P3 International 4460 Kill-A-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor Review
First Impressions
The Kill-A-Watt was nicely sealed in plastic packaging, nothing special
there. I'm not a huge fan of products sealed in plastic that require
you to destroy the packaging to get the contents out, but I can
understand why companies do this (deter theft, limit products returned
"as new", etc). A small manual is also included to explain how to use
the Kill-A-Watt, as well as safety & care instructions. The
Kill-A-Watt itself had a small row of buttons and looked pretty
straight-forward -- plug your appliance into the Kill-A-Watt, plug the
Kill-A-Watt into the wall and off you go!
Using the Kill-A-Watt
I don't normally read manuals all the
way through -- just kind of skim them over to see if there's something
important I need to know to avoid electricuting myself or blowing
something up :) The Kill-A-Watt seemed easy enough to operate once
plugged in. Hit the menu button a few times, get the the screen that
lets you input electricity costs, click set.. use the up/down buttons
to adjust your electricity cost per KwH, click set again to save. Once
you set electricity costs you never have to do it again (unless your
electricity costs change). Holding the reset button allows you to clear
the previous data that was collected on the Kill-A-Watt (except for
electricity costs of course!). The menu button allows you to cycle
between things like line voltage (voltage at the outlet), volts, amps,
current, watts, KwH, total time and electricity costs
First Test -- The Stereo!
I keep many appliances plugged in year-round and figured a good first
test would be my JVC Stereo that is usually blinking "12:00" when not
in use. A few seconds after plugging the stereo into the Kill-A-Watt,
it was happily reporting that I would spend roughly $20/year just to
have the clock blinking. Now for the real test -- turning the stereo on
and having it play a CD!! Surely this would consume much more energy
since it's spinning the CD, displaying track info, playing through the
speakers. To my amazement, when playing a CD the yearly costs only went
up to around $26/year. Not too shabby, almost makes you want to keep
the stereo running full-time knowing that it doesn't consume much more
electricity when on than when off.
Second Test -- Desktop Computer
I have had several computers
at home running practically 24/7 over the last 5 years.. more for
convenience than anything. I'm sure you've all heard someone say
something like "Why turn the computer off? It will cost just as much
with the spike in energy during boot-up than to just leave it on."
Turns out, that desktop computer I was leaving on 24/7 eats up roughly
150 watts when idle.. over a month at $0.09/KwH I'm spending $11.00 to
have the computer running for convenience. And the funny thing? There's
at least 12 hours of the day where I'm not even around to use it. So
there's $5.50/mo that I could have been saving if I would have shut it
off during off-peak hours -- that's $66/yr to have a computer running
when I'm not even around to use it! Yeah it's not a million dollars,
but if you have 2 or 3 desktop computers running 24/7 that could easily
be $30-40 of your electricity bill each month.
Third Test -- Laptop
I have a newer Dell Latitude laptop with
a 14.1" widescreen display. Yet another device that I use often enough
that I just leave it on 24/7. Fortunatley laptops are less power-hungry
since obviously their purpose is to be able to run on battery and they
are optimized to consume less power than their desktop counterparts.
The laptop costs roughly $3/mo to leave on 24/7.. not bad at all! Worth
the convenience for the amount that I use it.
Comments:
No comments have yet been made.