LED Monitors and Power Consumption

[noelex 77]

I often watch a movie at night and until recently did this on a laptop screen. I recently purchased a much larger 22 inch LCD monitor with LED backlighting. I was expecting a good deal more power draw and have been pleasantly surprised that using the large monitor (which has is a much larger brighter higher resolution display than the laptop) and driving the screen with a netbook the power consumption is actually slightly lower than the laptop alone.

I chose a 22 inch Samsung BX2231 monitor it has a great picture, low power consumption and can accept both a 12v and 14v input which should make it ideal for powering directly from the 12v boat supply (I am still running it on a small inverter as I have not rigged up the direct 12v supply yet)

The actual power consumption of everything needed to watch a movie, when playing a movie downloaded on to the internal hard drive of a netbook (netbook powered from 12v)with external speakers (usb powered) and running the monitor from an inverter is 2.8A. Which I think is excellent. This should go down a further 0.3-0.5 A when I get the monitor running directly from 12V.

For a comparison the old laptop with a 15 inch screen (an IBM T60P running from 12v) with external speakers when playing a movie downloader on to the internal hard drive was slightly more at 3.1A. (I have never measured the netbook playing a movie on its own screen as it is too small to be watchable)

Playing the movies from an external hard drive increases the power consumption by about 0.4A and playing from a DVD about 0.6A (so its worth putting the movie on the hard drive if you want the lowest consumption.

So don’t be afraid lots of power consumption with a larger monitor. The new LED screens do deliver low power consumption particularly when powered from an energy efficient computer such as a netbook