Your house is full of energy vampires. This $12 yardstick helped me find the big ones

Most of us assume that turning something off means it stops using energy. This is not the case. Home appliances and electronics continue to use electricity in standby mode — and according to the U.S. Department of Energy, this sneaky energy usage costs the average household about $100 a year.

Your house houses energy vampires in almost every room – and they quietly empty your wallet. To find the worst in me, I ordered a $12 Power Meter from Amazon and tested the passive power consumption of almost every device and appliance I could – 18 in total.

The goal? Find out which of them wastes the most energy when turned off and whether it’s worth unplugging the worst offenders when not in use. The winner (worst offender) shocked me; unpretentious television technology that almost every home has.

How I tested to find energy vampires

The project had a few limitations, the most notable being that I couldn’t test my washer, dryer, or oven. These devices use large 240 volt outlets and the power meter I purchased only works with standard NEMA 5-15R outlets. I also haven’t been able to properly test my refrigerator because there is no way to turn it off when plugged in.

That said, I tested virtually every other device in my house that could be turned off or put into standby or standby mode. I went through my house testing every fixture and appliance, including the outdoor LED light strips I recently installed.

Common Household Energy Vampires

I decided to catalog my results piece by piece. All told, I ended up testing the technology in my home office, living room, kitchen, bedroom, and strip lights outside. This is what I found.

Home office

Let’s start with the haunt of some of the biggest suspects on my list: my home office. I do the vast majority of my work there and spend a fair amount of my downtime there, and I have a pretty power-hungry setup that includes my desktop, my laptop, a 60-inch TCL TV, and an 18-inch monitor.

As I suspected, there were some power-hungry devices in my setup. Some of the most power-hungry devices in my house were in my home office, including my custom desktop computer which, although completely turned off, was siphoning off between 1.8 and 2 watts. When left idling in standby mode, this reaches 3.1 watts.

The laptop was also a major offender. The 2025 version of Framework 16 Laptop consumes between 0.5 and 1.3 watts in standby mode and 1.9 watts in standby mode. Although these are some of the highest passive siphons, keep in mind that these numbers are still quite low. For context, my refrigerator, while running on a medium cooling setting, gobbled up 509 watts.

I was surprised by the efficiency of the giant 60-inch TCL 4K TVwhich showed a power consumption of 0 watts when plugged into the meter. Interestingly, the much smaller 18-inch HP Omen 1080p monitor consumed a small amount of power, but only 0.1 watts.

There’s also an Echo Dot on my desk, Amazon’s portal to its Alexa smart assistant, which is always passively listening for voice prompts (and everything else, if you listen to the conspiracy theorists). I wasn’t surprised to find that the Dot drew a phantom load of 1.7 watts even when not actively in use.

I also keep my Nintendo Switch in my office, and it dropped steadily 0.8 watts when off and 1.3 watts in sleep mode. These numbers remain the same whether the Switch is physically connected or in portable mode. I also tested my Canon printer, which showed a consumption of 0.2 watts.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that none of the chargers in my office, whether for my cordless vacuum or for USB-C and USB-A devices, used any passive power.

I also tested my router in some configurations. Although it was completely off but plugged in, it showed zero watts of consumption. When I turned it on and made sure there was no live connection from any device, it hit 4.3 watts. This represents the idle active power of the router, not a passive phantom load, so it is not included in the final “vampire power” ranking. However, it gives you an idea of ​​how much power the router uses even when it’s not connected.

Living room

Second on my hit list was the living room, which also houses a number of electronic devices that I suspected were power-hungry. I have another TV there, so I started with this one to see if it could match the zero-watt power consumption of the TCL in my office. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Although it was smaller (a slightly older 50-inch RCA 4K TV), it had a passive power consumption of 0.3 watts. Not massive, but slightly disappointing after the TCL presentation.

I went to PlayStation 5 console and I tested it in sleep mode and off. When off, it registered a tiny 0.1 watts, although it increased to 1.5 watts in idle mode.

The real surprise here was the cable box. Although you can never turn it off completely, as there is still a digital clock display and it includes a DVR to record scheduled shows/movies, there is a separate on/off mode. While I didn’t expect it to draw much more power than other electronics in idle mode, like gaming consoles or my PCs, it showed a (relatively) massive 19.9 watts when turned off.

Besides the DVR capacity mentioned above, the large phantom load is likely caused by maintaining a relatively high power state to ensure instant turn-on. Because we expect our TVs to start displaying a channel almost immediately after turning on the cable box, many boxes are kept in a higher power state than other devices.

On the other end of the spectrum, I also tested a number of lamps in the living room (and throughout the house). I tried standard table lamps with on/off switches, a larger floor lamp, and a lamp with three brightness settings and touch activation. Each lamp, regardless of its size or activation type, had a power consumption of zero watts.

Kitchen

The kitchen is also a target-rich environment, considering how many devices I have plugged in at any given time. Although the results were quite varied, none of the devices I tested showed particularly high drain.

The thirstiest beast in my kitchen was the microwave, which clocked in at 0.5 watts. Below that was my drip coffee maker, at 0.3 watts, and my large air fryer, at a fairly meager 0.2 watts. The electric kettle, which I tend to leave plugged in for convenience even if I don’t use it regularly, showed no passive draft.

Most surprising was the full-size portable dishwasher I own, which plugs into an outlet and attaches directly to the sink, but can be rolled into the kitchen on four wheels. Based solely on its size and capacity (and the cacophony it emits when operating), I expected high phantom load, but it impressed with a 0 watt draw.

Bedroom

Finally, there were the rooms, which don’t house a ton of electronic devices (sleep hygiene is important and blue light can ruin your rest). There are phone chargers and lights, neither of which have shown passive draw.

I also have a humidifier in my room, which I tested even though I generally didn’t leave it plugged in; he also showed no passive drawing. The spare room houses an alarm clock that showed 0 watts of consumption, as well as an essential oil diffuser that used no power when turned off.

Before I finished, I went outside to test one of the 50 foot LED light strips I installed outside. They showed a relatively high passive consumption of 1.2 watts.

Ranking the worst offenders in my house

After some fairly exhaustive testing, the surprise “winner” among power guzzlers was the DirecTV cable box. With a passive power output of 19.9 watts, it far outperformed all other devices, because, as mentioned above, it has DVR and instant-on capabilities (although to be clear, it wasn’t recording anything during my test). At 19.9 watts, that means the box consumes approximately 477.6 watt-hours each day and 174.3 kilowatt-hours each year.

So, roughly, how much does this cost me per year? I pay about 16.4 cents per kWh, so if I left the cable box off (without recording) it would cost me a base $27.89 per year for that 174.3 kWh.

Less surprising was the finalist, the desktop computeror 3.1 watts in standby mode (and 1.8 to 2 watts fully off). What was surprising were some of the zero-watt appliances, particularly the large portable dishwasher and my 60-inch TCL flat-screen TV.

Here is the complete list, from highest to lowest draw:

Which energy vampires are really worth killing?

The sad reality is that many devices need to stay plugged in even when not actively in use, at least if you value convenience over relatively modest savings.

This includes my worst offender, the cable box. Unplugging it means it can’t record scheduled shows or movies, and it also has to go through a long and annoying startup cycle every time. This results in a 5-10 minute delay – which I’m not willing to put up with every time I want to watch TV in the living room, although I can probably unplug it when I go on vacation or a long work trip. Things like refrigerators, many smart devices, and routers also need to stay connected, for better or worse.

However, there are several ways to save on energy bills without seriously disrupting your daily routine.

On the one hand, you might want to consider turning off things like game consoles and PCs completely rather than leaving them in an eternal dormant state. This is especially true for older consoles or ones you don’t use frequently, or if you own a desktop and a laptop but find that you don’t use either very frequently, consider turning them off completely.

Other big vampires that I don’t personally own are old AV receivers and outdated printers, which are notoriously not very good at regulating power consumption. Older devices in general should be at the top of your list, and you may also want to remember to unplug all kitchen appliances that don’t really need to be constantly powered by the network. Do you really need your microwave to tell you what time it is?

You can also reduce some usage by turning off instant-on features on consoles and TVs where possible, or using smart plugs with scheduling for entertainment centers. Power strips with remote on/off functionality are also a great choice, and replacing older devices with newer and more efficient models can lead to significant savings over time.

As my experience shows, energy vampires are real, but they do not all drain energy to the same degree.