of its chipset, how many devices are connected at once and what you’re doing with the connection itself.<\/p>\nIt’s worth pointing out that routers are designed to maintain and manage the connection 24\/7, which means that even in an IDLE state (i.e. no other devices actively using the network) the router will often still be keeping its WiFi<\/a> open for new connections and retaining a live broadband link to your ISP.<\/p>\nAs such the difference in electricity consumption between a router at IDLE and under heavy LOAD is perhaps not as big as you might think, especially with modern broadband services being inherently low power technologies, but experiences do vary.<\/p>\n
Next up we need to understand the nightmare of electricity costs and for that we have to step into the world of Kilowatt Hours<\/strong> (kWh), which is what most electricity suppliers use to explain your usage. A single kWh represents the electricity consumption of 1,000 Watts for a period of 1 hour<\/strong> and a typical household might consume between 2,500 and 5,000 kWh per year.<\/p>\n![\"electricity_usage_kwh\"](\"\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/gallery\/2016-article-illustrations\/electricity_usage_kwh.gif\")
<\/div>\nIn practical terms you might pay around 12 to 20 pence per 1 kWh consumed (daytime) and some setups may also apply a much cheaper night-time rate. But we’ll leave that aside for now as it will cause too much confusion, plus there are big variations between homes and suppliers. For arguments sake we’ll use a roughly middling rate of 15.5p (pence) per 1kWh for our testing.<\/p>\n
As an example, using our 15.5p per 1kWh choice, it would cost 15.5p to run a 1,000 Watt vacuum cleaner constantly for 1 hour (assuming it’s always gobbling 1,000 Watts of course) or 7.75p for 30 minutes. Easy enough. Separately, if your whole house consumed a total of 2500 kWh per year then that would cost you \u00a3387.50 at our chosen average rate.<\/p>\n
On top of this you might have to pay the supplier’s standing charge<\/strong>, which is a small monthly or daily fee (e.g. around 10-19 pence per day) that is applied no matter how much electricity you use or don’t use. We’ve chosen not to include this charge below because it’s not directly connected to the amount of energy consumed by a router.<\/p>\nRouter Features vs Performance<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nLet’s kick things off with a practical example by looking at the bog standard Sky Hub SR101<\/strong> (ADSL2+ router), which Sky Broadband<\/a> originally supplied until it was replaced by the VDSL2<\/a> “fibre broadband<\/em>” (FTTC<\/a>) equipped SR102<\/strong> and most recently the much more advanced Sky Q Hub<\/strong>.<\/p>\nThis is a good place to start because Sky’s old kit is about as basic as you can get, not least since it only has 100Mbps LAN (Ethernet) support for wired networks, no USB ports and basic 802.11n spec WiFi<\/a> via the 2.4GHz band. So the SR101 should be about rock bottom for power usage (i.e. it’s completely rubbish, but at least you won’t notice it on your electricity bill).<\/p>\nWe don’t have the official power specifications for the SR101, but our own independent measurements reported that it consistently gobbled around 4 Watts. Even under load it never quite made it much past 4.5 Watts, except during a brief boot-up spike. In other words the SR101 would cost you around 1.49p to run for 24 hours or only \u00a35.43+ for an entire year<\/strong>. Hardly a problem.<\/p>\nNow let’s conduct a more detailed test..<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At this point we decided to take the slightly more recent SR102<\/strong> (802.11n WiFi at 2.4GHz = 144Mbps) and investigate what happens when five devices, situated one room away, are connected over both WiFi + LAN and tasked with conducting a number of different \/ bandwidth intensive tests at exactly the same time.<\/p>\nWe picked the SR102 because it’s basically the same as the SR101, albeit with added VDSL2<\/a> (FTTC<\/a>) support and an ever so slightly faster chipset. At idle it only uses a tiny amount of extra power (4.5 Watts+) compared with the SR101’s steady 4 Watts.<\/p>\nThe Test Devices and Simultaneous Activities
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\niPad Mini (Apple iOS)<\/strong>
\nRun ISPreview.co.uk’s Broadband Speedtest<\/p>\nSony Z5 Premium (Android Smartphone)<\/strong>
\nRun ISPreview.co.uk’s Broadband Speedtest<\/p>\nDesktop PC<\/strong>
\nDownload Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Microsoft Server + 1GB LAN File Transfer<\/p>\nDell Venue 11 Pro PC Tablet<\/strong>
\nDownload Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft Server + 1GB WLAN File Transfer<\/p>\nSamsung 32″ J6300 HD TV<\/strong>
\nStreaming a Netflix TV Show in 1080p HD<\/p><\/blockquote>\nOur stress test, which was conducted on a 37Mbps FTTC line (a faster line would require a little more power), pushed the broadband and admittedly slow WiFi \/ LAN connection to its limits. The result saw our SR102 router increase its IDLE power consumption from a shade over 4.5 Watts (just one device connected) to 6.5 Watts under LOAD with multiple devices (an increase of around 44%).<\/p>\n
At IDLE the SR102 would thus cost \u00a36.10 per year to run and this rises to \u00a38.83 when the router is placed under almost constant LOAD. In other words there is a cost, but it remains so low as to be largely irrelevant. Now lets see how the latest kit compares from several of the major broadband ISPs.<\/p>\n
SIDE NOTE:<\/span> We should point out that the Power Supply Unit<\/strong> (PSU) for most routers will usually be able to cope with significantly more electricity than the device itself would ever use (plenty of overhead is normal), so don’t put too much stock in the old Volts x Amps = Watts<\/strong> calculation as a reflection of the router’s real-world power consumption. A router will only run so fast [peak broadband + WiFi + LAN] before you can’t do much more or it simply overheats, which may occur before it reaches the max PSU rating.<\/p>\nComparing Power Usage on Major ISP Routers<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nUnfortunately we didn’t have practical access to all of the kit listed below and thus many of our estimates are based on what the ISP \/ manufacturers told us, although for some ISPs (e.g. Sky and Plus net) we were able to contrast the stated claims about power usage with some actual testing in order to examine the reality of the published figures.<\/p>\n
However our own figures for LOAD are based around a “typical family<\/em>” style test (above), while it’s likely that the manufacturers figures may have been able to push their hardware much further than we could. So the IDLE figure is the most stable point for comparison and indeed most routers spend far longer at close to IDLE levels than under LOAD.<\/p>\nOtherwise we generally picked the latest kit from each ISP and it’s worth noting that these modern routers are much more advanced than Sky’s SR101\/102 examples above, which has an impact upon their power consumption. Where possible we also tried to look at some older kit from each ISP.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to point out that we aren\u2019t trying to do a full comparison of all the kit (past and present) available from each of the major ISPs, but rather to give users a better idea of power usage by using a cross section of the latest kit from most of the biggest players.<\/p>\n
NOTE:<\/span> Nearly all of the routers we examined included support for both the ADSL2+ and VDSL2<\/a> (FTTC) broadband standards, except for Virgin Media<\/a>’s cable routers that supported DOCSIS<\/a> 3.0 and the Plusnet<\/a> Hub Zero that only supported ADSL2+.<\/p>\n* TalkTalk<\/a> (Super Router)<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Super Router is a tricky one because TalkTalk<\/a> initially used the HG635 model, before later adopting a cheaper HG633 to fill the role and this sacrificed the HG635’s 4 x Gigabit Ethernet ports in favour of the slower 100Mbps standard.<\/p>\nNever the less it does still support 802.11ac WiFi with a 3×3 antenna array (Peak speeds: 300Mbps (2.4GHz) and 900Mbps (5GHz 11ac)) and 1 x USB3 port. However in our experience the WiFi performance of TalkTalk<\/a>’s Super Router is a bit disappointing in comparison to the others.<\/p>\nPower Consumption (ISP Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMinimum \/ IDLE = 6 Watts<\/p>\n
Maximum \/ LOAD = 10 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The result suggests that the Super Router should cost between \u00a38.14 (IDLE) and \u00a313.58 (LOAD) per year to run, which isn’t anything to really worry about.<\/p>\n
* BT<\/a> (HomeHub 5)<\/strong><\/p>\nIn memory serves, BT<\/a>’s original HomeHub 1 router consumed around 8 Watts, while the HomeHub 2 pushed this to between 7 Watts (IDLE) and 10 Watts (LOAD) and later the HomeHub 3 required about 5 Watts. At this point we’ll skip the HomeHub 4 because we couldn’t find any reliable data on its power usage in our archives.<\/p>\nHowever until very recently BT<\/a>’s HomeHub 5 was the cream of their crop, offering support for 802.11ac WiFi (2.4GHz up to 300Mbps and 5GHz up to 1300Mbps), 4 x Gigabit Ethernet powers and 1 x USB2 port. Suffice to say that it was quite a reasonable piece of kit at its release, but since then BT’s hardware has fallen a little bit behind their rivals.<\/p>\nPower Consumption (Our Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMinimum \/ IDLE = 5.5 Watts<\/p>\n
Maximum \/ LOAD = 7.5 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In terms of electricity usage the HH5 should cost between \u00a37.48 (IDLE) and \u00a310.18 (LOAD) per year to run, which appears to be broadly in keeping with what we’ve seen above, albeit seemingly more efficient than some of the older HomeHub and Sky routers.<\/p>\n
* BT (SmartHub)<\/strong><\/p>\nFew will have been able to escape the recent launch of BT’s new SmartHub router (here<\/a>), which is currently one of the most advanced in terms of bundled ISP kit. The new kit houses 7 antennas to fuel the very latest 802.11ac WiFi implementation (2.4GHz = up to 217Mbps and 5GHz = up to 1700Mbps), 4 x Gigabit Ethernet ports and 1 x USB2 port.<\/p>\nPower Consumption (ISP Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMinimum \/ IDLE = 7 Watts<\/p>\n
Maximum \/ LOAD = 11 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Naturally the SmartHub is a bit more power hungry than some of its rivals, but then you’d expect that from a device that claims to beat most of its competitors (benchmarks<\/a>). In terms of electricity usage the SmartHub should cost between \u00a39.49 (IDLE) and \u00a314.93 (LOAD) per year to run, which makes it the most expensive of the bunch but not by much (TalkTalk’s SuperRouter comes close and that’s considered a slower device).<\/p>\n* Virgin Media<\/a> (SuperHub 3)<\/strong><\/p>\nSadly we didn’t have enough reliable data to examine the previous SuperHub 2AC router, but luckily Virgin Media<\/a>’s fairly recent SuperHub 3 (aka – ARRIS TG2492LG-VM \/ TG2492S \/ VMDG505) is much easier to pin down.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The SuperHub 3 itself supports 802.11ac WiFi (2.4GHz at up to 300Mbps and 5GHz at up to 1300Mbps), 4 x Gigabit Ethernet ports, 2 x Telephone ports (these seem to be disabled) and we should also mention that it uses a 1.2GHz Intel Atom CPU (odd choice for a router).<\/p>\n
This is also the only DOCSIS<\/a> 3.0 cable router we’ve looked at and that, combined with the CPU choice, means power consumption may be a bit higher than others (note: cable broadband connections tend to go a lot faster than VDSL2 and usually need a little more power).<\/p>\nPower Consumption (Manufacturer Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMinimum \/ IDLE = 12 Watts<\/p>\n
Maximum \/ LOAD = 15.3 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The results suggest that the SuperHub 3 will cost between \u00a316.28 (IDLE) and \u00a320.77 (LOAD) per year to run, which would make this the most expensive router of our study. Sadly this is one of the routers that we couldn’t test directly and that’s a frustration because we would have liked to know how power usage is impacted by switching the router into modem-only mode (perhaps one of our readers might be able to answer that?).<\/p>\n
* Sky Broadband<\/a> (Sky Q Hub)<\/strong><\/p>\nAt present Sky’s latest router is normally only supplied to their “fibre broadband<\/em>” subscribers (note: it also supports ADSL<\/a>) and annoyingly it also offers just 2 x Gigabit Ethernet ports, although on the flip side it does support Powerline (AV1.1) networking but this only works with other Sky Q Kit. Elsewhere its 802.11ac WiFi claims to offer a good top speed of up to 1600Mbps via 2.4GHz and 5GHz.<\/p>\nOtherwise the spec sheet is quite sparse, although in benchmarks we’ve seen that the Sky Q Hub often comes close to BT’s new SmartHub router and that’s a top-of-the-line piece of kit, at least in terms of bundled ISP hardware.<\/p>\n
Power Consumption (Our Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMinimum \/ IDLE = 8.5 Watts<\/p>\n
Maximum \/ LOAD = 11 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The official documentation claims that the Sky Q Hub’s “Network Standby<\/em>” mode uses “less than 12W of power<\/em>” within 20 minutes of no use, although our own real-world testing figures, displayed above, found that it only used around 8.5 Watts when IDLE and kept to 11 Watts under LOAD.<\/p>\nThe results suggest that the Sky Q Hub will cost between \u00a311.53 (IDLE) and \u00a314.93 (LOAD) per year to run, which puts it somewhere between the arguably superior BT SmartHub and Virgin Media’s power hungry SuperHub 3. Take note that you can save some power by enabling its Ethernet Energy Efficiency mode, but that didn’t seem to make much of a difference and is only applicable for wired connections.<\/p>\n
* Plusnet<\/a> (Hub Zero)<\/strong><\/p>\nZero by name, zero by nature. This router is best described as a bog standard piece of kit, which is based off the Sagemcom 2704N and similar to Sky’s SR101 in terms of core features (i.e. it only supports ADSL2+ broadband, 802.11n WiFi @ 2.4GHz and 4 x 100Mbps Ethernet ports).<\/p>\n
Plusnet<\/a> didn’t initially provide any official IDLE and LOAD figures for the Zero, but they did state that it will use an “average<\/em>” of around 3.4-3.8 Watts. The technical manual for the original unbranded router separately suggests that it’s unlikely to gobble more than 7 Watts at absolute maximum. Since then Plusnet has provided us with the following figures.<\/p>\nPower Consumption (ISP Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMinimum \/ IDLE = 4 Watts<\/p>\n
Maximum \/ LOAD = 7 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Luckily we did know somebody on Plusnet and were able to identify that the routers IDLE power consumption is just a shade above 3 Watts, but sadly we were unable to test it under multi-device LOAD. Never the less the results appear to be roughly in keeping with the SR101 that was tested earlier and so a LOAD of around 5 Watts seems more plausible than Plusnet’s 7 Watts, but we assume the manufacture was able to push it further than we could.<\/p>\n
In other words, the Hub Zero should cost you between around \u00a34.09 (3 Watts IDLE) and \u00a39.49 (7 Watts LOAD) per year to run, which given our measured IDLE consumption would make it one of the cheapest router’s to run.<\/p>\n
* Plusnet (Hub One)<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Hub One is essentially a re-branded and slightly cut-down version of BT’s HomeHub 5A router and as such it’s best to assume that the power consumption figures are likely to be almost identical to BT’s kit, as examined earlier. However Plusnet did provide is with<\/p>\n
Power Consumption (ISP Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMinimum \/ IDLE = 7.16 Watts<\/p>\n
Maximum \/ LOAD = 9.69 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We note that Plusnet’s figures are higher than what we recorded for the HomeHub 5, but then we saw the same with their Hub Zero data. This could of course be down to all sorts of things, such as slight differences in testing or the sensitivity of our basic testing equipment. On top of that Plusnet’s doesn’t use identical firmware.<\/p>\n
Using Plusnet’s figures we’d estimate that the Hub One should cost you between around \u00a39.71 (IDLE) and \u00a313.14 (LOAD) per year to run.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/span><\/h3>\nNone of the above devices are likely to burn a hole in your pocket (electricity bill), at least not to an extent that is any greater than occasionally charging your Smartphone or leaving a single energy-saving light switched-on 24\/7. A lot of modern LED light bulbs only use around 4-8 Watts, which is similar to many of the routers we examined.<\/p>\n
Generally almost all of the routers being bundled by major ISPs are likely to cost no more than around \u00a315 per year to run and that’s assuming you a) leave them switched-on 24\/7 as intended and, b) make simultaneous use of multiple connected devices (computers, smartphones etc.). In reality the impact upon your pocket will probably be less, partly depending upon your energy tariff.<\/p>\n
The one exception was Virgin Media’s SuperHub 3 which, if the official figures are to be believed, appears to be quite a power hungry beast and may set you back an extra +\u00a35 per year over the others. Now that’s hardly worth worrying about, but it’s still a consideration for the unemployed and those on much lower incomes.<\/p>\n
Furthermore Internet providers will often bundle cheaper and lower spec hardware with their broadband packages. By comparison you could buy a superior third-party router, although in our experience most of these will still keep their usage below the level of Virgin’s SuperHub 3 under LOAD.<\/p>\n
Going forwards the future generation of G.fast<\/a> and DOCSIS<\/a> 3.1 equipped wireless broadband routers, which are also likely to support new standards like 802.11ax WiFi and 801.22ad WiGig, will be more demanding and so we may revisit the issue of power consumption again in a few years\u2019 time.<\/p>\nOtherwise we’d take the above figures (both ours and those from the ISPs \/ manufacturers’) with a pinch of salt as power consumption is difficult to measure and there’s plenty of margin for error with all of the potential variations involved, but these ball park figures should at least give you a rough indication of the cost.<\/p>\n
In an ideal world the router manufactures’ would all be making their power consumption levels clear, instead of merely posting the PSU’s maximum rating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the unseen costs of running a modern Home Broadband connection stems from its impact on your electricity bill, not least the price of keeping your Internet router or modem device switched-on around the clock. We take a closer look at the costs of running such hardware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[111,428,422,474,405,84,66,74,475],"class_list":["post-11900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial_article","tag-802-11ac","tag-802-11ad","tag-802-11ax","tag-bt","tag-ee","tag-plusnet","tag-sky-broadband","tag-talktalk","tag-virgin-media"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"yoast_head":"\n
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It’s worth pointing out that routers are designed to maintain and manage the connection 24\/7, which means that even in an IDLE state (i.e. no other devices actively using the network) the router will often still be keeping its WiFi<\/a> open for new connections and retaining a live broadband link to your ISP.<\/p>\n As such the difference in electricity consumption between a router at IDLE and under heavy LOAD is perhaps not as big as you might think, especially with modern broadband services being inherently low power technologies, but experiences do vary.<\/p>\n Next up we need to understand the nightmare of electricity costs and for that we have to step into the world of Kilowatt Hours<\/strong> (kWh), which is what most electricity suppliers use to explain your usage. A single kWh represents the electricity consumption of 1,000 Watts for a period of 1 hour<\/strong> and a typical household might consume between 2,500 and 5,000 kWh per year.<\/p>\n In practical terms you might pay around 12 to 20 pence per 1 kWh consumed (daytime) and some setups may also apply a much cheaper night-time rate. But we’ll leave that aside for now as it will cause too much confusion, plus there are big variations between homes and suppliers. For arguments sake we’ll use a roughly middling rate of 15.5p (pence) per 1kWh for our testing.<\/p>\n As an example, using our 15.5p per 1kWh choice, it would cost 15.5p to run a 1,000 Watt vacuum cleaner constantly for 1 hour (assuming it’s always gobbling 1,000 Watts of course) or 7.75p for 30 minutes. Easy enough. Separately, if your whole house consumed a total of 2500 kWh per year then that would cost you \u00a3387.50 at our chosen average rate.<\/p>\n On top of this you might have to pay the supplier’s standing charge<\/strong>, which is a small monthly or daily fee (e.g. around 10-19 pence per day) that is applied no matter how much electricity you use or don’t use. We’ve chosen not to include this charge below because it’s not directly connected to the amount of energy consumed by a router.<\/p>\n Let’s kick things off with a practical example by looking at the bog standard Sky Hub SR101<\/strong> (ADSL2+ router), which Sky Broadband<\/a> originally supplied until it was replaced by the VDSL2<\/a> “fibre broadband<\/em>” (FTTC<\/a>) equipped SR102<\/strong> and most recently the much more advanced Sky Q Hub<\/strong>.<\/p>\n This is a good place to start because Sky’s old kit is about as basic as you can get, not least since it only has 100Mbps LAN (Ethernet) support for wired networks, no USB ports and basic 802.11n spec WiFi<\/a> via the 2.4GHz band. So the SR101 should be about rock bottom for power usage (i.e. it’s completely rubbish, but at least you won’t notice it on your electricity bill).<\/p>\n We don’t have the official power specifications for the SR101, but our own independent measurements reported that it consistently gobbled around 4 Watts. Even under load it never quite made it much past 4.5 Watts, except during a brief boot-up spike. In other words the SR101 would cost you around 1.49p to run for 24 hours or only \u00a35.43+ for an entire year<\/strong>. Hardly a problem.<\/p>\n Now let’s conduct a more detailed test..<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At this point we decided to take the slightly more recent SR102<\/strong> (802.11n WiFi at 2.4GHz = 144Mbps) and investigate what happens when five devices, situated one room away, are connected over both WiFi + LAN and tasked with conducting a number of different \/ bandwidth intensive tests at exactly the same time.<\/p>\n We picked the SR102 because it’s basically the same as the SR101, albeit with added VDSL2<\/a> (FTTC<\/a>) support and an ever so slightly faster chipset. At idle it only uses a tiny amount of extra power (4.5 Watts+) compared with the SR101’s steady 4 Watts.<\/p>\n The Test Devices and Simultaneous Activities iPad Mini (Apple iOS)<\/strong> Sony Z5 Premium (Android Smartphone)<\/strong> Desktop PC<\/strong> Dell Venue 11 Pro PC Tablet<\/strong> Samsung 32″ J6300 HD TV<\/strong> Our stress test, which was conducted on a 37Mbps FTTC line (a faster line would require a little more power), pushed the broadband and admittedly slow WiFi \/ LAN connection to its limits. The result saw our SR102 router increase its IDLE power consumption from a shade over 4.5 Watts (just one device connected) to 6.5 Watts under LOAD with multiple devices (an increase of around 44%).<\/p>\n At IDLE the SR102 would thus cost \u00a36.10 per year to run and this rises to \u00a38.83 when the router is placed under almost constant LOAD. In other words there is a cost, but it remains so low as to be largely irrelevant. Now lets see how the latest kit compares from several of the major broadband ISPs.<\/p>\n SIDE NOTE:<\/span> We should point out that the Power Supply Unit<\/strong> (PSU) for most routers will usually be able to cope with significantly more electricity than the device itself would ever use (plenty of overhead is normal), so don’t put too much stock in the old Volts x Amps = Watts<\/strong> calculation as a reflection of the router’s real-world power consumption. A router will only run so fast [peak broadband + WiFi + LAN] before you can’t do much more or it simply overheats, which may occur before it reaches the max PSU rating.<\/p>\n Unfortunately we didn’t have practical access to all of the kit listed below and thus many of our estimates are based on what the ISP \/ manufacturers told us, although for some ISPs (e.g. Sky and Plus net) we were able to contrast the stated claims about power usage with some actual testing in order to examine the reality of the published figures.<\/p>\n However our own figures for LOAD are based around a “typical family<\/em>” style test (above), while it’s likely that the manufacturers figures may have been able to push their hardware much further than we could. So the IDLE figure is the most stable point for comparison and indeed most routers spend far longer at close to IDLE levels than under LOAD.<\/p>\n Otherwise we generally picked the latest kit from each ISP and it’s worth noting that these modern routers are much more advanced than Sky’s SR101\/102 examples above, which has an impact upon their power consumption. Where possible we also tried to look at some older kit from each ISP.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to point out that we aren\u2019t trying to do a full comparison of all the kit (past and present) available from each of the major ISPs, but rather to give users a better idea of power usage by using a cross section of the latest kit from most of the biggest players.<\/p>\n NOTE:<\/span> Nearly all of the routers we examined included support for both the ADSL2+ and VDSL2<\/a> (FTTC) broadband standards, except for Virgin Media<\/a>’s cable routers that supported DOCSIS<\/a> 3.0 and the Plusnet<\/a> Hub Zero that only supported ADSL2+.<\/p>\n * TalkTalk<\/a> (Super Router)<\/strong><\/p>\n The Super Router is a tricky one because TalkTalk<\/a> initially used the HG635 model, before later adopting a cheaper HG633 to fill the role and this sacrificed the HG635’s 4 x Gigabit Ethernet ports in favour of the slower 100Mbps standard.<\/p>\n Never the less it does still support 802.11ac WiFi with a 3×3 antenna array (Peak speeds: 300Mbps (2.4GHz) and 900Mbps (5GHz 11ac)) and 1 x USB3 port. However in our experience the WiFi performance of TalkTalk<\/a>’s Super Router is a bit disappointing in comparison to the others.<\/p>\n Power Consumption (ISP Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Minimum \/ IDLE = 6 Watts<\/p>\n Maximum \/ LOAD = 10 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The result suggests that the Super Router should cost between \u00a38.14 (IDLE) and \u00a313.58 (LOAD) per year to run, which isn’t anything to really worry about.<\/p>\n * BT<\/a> (HomeHub 5)<\/strong><\/p>\n In memory serves, BT<\/a>’s original HomeHub 1 router consumed around 8 Watts, while the HomeHub 2 pushed this to between 7 Watts (IDLE) and 10 Watts (LOAD) and later the HomeHub 3 required about 5 Watts. At this point we’ll skip the HomeHub 4 because we couldn’t find any reliable data on its power usage in our archives.<\/p>\n However until very recently BT<\/a>’s HomeHub 5 was the cream of their crop, offering support for 802.11ac WiFi (2.4GHz up to 300Mbps and 5GHz up to 1300Mbps), 4 x Gigabit Ethernet powers and 1 x USB2 port. Suffice to say that it was quite a reasonable piece of kit at its release, but since then BT’s hardware has fallen a little bit behind their rivals.<\/p>\n Power Consumption (Our Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Minimum \/ IDLE = 5.5 Watts<\/p>\n Maximum \/ LOAD = 7.5 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In terms of electricity usage the HH5 should cost between \u00a37.48 (IDLE) and \u00a310.18 (LOAD) per year to run, which appears to be broadly in keeping with what we’ve seen above, albeit seemingly more efficient than some of the older HomeHub and Sky routers.<\/p>\n * BT (SmartHub)<\/strong><\/p>\n Few will have been able to escape the recent launch of BT’s new SmartHub router (here<\/a>), which is currently one of the most advanced in terms of bundled ISP kit. The new kit houses 7 antennas to fuel the very latest 802.11ac WiFi implementation (2.4GHz = up to 217Mbps and 5GHz = up to 1700Mbps), 4 x Gigabit Ethernet ports and 1 x USB2 port.<\/p>\n Power Consumption (ISP Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Minimum \/ IDLE = 7 Watts<\/p>\n Maximum \/ LOAD = 11 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Naturally the SmartHub is a bit more power hungry than some of its rivals, but then you’d expect that from a device that claims to beat most of its competitors (benchmarks<\/a>). In terms of electricity usage the SmartHub should cost between \u00a39.49 (IDLE) and \u00a314.93 (LOAD) per year to run, which makes it the most expensive of the bunch but not by much (TalkTalk’s SuperRouter comes close and that’s considered a slower device).<\/p>\n * Virgin Media<\/a> (SuperHub 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n Sadly we didn’t have enough reliable data to examine the previous SuperHub 2AC router, but luckily Virgin Media<\/a>’s fairly recent SuperHub 3 (aka – ARRIS TG2492LG-VM \/ TG2492S \/ VMDG505) is much easier to pin down.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The SuperHub 3 itself supports 802.11ac WiFi (2.4GHz at up to 300Mbps and 5GHz at up to 1300Mbps), 4 x Gigabit Ethernet ports, 2 x Telephone ports (these seem to be disabled) and we should also mention that it uses a 1.2GHz Intel Atom CPU (odd choice for a router).<\/p>\n This is also the only DOCSIS<\/a> 3.0 cable router we’ve looked at and that, combined with the CPU choice, means power consumption may be a bit higher than others (note: cable broadband connections tend to go a lot faster than VDSL2 and usually need a little more power).<\/p>\n Power Consumption (Manufacturer Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Minimum \/ IDLE = 12 Watts<\/p>\n Maximum \/ LOAD = 15.3 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The results suggest that the SuperHub 3 will cost between \u00a316.28 (IDLE) and \u00a320.77 (LOAD) per year to run, which would make this the most expensive router of our study. Sadly this is one of the routers that we couldn’t test directly and that’s a frustration because we would have liked to know how power usage is impacted by switching the router into modem-only mode (perhaps one of our readers might be able to answer that?).<\/p>\n * Sky Broadband<\/a> (Sky Q Hub)<\/strong><\/p>\n At present Sky’s latest router is normally only supplied to their “fibre broadband<\/em>” subscribers (note: it also supports ADSL<\/a>) and annoyingly it also offers just 2 x Gigabit Ethernet ports, although on the flip side it does support Powerline (AV1.1) networking but this only works with other Sky Q Kit. Elsewhere its 802.11ac WiFi claims to offer a good top speed of up to 1600Mbps via 2.4GHz and 5GHz.<\/p>\n Otherwise the spec sheet is quite sparse, although in benchmarks we’ve seen that the Sky Q Hub often comes close to BT’s new SmartHub router and that’s a top-of-the-line piece of kit, at least in terms of bundled ISP hardware.<\/p>\n Power Consumption (Our Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Minimum \/ IDLE = 8.5 Watts<\/p>\n Maximum \/ LOAD = 11 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The official documentation claims that the Sky Q Hub’s “Network Standby<\/em>” mode uses “less than 12W of power<\/em>” within 20 minutes of no use, although our own real-world testing figures, displayed above, found that it only used around 8.5 Watts when IDLE and kept to 11 Watts under LOAD.<\/p>\n The results suggest that the Sky Q Hub will cost between \u00a311.53 (IDLE) and \u00a314.93 (LOAD) per year to run, which puts it somewhere between the arguably superior BT SmartHub and Virgin Media’s power hungry SuperHub 3. Take note that you can save some power by enabling its Ethernet Energy Efficiency mode, but that didn’t seem to make much of a difference and is only applicable for wired connections.<\/p>\n * Plusnet<\/a> (Hub Zero)<\/strong><\/p>\n Zero by name, zero by nature. This router is best described as a bog standard piece of kit, which is based off the Sagemcom 2704N and similar to Sky’s SR101 in terms of core features (i.e. it only supports ADSL2+ broadband, 802.11n WiFi @ 2.4GHz and 4 x 100Mbps Ethernet ports).<\/p>\n Plusnet<\/a> didn’t initially provide any official IDLE and LOAD figures for the Zero, but they did state that it will use an “average<\/em>” of around 3.4-3.8 Watts. The technical manual for the original unbranded router separately suggests that it’s unlikely to gobble more than 7 Watts at absolute maximum. Since then Plusnet has provided us with the following figures.<\/p>\n Power Consumption (ISP Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Minimum \/ IDLE = 4 Watts<\/p>\n Maximum \/ LOAD = 7 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Luckily we did know somebody on Plusnet and were able to identify that the routers IDLE power consumption is just a shade above 3 Watts, but sadly we were unable to test it under multi-device LOAD. Never the less the results appear to be roughly in keeping with the SR101 that was tested earlier and so a LOAD of around 5 Watts seems more plausible than Plusnet’s 7 Watts, but we assume the manufacture was able to push it further than we could.<\/p>\n In other words, the Hub Zero should cost you between around \u00a34.09 (3 Watts IDLE) and \u00a39.49 (7 Watts LOAD) per year to run, which given our measured IDLE consumption would make it one of the cheapest router’s to run.<\/p>\n * Plusnet (Hub One)<\/strong><\/p>\n The Hub One is essentially a re-branded and slightly cut-down version of BT’s HomeHub 5A router and as such it’s best to assume that the power consumption figures are likely to be almost identical to BT’s kit, as examined earlier. However Plusnet did provide is with<\/p>\n Power Consumption (ISP Figures)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Minimum \/ IDLE = 7.16 Watts<\/p>\n Maximum \/ LOAD = 9.69 Watts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n We note that Plusnet’s figures are higher than what we recorded for the HomeHub 5, but then we saw the same with their Hub Zero data. This could of course be down to all sorts of things, such as slight differences in testing or the sensitivity of our basic testing equipment. On top of that Plusnet’s doesn’t use identical firmware.<\/p>\n Using Plusnet’s figures we’d estimate that the Hub One should cost you between around \u00a39.71 (IDLE) and \u00a313.14 (LOAD) per year to run.<\/p>\n None of the above devices are likely to burn a hole in your pocket (electricity bill), at least not to an extent that is any greater than occasionally charging your Smartphone or leaving a single energy-saving light switched-on 24\/7. A lot of modern LED light bulbs only use around 4-8 Watts, which is similar to many of the routers we examined.<\/p>\n Generally almost all of the routers being bundled by major ISPs are likely to cost no more than around \u00a315 per year to run and that’s assuming you a) leave them switched-on 24\/7 as intended and, b) make simultaneous use of multiple connected devices (computers, smartphones etc.). In reality the impact upon your pocket will probably be less, partly depending upon your energy tariff.<\/p>\n The one exception was Virgin Media’s SuperHub 3 which, if the official figures are to be believed, appears to be quite a power hungry beast and may set you back an extra +\u00a35 per year over the others. Now that’s hardly worth worrying about, but it’s still a consideration for the unemployed and those on much lower incomes.<\/p>\n Furthermore Internet providers will often bundle cheaper and lower spec hardware with their broadband packages. By comparison you could buy a superior third-party router, although in our experience most of these will still keep their usage below the level of Virgin’s SuperHub 3 under LOAD.<\/p>\n Going forwards the future generation of G.fast<\/a> and DOCSIS<\/a> 3.1 equipped wireless broadband routers, which are also likely to support new standards like 802.11ax WiFi and 801.22ad WiGig, will be more demanding and so we may revisit the issue of power consumption again in a few years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n Otherwise we’d take the above figures (both ours and those from the ISPs \/ manufacturers’) with a pinch of salt as power consumption is difficult to measure and there’s plenty of margin for error with all of the potential variations involved, but these ball park figures should at least give you a rough indication of the cost.<\/p>\n In an ideal world the router manufactures’ would all be making their power consumption levels clear, instead of merely posting the PSU’s maximum rating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the unseen costs of running a modern Home Broadband connection stems from its impact on your electricity bill, not least the price of keeping your Internet router or modem device switched-on around the clock. We take a closer look at the costs of running such hardware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[111,428,422,474,405,84,66,74,475],"class_list":["post-11900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial_article","tag-802-11ac","tag-802-11ad","tag-802-11ax","tag-bt","tag-ee","tag-plusnet","tag-sky-broadband","tag-talktalk","tag-virgin-media"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"yoast_head":"\n<\/div>\nRouter Features vs Performance<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\nRun ISPreview.co.uk’s Broadband Speedtest<\/p>\n
\nRun ISPreview.co.uk’s Broadband Speedtest<\/p>\n
\nDownload Windows 7 SP1 ISO from Microsoft Server + 1GB LAN File Transfer<\/p>\n
\nDownload Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft Server + 1GB WLAN File Transfer<\/p>\n
\nStreaming a Netflix TV Show in 1080p HD<\/p><\/blockquote>\nComparing Power Usage on Major ISP Routers<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/span><\/h3>\n