Stop Wasting Money: The Hidden Energy Vampire Draining Your Wallet

You need only $12 to find out what's sucking the life out of your bank account.

Tired of spending all your money on electricity bills? Blame the energy vampires in your home. Those include things like appliances, devices and other electronics that continue to draw electricity even when powered off.

Called standby power, this leech can be a significant expense. According to the US Department of Energy, standby power accounts for 5% to 10% of residential energy usage and can cost a typical household about $100 per year.

With that in mind, I decided to launch an experiment. I ordered a $12 power meter from Amazon and set about gauging the passive power draw of nearly every device and appliance I could plug into it.

My mission: To determine which one wastes the most energy while off, and whether it's worth unplugging the worst offenders. The clear winner surprised me because it was an unexpected piece of living-room tech that almost everyone has.

How I tested for vampire energy drain

There were a few limitations to the project, the most notable being that I couldn't test my washer, dryer or oven. Those appliances use large 240-volt outlets, and the power meter I bought only works with standard NEMA 5-15R outlets. I also wasn't able to properly test my fridge, because there's no way to power it down while it's plugged in.

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

Common household energy vampires

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

[Energy meter with nothing plugged in]

The energy meter only works with AC outlets, so I wasn't able to test 240-volt appliances, like washers and dryers.

Alan Bradley/CNET*

Home office

Let's start with the lair of some of the most prominent suspects on my list: my home office. I do the vast majority of my work and spend a fair amount of my downtime there, and I've got a pretty energy-intensive setup that includes my desktop PC, laptop, a 60-inch TCL television, alongside an 18-inch monitor.

As I suspected, there were some power-hungry devices throughout my setup. Some of the highest-consuming devices in my home were in my home office, including my custom-built desktop PC, which, while fully powered down, siphoned off between 1.8 and 2 watts. When left idling in sleep mode, this spiked to 3.1 watts.

The laptop was also a chief offender. The 2025 version of the Framework 16 laptop drew between 0.5 and 1.3 watts when off and 1.9 watts in sleep mode. While these were some of the highest passive siphons, bear in mind that those figures are still quite low. For context, my fridge, while running at a medium cooling setting, gulped down 509 watts.

[Energy meter doing a reading for a laptop]

My Framework 16 laptop ended up having some passive energy draw.

Alan Bradley/CNET*

I was surprised by the efficiency of the giant 4K 60-inch TCL TV, which showed a 0-watt power draw when plugged into the meter. Interestingly, the much smaller, 18-inch, 1080p HP Omen monitor did pull down a trickle of energy, though 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 to everything else, if you listen to the conspiracy theorists). I wasn't surprised to find that the Dot drew a 1.7-watt phantom load even while not in active use.

I also keep my Nintendo Switch in my office, and it pulled down a consistent 0.8 watts when off and 1.3 watts while in sleep mode. Those numbers remained the same whether the Switch was physically docked or in handheld mode. I also tested my Canon printer, which showed a draw of 0.2 watts.

[Energy meter with a Nintendo Switch in front of it]

The Nintendo Switch had some modest power draw, whether physically docked or in handheld mode.

Alan Bradley/CNET*

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, drew any passive power whatsoever.

I also tested my router in a couple of configurations. While fully off but plugged in, it showed zero watts of draw. When I powered it on and ensured there were no live connections from any devices, it spiked to 4.3 watts. This represents the router's active idle power, not a passive phantom load, so it's not included in the final "vampire energy" ranking, but it gives you a sense of how much power the router is using even when not connected.

Living room

Second on my hit list was the living room, which also hosts a number of electronics I suspected might be pretty power-hungry. I have another TV there, so I started with it to see if it could match the TCL's zero-watt power draw in my office. Sadly, it did not. Despite being smaller (a slightly older 50-inch 4K RCA TV), it showed a passive power draw of 0.3 watts. Not massive, but slightly disappointing after the TCL's showing.

The PlayStation 5 actually proved to be failry energy efficent in sleep mode.

CNET*

I moved on to the PlayStation 5 console and tested it both in sleep mode and while fully powered off. When off, it registered a teensy 0.1 watts, though it jumped to 1.5 watts in rest mode.

The real surprise here was the cable box. While you can never fully turn it off, as there's always a digital clock display and it includes a DVR to record scheduled shows/films, there is a distinct on and off mode. Though I didn't expect it to draw significantly more than other electronics in rest mode, like the game consoles or my PCs, it showed a (relatively) massive 19.9-watt draw while powered off.

This isn't my DirecTV cable box, but it's similar. This device ended up being the biggest energy vampire in my house.

David Katzmaier/CNET*

Aside from the aforementioned DVR capability, the significant phantom load is likely due to being kept in a relatively high-power state to ensure instant-on. Because we expect our TVs to start displaying a channel almost immediately after we switch on the cable box, many boxes are kept in a higher-power state than other devices.

At 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. Every single lamp, regardless of size or activation type, showed a zero-watt power draw.

Kitchen

The kitchen is also somewhat of a target-rich environment, given how many appliances I have plugged in at any given time. While there was a fair range of results, none of the appliances I tested showed a particularly high drain.

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

[Energy meter doing a reading for a microwave]

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