How Many Watts Does a Laptop Use? 6 Important Factors

If you are worried about the energy consumption of your laptop, then you might find yourself wondering how many watts does a laptop use? A laptop’s power consumption depends on various factors and it is not so easy to give a straightforward answer to this question.

However, we can narrow down our answer by studying the energy consumption of a laptop in detail. Let’s dive in.

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How many watts does a laptop consume?

A typical 15-inch laptop with modern components consumes around 60 watts in an hour. This number can fluctuate between 20 watts and 180 watts depending on the task that the laptop is performing.

Power consumption in laptops is dynamic and it is quite difficult to assign a number and say this is how many watts all laptops use in an hour.

The number of watts a laptop uses depends on several factors and it can vary dramatically between a high end laptop and a budget one.

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Factors Affecting Average Power Consumption

As mentioned before, energy consumption depends on the task that is being performed. Every laptop consumes a different amount of power based on the components that the laptop has.

To see how many watts does a laptop really uses, you have to understand the different factors that affect the average power consumption of the laptop.

Let’s dive in.

Laptop Type

The biggest factor that produces the highest discrepancy in power consumption numbers is the type of laptop being used.

Generally, laptops are divided into thin-and-light notebooks, office laptops, gaming laptops, and workstation laptops among some other types.

If you are using a basic thin-and-light laptop without any frills, then chances are that it is geared towards efficiency. It will maybe consume around 50-60 watts/hour.

However, on the other end of the spectrum, if you are using a hefty gaming laptop like an Acer Predator Laptop with a high-performance CPU, a full desktop-grade GPU, a bright high-resolution screen, then it will definitely consume more power.

A gaming laptop can range between 80-160 watts of power consumption per hour.

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Processor

The processor or CPU is an integral part of answering the question “how many watts does a laptop consume”. Since the CPU handles all the processing tasks of a laptop, it is undoubtedly one of the most power-hungry components.

Modern CPUs are becoming more and more efficient with their power consumption, and Intel has even introduced an “efficiency core” structure to improve this factor.

However, it is still commonplace to see powerful Intel Core i7/i9 processors or AMD’s Ryzen 7 equivalents in laptops that are meant to be performance-focused processors.

These CPUs often have a high turbo clock, which means that they can automatically overclock themselves to increase their clock speeds depending on the power availability.

Therefore, powerful performance grade CPUs are still a big drain on your energy resources, especially if you are operating the laptop on the battery.

Graphics Card

The Graphics Card is a misnomer as laptops generally do not have full-scale graphics cards inside them, but they do often have the Graphics Processing Unit or GPU which is the heart of a graphics card.

GPUs are commonly found in gaming laptops and workstation PCs as they are essential for gaming and quite helpful in productivity tasks such as animation work and video editing.

However, if a laptop does have a powerful GPU such as an RTX 2000 series or RTX 3000 series GPU from Nvidia, then the GPU will undoubtedly be the most power-hungry component in the laptop.

Modern GPUs make use of a technology called GPU Boost that allows them to automatically overclock if there is an available power budget. This can exponentially increase power consumption in a gaming laptop.

Laptops with premium GPUs often come with premium CPUs as well, which spells double trouble for your power consumption.

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Screen

Another huge factor that can impact the power consumption of laptops quite significantly is the screen.

Nowadays, manufacturers are installing bigger, brighter and higher resolution screens in their laptops and 4K touchscreen displays are becoming commonplace.

Furthermore, gaming laptops often include a high-refresh-rate display which can refresh at 120Hz or 144Hz or even 240Hz in some cases.

These screens are a huge burden on the battery life of laptops as they consume a lot of power.

Cooling System

Once a laptop is working at its peak performance, its cooling system is also working hard to cool the internal components.

The cooling system often consists of a system of heat pipes and fans. Although the power consumption of laptop fans isn’t significant, it does add up to the total number thus increasing the number of watts a laptop consumes at peak performance.

Additional cooling accessories such as a cooling pad will also contribute to power consumption.

Adapter Wattage

The adapter wattage is another factor that contributes to the energy consumption of a laptop. The laptop charger that comes with the product has a specific wattage which indicates the number of watts that they produce.

Common laptop’s charger power consumption is 60 watts for a 15.6-inch laptop, and 90 watts for a 17-inch laptop.

A laptop that comes with a 60 watts adapter will consume less power than a laptop that comes with a 90 watts adapter, as the laptop with a 60 watts adapter is more power efficient.

How To Calculate Power Consumption?

So you have understood the factors that contribute to energy consumption, but still do not know exactly how many watts does a laptop use?

Fortunately, you can calculate watts consumed in a unit of time quite easily using the following methods.

Manual Method

In order to manually find power consumption of your laptop uses, you have to add up the individual power consumption numbers of all the different components in a laptop.

This method is not accurate, but it can give you a ballpark figure of the amount of power your laptop uses in a set time.

Starting with the laptop charging adapter, you first have to take the wattage that the adapter consumes in an hour. Typical figures are 60W or 90W but heavy-duty laptops can also have 150-180W adapters.

Now, you have to individually sum up the power consumption numbers of the laptop components such as the CPU, GPU, Screen, etc. The TDP numbers of CPUs and GPUs are fairly arbitrary, but they can be used for this method.

Typical consumption for a CPU is around 40 to 50W per hour while it is 75 to 80W for a normal GPU. For a standard 1080p screen, we can expect about 0.5 to 15W per hour on maximum brightness.

Summing up all the figures will give you your rough power consumption figure using the manual method.

By Electricity Usage Monitor

A far more accurate method to calculate how many watts a laptop uses is by using an electricity usage monitor. This is a device that can accurately give you the number of watts your laptop has been consuming while it is plugged into a socket.

The device is installed into the wall power socket and the laptop charger is connected to the device. The usage monitor will start calculating the power your laptop is drawing.

The result is displayed directly on the screen so you can see how many watts the laptop has been consuming during that time. The power consumed while using the laptop battery will be similar.

You can also use the wattage number and multiply it with the average energy unit cost to get a rough estimate of how expensive the laptop is to run on a daily basis.

How Can I Lower Energy Consumption On My Laptop?

Now that we have established what factors affect the number of watts a laptop uses and how to measure the power consumption, we can take a look at ways to make your laptop consume less power.

It should be in every laptop user’s interest to use less power and to save power especially when the laptop is idle. This can be done by implementing a number of steps to optimize your laptop software for higher efficiency.

Use Battery Saver

Most laptop users think the Battery Saver feature is only to prolong your battery life when you are away from your laptop charger. However, this feature can also be used regularly to lower the number of watts laptops consume regularly.

Many laptops have built-in Battery Saver features that are tailor-made to that particular laptop. If your laptop does not have that feature, then you can use the Windows Power Saver feature to save energy as well.

Gaming laptops consume a lot more power than regular office laptops, so they should be used on Battery Saver mode to consume fewer watts when the peak performance of the laptop is not required.

Turn off External Devices

If you have external hardware like speakers or webcams, external devices like hard drives, or other accessories connected to your laptop, then you might want to turn them off to improve battery life.

Keeping those devices connected at all times will make your laptop consume more power. If you want a higher battery capacity, then it is advisable to not connect any accessory or device to the laptop at all.

Reduce Background Processes

How much power a laptop consumes can also depend on the number of background processes that are running at any given time.

Windows is notorious for running power-hungry system processes in the background which can cause your processor to use more power than normal. You may also have bloatware running in the background which can engage the CPU and RAM resources, thus reducing battery life.

It is advisable to stop all background processes that are unnecessary for you. It is common for applications such as Discord and Spotify to be always running in the background.

Moreover, RGB software and Antivirus applications are the two biggest culprits of poor performance due to heavy background usage. You should stop these processes to lower how much power your laptop uses.

Reduce Screen Brightness

If you are running out of battery power, then you can squeeze a bit more juice out of your battery by reducing the screen brightness.

This is more of a temporary workaround that can help you in a tight spot if you are away from a wall power supply.

In the bigger picture, this step may not have a significant impact on how much power your laptop uses.

Optimize Windows Startup

The energy efficiency of your laptop can also be increased by reducing the number of applications that start up with Windows.

This can be done in the Startup tab of Windows Task Manager. Just disable any applications that you don’t need to start up as soon as Windows boots up.

This will improve your performance as well as battery life.

Use Laptop Cooling Pad

You might be wondering, doesn’t a cooling pad consume power from the laptop? Yes, it does, but it can be a net positive in terms of energy efficiency when you look at the bigger picture.

When the internal components of your laptop get hot, they tend to lose their efficiency. Since the CPU and GPU consume way more energy than the cooling pad itself, cooling them down is the main priority for the laptop.

Therefore, installing an external cooling device will help you improve the efficiency of the internal components by keeping your laptop cool.

Do desktops consume more power than laptops?

Yes, generally desktop computers consume way more power than laptops. This is because the internal components of desktops have higher power budgets since better cooling is available on a desktop.

A typical power supply of a desktop computer can be rated at 300-850W quite easily. Even a heavy gaming laptop wattage does not come close to this number, let alone a basic laptop wattage.

Therefore, it is quite understandable that desktop computers consume way more watts per hour than do laptops.

FAQs:

Why do laptops use less energy than desktops?

Laptops use less energy than desktops because they have a space limitation and are designed with energy efficiency in mind.

Desktops, on the other hand, can use a lot more power since they have the cooling capabilities to handle the heat output from that power.

Therefore, generally, desktops consume way more watts per hour than do laptops.

How much power does a laptop use when plugged in?

A typical 15.6-inch office laptop uses around 60W of power per hour when plugged in. This can be tested directly using an electricity usage monitor.

However, a laptop’s wattage consumption varies dynamically depending on the task being performed. Different types of laptops also consume different amounts of energy depending on their internal components.

How many watts does an Apple MacBook consume?

A typical 13-inch MacBook Pro consumes around 60 watts per hour, while a 15-inch MacBook Pro consumes around 85 watts per hour.

These laptops are becoming more and more efficient due to Apple’s brand new in-house Silicon. The M1 processors in these MacBooks are more efficient than any AMD or Intel processors available.

How many watts does a gaming laptop consume?

Most gaming laptops can consume around 150-200 watts of power every hour.

This high figure can be attributed to the powerful CPUs and GPUs that are present in most modern gaming laptops. The graphics card is the most hungry component in these laptops thus gaming laptop wattage differ from regular laptops significantly.

In order to know the consumption of your gaming laptop, take a look at the laptop adapter and the wattage listed on it.