Is there some way I could set this up as a remote switch? I have a lamp in the corner that would be easier to turn on and off if I had a remote to point at it.
Maybe if I bought a junky old universal remote at the thrift store?
@lljk it would turn on, but it wouldn’t turn off. The box detects when the TV goes into standby mode and then shuts down, instead of just being a remote controlled switch.
I don’t have one of these, but I do have a Kill-a-Watt power meter and it’s a quality product. I definitely recommend the brand. Four bucks for this seems like a pretty good deal.
@The_Tim It also measures line frequency, Voltage, current and might have some recording capabilities (Not sure, not something that interested me.) I would use it to see how much power my TV used in standby before I tried to do anything about it.
@HankB33 Yeah it tells you basically everything you’d want to know about the power you’ve got it plugged into and the device plugged into it.
The only “recording” it does is a cumulative measure of how much power has been used since it was last reset. That feature is useful for plugging into something that uses power intermittently, leave it plugged in for a few days or weeks, then check the total usage. It will also project out how much power the device will use over the course of a day, a month or a year. Plus if you set your power rate into it, it will translate that into cost projections too.
All around it’s a pretty nifty device, and I recommend having one handy if you’re interested in knowing how much power your devices are really using.
@bigmeh Exactly. The assumption is this device uses less power in its standby mode than your TV does in its standby mode. It would be worth looking into how much power your TV uses in standby mode before buying this.
@bigmeh@dude My Vizio P75-F1 uses <0.5W in standby. So this device would only save me around 0.42 W/h. And according to my electricity rates that’s about a savings of $3.00 per year. So I guess at this price it will pay off in less than 2 years. At the Amazon price it would take over 10 years to be worth it!
@bigmeh@Dema9o9ue@dude@jwilday I know you were being facetious, but there is an energy cost to manufacture this item. So the time for energy payback (as opposed to cost payback) would be even longer than the two years!
@bdb@bigmeh@ckcarlton@Dema9o9ue@dude@jwilday
What about the shipping costs to you vs sitting in meh’s warehouse? Or the forklifts (assuming meh uses forklifts)? Perhaps I should have not read this, wasting the elections used to transmit this to me. Agony - what can I do to save my little part of the world for the children? Perhaps my mere existence is a threat to the future… Ahh, heck with the future - living my life for me!
@motme A disturbingly rational solution to the issue of oneself destroying the environment is to find someone else who is environmentally equivalent to you (or slightly worse), and kill them. Bam, you’ve offset everything environmentally damaging you will ever do for the rest of your life, and (assuming the other person was also going to have equivalent children to your future children) that of all your descendants forever!
I’m not sure how that theory plays out if everyone tries to apply it though.
@Shawn999 No. A TV’s standby mode has nothing to do with its settings. The standby mode is only so that the IR receiver stays on so when you hit the power button on your remote the TV responds. Essentially your just buying this device to be in its own standby mode. The assumption is that this device uses less power in its standby mode than your TV uses in its standby mode. Either way if you want to use a remote control with any device then it must remain in some sort of standby mode. Everything from your DVD/Blu-ray player to an Xbox or sound bar is in standby mode. If it has a remote control then it has a standby mode.
@Dema9o9ue next you need the save a watt tv standby saver standby saver to cut the amount of power this thing consumes in standby mode. And then a saver for that saver. And so on, until a single, lonely electron can keep your entertainment at the ready.
@Dema9o9ue@Shawn999 This kills the TV’s standby mode by killing all power to the TV. Since many TVs don’t use NVRAM to store settings, it will cause all settings to be reset to default just like a power outage. If you have a more expensive smart TV, then maybe you’ll be lucky and the settings are saved in NVRAM. Otherwise, be prepared to reenter your wifi key and all the other settings.
@Dema9o9ue@kuoh@Shawn999 Is it really true that most modern televisions aren’t saving settings to non-volatile memory? I have avoided smart tvs, but I haven’t owned a television newer than about 2005 that hasn’t kept its settings through power outages or being unplugged for days at a time.
@kuoh@Limewater@Shawn999 Right. Just shut the power off to my whole house the other day while replacing a switch and all my TV settings were fine. I can’t speak for every model of TV but none I’ve owned had issues with power outages. However, some people below bring up some good points about constant power cycling damaging the TV hardware. I’d be more concerned about that than losing your settings. Most modern TV’s are essentially computers with a built in monitor. Not a single PC manufacturer would recommend pulling your computers plug every time it’s on standby mode. There is a shit down process for a reason and modern TV’s also have a shit down and boot up process as well.
How come there’s no photos of the backside of this item? Are they trying to hide something from us, like a european plug or something?
Also, no mention anywhere about how long the sensor cord is. Most of my TV outlets are behind furniture and low to the ground, so that sensor would need a long cord to allow it a line-of-sight for my remote!
@cengland0 Thanks again for helping!
It’s weird that here and in the manuals the length isn’t mentioned at all. For such a featureless product you would think they would want to market its one feature. LOL
I see this sometimes when I open a pdf printed in MS Word in another application like Inkscape. My inelegant workaround has been to use Preview to make a .ps file and then bring THAT in for editing instead.
@craigcush I put my Directv Genie on a UPS because it seems like half an hour of boot time plus searching for satellites that are supposedly geosynchronous. Does this even if the power was out for less than a second.
What are the actual power saving on a modern LCD? I mean, I can understand using this device on a tube TV or older plasma screen… but this seems inconsequential.
@matthewjfazio The screen type should be irrelevant: when the TV is in standby the screen is off; only the infra-red circuitry is active, awaiting a remote control comment. Caveat: older TVs were less well designed in this respect, and the older the TV the more likely it is to have a tube or plasma screen - so there may be a correlation though not a causation
I did some measurements on my 5 year old TV. Immediately on going into stand-by the power draw drops to 3.5 Watts. After a while it seems to go into a deeper sleep mode and the power goes down to 0.3 Watts. Plugging these numbers into the relevant equation along with the local cost of electricity (about $0.12 per kWh for me right now) gives an electricity cost saving of $0.31 per year if the TV is mostly in deep sleep, or $3.65 per year for the not-so-deep sleep.
Given how rarely I turn the TV on, paying $4 is not a saving for me - but your TV may differ.
Incidentally, I checked my Blu-ray player too: that turns out to use about 7 Watts in standby, at least twice as much as the TV.
So assuming a 65 inch LCD TV uses 0.5 watts in standby, if my math is correct, at 12 cents per KWh, that would be about 52 cents per year, assuming you never turn your TV on (the “worst” case).
$4 / 52 cents = 7.7 year payback.
If you actually watch your TV for a few hours per day, the payback gets dragged out further.
And hopefully you have VMP or are a member or the $5 shipping really makes the payback go to hell.
@RedOak What people also fail to realize is that constantly disconnecting and reconnecting the power to a tv or similar device puts a lot of unnecessary strain on the power supplies and wears them out much much faster.
Ok, some rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations are in order…
Claim: this uses 1/50th the standby power of a typical television. Specs state standby power usage is <0.08W. Let’s call it 0.08W for this and 4W for your television.
If you never turned your tv on all year (8760 hours) without this device, that 4W consumption equates to just over 35 KWh. If your utility charges $0.15 per KWh, then the annual cost to keep your tv in standby mode is about $5.26.
However, when your tv is on, (thus presumably this device is on too) it consumes 0.5W in addition to the power consumed by your tv. So if you left your tv on 24/7, this device will consume roughly an additional 4.38 KWh or an extra $0.66 per year.
Conclusion: yes this device will save some electricity and money if you turn your tv off when not in use, but the amount is negligible to the point of being unnoticeable, aside from having to hit the power button on your remote twice to turn your tv on. (Someone else can calculate the increased use of battery power for that extra press if they want.)
You’ll see far more savings by replacing a single incandescent bulb with a CFL or LED bulb, or just turning the damn light off when you leave the room.
@ciabelle $4.00, plus $5-$6.00 shipping, which ever it is. So any small payback would only begin long after 2 years! A lot of frustration for the benefits. Actually kind of silly. Nice calculations you have here!
This entire product and its premise seem really poor. It does the same thing unplugging your TV from the AC wall outlet does. Bullet point time!
The product seems to have been conceived by people who aren’t familiar with standby power and why it exists. Many televisions, especially modern smart TVs, require a small amount of power to maintain things like the clock, settings, and in the latter case network and wireless configurations. Remember how much stuff you had to set up when you first bought your TV? Now imagine having to do that every single time you turn on your TV!
Most TVs, and in fact most modern electronics in general, dislike being unplugged at inopportune times or numerous times in a relatively short period. Modern TVs are poorly made in comparison to older models, and are often engineered using parts that are just barely good enough for the job. Subjecting them to repeated power cycling can damage these frail power supplies over time, which could lead to an early demise. This device claims to ‘detect’ when a TV set enters standby mode, which I can only guess it does by monitoring the current draw through the device. The problem with this method is that there is no industry standard standby voltage, and this could result in the device incorrectly identifying ‘standby mode’ and doing things like unplugging your TV when a dark scene shows onscreen.
As several mehmbers have already mentioned, the actual energy savings from using this device would be so marginal as to be insignificant in the grand scheme of your power bill. The back of the product box uses the phrase ‘energy hogging TVs’…modern television sets use between one half and one tenth of one watt while in standby, which is probably close to the power drawn by this device itself! Even the product name is disingenuous, alluding to standby power being ‘evil’ or undesirable. I think it tries too hard to further a noble cause (saving electricity) in an area that doesn’t really need attention. This latter point is most likely why it has more or less failed in the marketplace, and subsequently ended up here on Meh.
TL;DR - This device really won’t save you any meaningful amount of money at any price, and may cause your TV to exhibit undesirable behavior, and may even shorten its lifespan!
@PooltoyWolf-Mr, or Ms Pooltoy, would this dingaling help like a power strip if, weather forbid, lightning struck nearby, instead of burning up my tv’s innards?
@decoratedwarvet Not likely. It’s not billed as a surge protector, and while there is a very slim chance something inside this device might open (fry and stop current flow) before the surge reaches your TV, I definitely wouldn’t count on it.
@fastharry This product was a solution to a problem that has long since gone away due to them pesky big governments.
In the early days of plasma HDTVs, there really were models that used more than 15 watts in standby. The regulation happy big governments around the world made it nearly impossible to sell new TVs that wasted that much power. That generation of TV rarely had a good picture after five years, so those TVs are almost all gone now.
This has left this product with no reason to exist.
Power savings - or lack thereof - notwithstanding, I’ll buy one of these to turn off that goddamned standby light. The power’s off, and I don’t need a light to tell me so.
Yes, I could use a piece of tape. But I like the idea of it actually being off.
@Fuzzalini My TV has a setting to change the light behavior. Currently it is red when off and white when on, but I could turn that off if I wanted. Check your TV’s settings.
Hey, old people! Would you like to wait a long time for your TV to turn on just like in the old days, while also saving an almost imperceptible amount of energy? Have we got the product for you!
@CaptAmehrican It does seem confusing but if you follow the exact steps in the manual, it should clear things up.
To turn on your TV, you press the on button on your remote. That will then provide power to the TV. You then need to power the TV on again by pressing the On button a second time. Pressing power twice is counter intuitive.
To turn off the TV, just press the power off button on the remote. Once the TV goes into standby mode, that will be detected by the product and it will then remove all power to the TV.
@chienfou@cmacrun If a TV with a CRT was “instant on”, that meant it always kept the filament in the picture tube heated.
The cathode had to literally warm up enough for electrons to start boiling off the surface to make the ray of electrons that hit the phosphors on the inside of the front of the tube to make a picture. CRT is Cathode Ray Tube.
@cmacrun You know… there was a time, when the TV was a piece of furniture and there was something lovely about that. Now we just stick it on the wall like so many Halsey posters or whatever the kids are into these days.
I just have one question:
What is that thing in the last photo?
I’m not gonna buy this just for fear that I may be joining the ranks of or combatting some kind of evil stuffed animal cult…
So… $9 including shipping buys 75kWHr of energy.
If my TV uses 5W in standby it would take 15,000 hours to recoup the $9 in additional plastic waste in my house this would generate, and that’s assuming this actually uses 5W less than my TV in standby mode.
Pretty sure these things have been confirmed to actually not have any positive affect for consumers. There are tons of articles that essentially claim they are false advertising at best…
So glad I read the comments. I didn’t feel there’d be enough savings to quantify the purchase of this device.$5 a year? Really? This would be something to market to Republicans to make them feel they are saving money.
One for the Tv and another for the fridge, microwave, coffee maker, instant pot, air fryer and any other powered RonCo Kitchen utilities. TV off, Snack Bar Closed. Enough said. I’ll take 5.
You can get this, or do what my grandfather did in the 50’s and 60’s. He unplugged anything with tubes that stayed on all the time! TV, radio…if there was a glowing tube in it, it was unplugged. Not that he was cheap or anything…
The neighbors knew how cheap he was and told him…You know, your doorbell has a little light on it that is always on. Do you know how much money that is costing you? We had odd neighbors. They enjoyed doing stuff like that!
My TCL Roku Smart TV has a setting that allows to choose whether it goes into ‘standby’ or turns off entirely when you hit the power button. I’d think that other TVs have the same setting option if you look for it.
@sunderbug Remote control lights aren’t all that great. I used to have some in my old house.
The problem is, you lose the remote control and have to look for it, so you go to turn on the light so it will be easier, and then you realize what a bad idea they are.
@Limewater@sunderbug I know some people are anti-smart home, but I’ve gotta say… being able to say “Alexa, turn off the lights” or “set the lights to 50%” etc is super nice.
My “free” VMP from the Casemates launch recently expired so recently started paying for the privilege again. This has had the added benefit of an increased level of irrationality when it comes to making purchases on Meh
In this instance I am now stuck with two completely usely hunks of plastic. I saw this deal at 11:55 pm and bought it without really reading any of the posts, shame on me. While some of the posts touch on this fact, most televisions sold in the last 5-10 years use ~0 energy whilst in standby. I used my Kill-A-Watt to monitor both a 2018 Visio and a several year old Magnavox, I never hit more than 0.03 amp and accumulated 0.00 kwh over a 15 hour testing period. Now I wish I still had my old 61" DLP TV to see how much energy it consumed in standby.
Specs
What’s in the Box?
1x TV Standby Killer
Price Comparison
$36.28 at Amazon
Warranty
6 Month P3
Estimated Delivery
Monday, Dec 15 - Monday, Dec 22
Meh Fresh!
Is there some way I could set this up as a remote switch? I have a lamp in the corner that would be easier to turn on and off if I had a remote to point at it.
Maybe if I bought a junky old universal remote at the thrift store?
@lljk
/giphy the clapper
@lljk no, not according to the instructions.
@lljk it would turn on, but it wouldn’t turn off. The box detects when the TV goes into standby mode and then shuts down, instead of just being a remote controlled switch.
@lljk https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Control-Outlets-BATTERY-INCLUDED/dp/B002WV3F3E/
This is a 3 pack of remotely controlled switches. You could also use a smart outlet and Alexa if you wanted.
@djslack @lljk We tried the Alexa way and it only worked when it felt like it. What a PAIN it was!!!
@djslack @lljk @ripper69 The TP Link smart plugs connected to Alexa have been reliable for us.
I don’t believe in killing. Standby setting deserves to live.
I like it a lot
For $4, I’d think I’d get a Meh employee to standby next to the TV and unplug it every time I turn it off
I don’t have one of these, but I do have a Kill-a-Watt power meter and it’s a quality product. I definitely recommend the brand. Four bucks for this seems like a pretty good deal.
@The_Tim What does a Kill-a-Watt power meter do?
@ripper69 @The_Tim It goes between the plug and the wall receptacle. It tells you how much power the device is using.
The local libraries near me all have them available to check out.
@The_Tim It also measures line frequency, Voltage, current and might have some recording capabilities (Not sure, not something that interested me.) I would use it to see how much power my TV used in standby before I tried to do anything about it.
@HankB33 Yeah it tells you basically everything you’d want to know about the power you’ve got it plugged into and the device plugged into it.
The only “recording” it does is a cumulative measure of how much power has been used since it was last reset. That feature is useful for plugging into something that uses power intermittently, leave it plugged in for a few days or weeks, then check the total usage. It will also project out how much power the device will use over the course of a day, a month or a year. Plus if you set your power rate into it, it will translate that into cost projections too.
All around it’s a pretty nifty device, and I recommend having one handy if you’re interested in knowing how much power your devices are really using.
This is the version I have, which retains its recorded info even when you unplug it. There’s a cheaper version that resets whenever it is unplugged. https://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4460-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B000RGF29Q/
Huh? So now the outlet is always on waiting for the remote instead of the TV waiting for the remote?
@bigmeh Exactly. The assumption is this device uses less power in its standby mode than your TV does in its standby mode. It would be worth looking into how much power your TV uses in standby mode before buying this.
@bigmeh The product documentation says it uses as little as 1/50 of what a TV uses for standby
@bigmeh @dude My Vizio P75-F1 uses <0.5W in standby. So this device would only save me around 0.42 W/h. And according to my electricity rates that’s about a savings of $3.00 per year. So I guess at this price it will pay off in less than 2 years. At the Amazon price it would take over 10 years to be worth it!
@bigmeh @Dema9o9ue @dude yes but you’d be saving the planet. Its for the children…
@jwilday *It’s
@bigmeh @Dema9o9ue @dude @jwilday I know you were being facetious, but there is an energy cost to manufacture this item. So the time for energy payback (as opposed to cost payback) would be even longer than the two years!
@bdb @bigmeh @Dema9o9ue @dude @jwilday Manufacturing costs have already been incurred (sunk costs) so they should not be part of the calculation.
@jwilday
@bdb @bigmeh @ckcarlton @Dema9o9ue @dude @jwilday
What about the shipping costs to you vs sitting in meh’s warehouse? Or the forklifts (assuming meh uses forklifts)? Perhaps I should have not read this, wasting the elections used to transmit this to me. Agony - what can I do to save my little part of the world for the children? Perhaps my mere existence is a threat to the future… Ahh, heck with the future - living my life for me!
@motme A disturbingly rational solution to the issue of oneself destroying the environment is to find someone else who is environmentally equivalent to you (or slightly worse), and kill them. Bam, you’ve offset everything environmentally damaging you will ever do for the rest of your life, and (assuming the other person was also going to have equivalent children to your future children) that of all your descendants forever!
I’m not sure how that theory plays out if everyone tries to apply it though.
/image adhesive-endearing-dragonfly
Bought two. One for living room, one for basement.
And what about all your settings? Are they killed too? As in power failure.
@Shawn999 I wondered the same thing!
@Shawn999 No. A TV’s standby mode has nothing to do with its settings. The standby mode is only so that the IR receiver stays on so when you hit the power button on your remote the TV responds. Essentially your just buying this device to be in its own standby mode. The assumption is that this device uses less power in its standby mode than your TV uses in its standby mode. Either way if you want to use a remote control with any device then it must remain in some sort of standby mode. Everything from your DVD/Blu-ray player to an Xbox or sound bar is in standby mode. If it has a remote control then it has a standby mode.
@Dema9o9ue Many thanks. Appreciate your reply. Might spring for this now after all!
@Dema9o9ue next you need the save a watt tv standby saver standby saver to cut the amount of power this thing consumes in standby mode. And then a saver for that saver. And so on, until a single, lonely electron can keep your entertainment at the ready.
@Dema9o9ue @Shawn999 This kills the TV’s standby mode by killing all power to the TV. Since many TVs don’t use NVRAM to store settings, it will cause all settings to be reset to default just like a power outage. If you have a more expensive smart TV, then maybe you’ll be lucky and the settings are saved in NVRAM. Otherwise, be prepared to reenter your wifi key and all the other settings.
KuoH
@Dema9o9ue @kuoh @Shawn999 Is it really true that most modern televisions aren’t saving settings to non-volatile memory? I have avoided smart tvs, but I haven’t owned a television newer than about 2005 that hasn’t kept its settings through power outages or being unplugged for days at a time.
@kuoh @Limewater @Shawn999 Right. Just shut the power off to my whole house the other day while replacing a switch and all my TV settings were fine. I can’t speak for every model of TV but none I’ve owned had issues with power outages. However, some people below bring up some good points about constant power cycling damaging the TV hardware. I’d be more concerned about that than losing your settings. Most modern TV’s are essentially computers with a built in monitor. Not a single PC manufacturer would recommend pulling your computers plug every time it’s on standby mode. There is a shit down process for a reason and modern TV’s also have a shit down and boot up process as well.
@Dema9o9ue Yes, but the shutdown procedure for computers is because the OS needs to save open files and leave the filesystem in an orderly state.
Embedded devices like TVs operate differently.
@Shawn999 It depends entirely on your TV. My Samsung dumb TV will keep the settings, but lose the clock.
My TV gets updates while I’m not watching it.
@medz do they help anything?
@jmkiii you bet
Protip — if your TV still has two knobs and you have to get up to change the volume, this probably won’t save you much of anything
@nolrak my TVs are all female
Got one of these in a morningsave mystery box for $30. Here are some photos of the box not included in all the other photos today.!
!
Haven’t tested it yet but I have read the instructions. It’s clearly designed to work on TVs only.
shahnm don’t draw good.
How come there’s no photos of the backside of this item? Are they trying to hide something from us, like a european plug or something?
Also, no mention anywhere about how long the sensor cord is. Most of my TV outlets are behind furniture and low to the ground, so that sensor would need a long cord to allow it a line-of-sight for my remote!
@Kerig3 here you go.
@cengland0 Thanks! Any idea how long the cord is?
@Kerig3 completely unrolled from the spool it is 55 inches stretched tight.
@Kerig3
This isn’t that kind of website
@cengland0 Thanks again for helping!
It’s weird that here and in the manuals the length isn’t mentioned at all. For such a featureless product you would think they would want to market its one feature. LOL
Before you buy one of these you might want to unplug and replug your TV to see how happy it is to be noodled with like this.
Also no indication of UL or ETL listing so also check to see how flammable your house is.
@stoopkid Back of it does say ETL. I posted a photo above.
Apparently standby power makes one swear like a comic strip:
I see this sometimes when I open a pdf printed in MS Word in another application like Inkscape. My inelegant workaround has been to use Preview to make a .ps file and then bring THAT in for editing instead.
@djslack Damn, you beat me to it! I was just editing my screenshot, LOL.
@djslack At first I thought I had missed a class or two at Rocket Science University!
@djslack here’s that info from the paper manual.
!
@djslack
My tv takes 10 minutes to receive after a power failure. Meh
@craigcush, I assume you meant recover.
@craigcush I put my Directv Genie on a UPS because it seems like half an hour of boot time plus searching for satellites that are supposedly geosynchronous. Does this even if the power was out for less than a second.
What are the actual power saving on a modern LCD? I mean, I can understand using this device on a tube TV or older plasma screen… but this seems inconsequential.
@matthewjfazio From the manual, do your own math to figure it out!
@matthewjfazio The screen type should be irrelevant: when the TV is in standby the screen is off; only the infra-red circuitry is active, awaiting a remote control comment. Caveat: older TVs were less well designed in this respect, and the older the TV the more likely it is to have a tube or plasma screen - so there may be a correlation though not a causation
I’ll sell the one I got in morningsave bundle for 3.50
@fastharry Man, the struggle must be real. I won’t even walk to my mailbox to send something I sold for less than $20.
@goldnectar no struggle here…just thought I’d help someone out…BTW, I made 6,000 + on ebay last year selling 20 dollar items…
What if my TV uses < 0.07 Watts on standby?
@RedOak Checkmate!
I use my google home to turn on and off my tv - this would not work for me.
@makhay No. It would not.
so basically, the payback on this is 19 years?
@alacrity the long con. Stick it to the man!
I did some measurements on my 5 year old TV. Immediately on going into stand-by the power draw drops to 3.5 Watts. After a while it seems to go into a deeper sleep mode and the power goes down to 0.3 Watts. Plugging these numbers into the relevant equation along with the local cost of electricity (about $0.12 per kWh for me right now) gives an electricity cost saving of $0.31 per year if the TV is mostly in deep sleep, or $3.65 per year for the not-so-deep sleep.
Given how rarely I turn the TV on, paying $4 is not a saving for me - but your TV may differ.
Incidentally, I checked my Blu-ray player too: that turns out to use about 7 Watts in standby, at least twice as much as the TV.
@JohnMorris hah! You beat me by a few minutes!
So assuming a 65 inch LCD TV uses 0.5 watts in standby, if my math is correct, at 12 cents per KWh, that would be about 52 cents per year, assuming you never turn your TV on (the “worst” case).
$4 / 52 cents = 7.7 year payback.
If you actually watch your TV for a few hours per day, the payback gets dragged out further.
And hopefully you have VMP or are a member or the $5 shipping really makes the payback go to hell.
Hmmm. Will this device survive that long?
@RedOak What people also fail to realize is that constantly disconnecting and reconnecting the power to a tv or similar device puts a lot of unnecessary strain on the power supplies and wears them out much much faster.
Ok, some rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations are in order…
Claim: this uses 1/50th the standby power of a typical television. Specs state standby power usage is <0.08W. Let’s call it 0.08W for this and 4W for your television.
If you never turned your tv on all year (8760 hours) without this device, that 4W consumption equates to just over 35 KWh. If your utility charges $0.15 per KWh, then the annual cost to keep your tv in standby mode is about $5.26.
However, when your tv is on, (thus presumably this device is on too) it consumes 0.5W in addition to the power consumed by your tv. So if you left your tv on 24/7, this device will consume roughly an additional 4.38 KWh or an extra $0.66 per year.
Conclusion: yes this device will save some electricity and money if you turn your tv off when not in use, but the amount is negligible to the point of being unnoticeable, aside from having to hit the power button on your remote twice to turn your tv on. (Someone else can calculate the increased use of battery power for that extra press if they want.)
You’ll see far more savings by replacing a single incandescent bulb with a CFL or LED bulb, or just turning the damn light off when you leave the room.
@ciabelle $4.00, plus $5-$6.00 shipping, which ever it is. So any small payback would only begin long after 2 years! A lot of frustration for the benefits. Actually kind of silly. Nice calculations you have here!
@ciabelle And CLOSE THE FRONT DOOR! What are we? Rockefellers? We aren’t paying to air condition the whole neighborhood you know!
@ciabelle Turning the light off when you leave the room? Spendthrift! In my house we leave the light off when we enter the room!
There’s a lot to unpack here.
This entire product and its premise seem really poor. It does the same thing unplugging your TV from the AC wall outlet does. Bullet point time!
The product seems to have been conceived by people who aren’t familiar with standby power and why it exists. Many televisions, especially modern smart TVs, require a small amount of power to maintain things like the clock, settings, and in the latter case network and wireless configurations. Remember how much stuff you had to set up when you first bought your TV? Now imagine having to do that every single time you turn on your TV!
Most TVs, and in fact most modern electronics in general, dislike being unplugged at inopportune times or numerous times in a relatively short period. Modern TVs are poorly made in comparison to older models, and are often engineered using parts that are just barely good enough for the job. Subjecting them to repeated power cycling can damage these frail power supplies over time, which could lead to an early demise. This device claims to ‘detect’ when a TV set enters standby mode, which I can only guess it does by monitoring the current draw through the device. The problem with this method is that there is no industry standard standby voltage, and this could result in the device incorrectly identifying ‘standby mode’ and doing things like unplugging your TV when a dark scene shows onscreen.
As several mehmbers have already mentioned, the actual energy savings from using this device would be so marginal as to be insignificant in the grand scheme of your power bill. The back of the product box uses the phrase ‘energy hogging TVs’…modern television sets use between one half and one tenth of one watt while in standby, which is probably close to the power drawn by this device itself! Even the product name is disingenuous, alluding to standby power being ‘evil’ or undesirable. I think it tries too hard to further a noble cause (saving electricity) in an area that doesn’t really need attention. This latter point is most likely why it has more or less failed in the marketplace, and subsequently ended up here on Meh.
TL;DR - This device really won’t save you any meaningful amount of money at any price, and may cause your TV to exhibit undesirable behavior, and may even shorten its lifespan!
@PooltoyWolf-Mr, or Ms Pooltoy, would this dingaling help like a power strip if, weather forbid, lightning struck nearby, instead of burning up my tv’s innards?
@decoratedwarvet Not likely. It’s not billed as a surge protector, and while there is a very slim chance something inside this device might open (fry and stop current flow) before the surge reaches your TV, I definitely wouldn’t count on it.
The inflatable wolf is male, by the way.
@PooltoyWolf
Yes there is. In the USA, it’s 110/120 volts.
@cengland0 I see what you did there.
@cengland0 @PooltoyWolf 120, 121, whatever it takes.
Watt? I’m no Rocket Surgeon, but I can tell my TV is still on because there’s a little red light on at the lower right side of the tv! Dah!!
Would this work on a computer or monitor in standby mode?
if there was ever a product looking for a solution…
@fastharry This product was a solution to a problem that has long since gone away due to them pesky big governments.
In the early days of plasma HDTVs, there really were models that used more than 15 watts in standby. The regulation happy big governments around the world made it nearly impossible to sell new TVs that wasted that much power. That generation of TV rarely had a good picture after five years, so those TVs are almost all gone now.
This has left this product with no reason to exist.
I use one of these for the whole entertainment system, tv, receiver. cable box, etc etc. Its an rf remote, no need to be seen.
@digital_one Yes! I do also. I won’t go to bed unless I hear the tell-tale thump of my subwoofer going off…
Power savings - or lack thereof - notwithstanding, I’ll buy one of these to turn off that goddamned standby light. The power’s off, and I don’t need a light to tell me so.
Yes, I could use a piece of tape. But I like the idea of it actually being off.
@dannybeans My TV irritates me that the light is on when it’s off, and there’s no light when it’s on. WTH?
@Fuzzalini My TV has a setting to change the light behavior. Currently it is red when off and white when on, but I could turn that off if I wanted. Check your TV’s settings.
@Fuzzalini @medz This is not the answer you’re looking for, but someone probably is.
Hey, old people! Would you like to wait a long time for your TV to turn on just like in the old days, while also saving an almost imperceptible amount of energy? Have we got the product for you!
@superpope But then I’ll need someone to install and maintain it for me.
I got one of these in one of my morningsave boxes. Ugh awful
@CaptAmehrican It does seem confusing but if you follow the exact steps in the manual, it should clear things up.
To turn on your TV, you press the on button on your remote. That will then provide power to the TV. You then need to power the TV on again by pressing the On button a second time. Pressing power twice is counter intuitive.
To turn off the TV, just press the power off button on the remote. Once the TV goes into standby mode, that will be detected by the product and it will then remove all power to the TV.
If you’re still sportin’ one of these:
I’d venture to guess you’d save quite a bit of energy…
@cmacrun …umm… probably not. Don’t think there was a standby mode on those. They turned OFF!
@chienfou @cmacrun If a TV with a CRT was “instant on”, that meant it always kept the filament in the picture tube heated.
The cathode had to literally warm up enough for electrons to start boiling off the surface to make the ray of electrons that hit the phosphors on the inside of the front of the tube to make a picture. CRT is Cathode Ray Tube.
@cmacrun You know… there was a time, when the TV was a piece of furniture and there was something lovely about that. Now we just stick it on the wall like so many Halsey posters or whatever the kids are into these days.
@cmacrun @hamjudo Pretty sure that TV was not an ‘instant on’ CRT…
@chienfou @cmacrun @hamjudo Does anyone still understand this?
I just have one question:
What is that thing in the last photo?
I’m not gonna buy this just for fear that I may be joining the ranks of or combatting some kind of evil stuffed animal cult…
@sivadm that’s Irk.
/youtube ask irk
So… $9 including shipping buys 75kWHr of energy.
If my TV uses 5W in standby it would take 15,000 hours to recoup the $9 in additional plastic waste in my house this would generate, and that’s assuming this actually uses 5W less than my TV in standby mode.
@caffeineguy According to this chart, 5W in standby could pay for itself in the first year depending on your cost per kWh (save up to $13/year).
Pretty sure these things have been confirmed to actually not have any positive affect for consumers. There are tons of articles that essentially claim they are false advertising at best…
Wow, I haven’t seen a Meh product take such a savage beating…
444 people bought this product for $4.
So glad I read the comments. I didn’t feel there’d be enough savings to quantify the purchase of this device.$5 a year? Really? This would be something to market to Republicans to make them feel they are saving money.
@marilyn80s …you had to go there…
@marilyn80s Nah, they do that buy cutting funding for silly little things like the Special Olympics.
@chienfou always.
One for the Tv and another for the fridge, microwave, coffee maker, instant pot, air fryer and any other powered RonCo Kitchen utilities. TV off, Snack Bar Closed. Enough said. I’ll take 5.
You can get this, or do what my grandfather did in the 50’s and 60’s. He unplugged anything with tubes that stayed on all the time! TV, radio…if there was a glowing tube in it, it was unplugged. Not that he was cheap or anything…
The neighbors knew how cheap he was and told him…You know, your doorbell has a little light on it that is always on. Do you know how much money that is costing you? We had odd neighbors. They enjoyed doing stuff like that!
@smilingjack I would have a hard time not telling him that!
My TCL Roku Smart TV has a setting that allows to choose whether it goes into ‘standby’ or turns off entirely when you hit the power button. I’d think that other TVs have the same setting option if you look for it.
@Gypsigirl213 I look at them being optimum for legacy TeeVees, but I am wondering if I can get it to work on other gizmos.
@Gypsigirl213 Yeah, it has to be in standby to turn it on via Echo, Google Home, or the Android app.
Worth it for the giphy!
omnipresent-acidic-bobcat
/giphy dependent-exultant-huckleberry
sorry- i just pull the plug… i cant think of another use for it … unless i can us it to remote turn off a light or something…
@sunderbug Remote control lights aren’t all that great. I used to have some in my old house.
The problem is, you lose the remote control and have to look for it, so you go to turn on the light so it will be easier, and then you realize what a bad idea they are.
@Limewater @sunderbug I know some people are anti-smart home, but I’ve gotta say… being able to say “Alexa, turn off the lights” or “set the lights to 50%” etc is super nice.
Quality of the product aside, I just wanted to say I really enjoy the Gleg write-ups when they show up. Excellent stuff.
Buy a power strip and group your electronics for power off. Yes appliances use power when turned off but it is minimal…
Does this work by RF or iR? (if by iR, I’d have to crawl under the tv stand to get it to work!)
@bgammill Definitely IR
Did you know that your TV power saver actually uses power when it is off? Buy a TV power saver power saver for your TV power saver.
This would be useful…if I didn’t keep my entire media cabinet on a power strip that gets turned off when nothing is in use.
My “free” VMP from the Casemates launch recently expired so recently started paying for the privilege again. This has had the added benefit of an increased level of irrationality when it comes to making purchases on Meh
In this instance I am now stuck with two completely usely hunks of plastic. I saw this deal at 11:55 pm and bought it without really reading any of the posts, shame on me. While some of the posts touch on this fact, most televisions sold in the last 5-10 years use ~0 energy whilst in standby. I used my Kill-A-Watt to monitor both a 2018 Visio and a several year old Magnavox, I never hit more than 0.03 amp and accumulated 0.00 kwh over a 15 hour testing period. Now I wish I still had my old 61" DLP TV to see how much energy it consumed in standby.