At launch, the Xbox Series S/X systems were very inefficient power-wise, drawing nearly 30 watts of juice in standby mode, 24 hours a day. With 12 million consoles sold and counting, this was projected to require 4 billion kWh of electricity within just a few years. This is as much as a year’s output from a large power plant, releasing more than 3 million tons of CO2 into our air just to power consoles that weren’t even being used. Things have improved, but it needs you to flip the switch.
I think Microsoft Xbox can and should press themselves to do better here, these things are practically PCs, and a PC can go completely to sleep and use practically zero power, and still wake up periodically to check for updates and things.https://t.co/JbE2w2RjwL
— CmdrKeene 🏳️🌈 | #WIMVP (@CmdrKeene) January 16, 2021
At the time, Microsoft said they were committed to reducing this waste. And they did make some progress last year. While the Xbox Series S/X initially drew 25 to 28W of “instant on” standby power at launch, a firmware update cut it in half and back on par with the ~13W drawn by last generations’ Xbox One “instant on” mode. An improvement to be sure, but the PlayStation 5 sips just over 1 watt in standby.
Fast-forward to today, and the situation has improved again in several ways.
First, Energy Saver is now the default selection for a console, which uses about 20x less energy than the “instant on” mode while only being very slightly less instant. Thanks to modern SSD drives, even a “slow” bootup only takes a few seconds anyway.
Energy Saver mode now uses about 20 times less power than instant-on mode, plus it no longer blocks automatic updates.
It’s a win-win for everyone
Secondly (and this is the big one), using Energy Saver is no longer a major detriment to the user experience. Previously, energy saver had a big drawback: no background updates. In the past, using energy saver meant a gamer would frequently power on the system only to be met with mandatory, time-consuming updates to download. And then once updates were installed and the system rebooted, launching a game would often then trigger a game title update as well, consuming yet more time while the gamer twiddles their thumbs and waits.
I can attest that, as an actual human adult with responsibilities, these delays ate significantly into my limited leisure time and lead me to use the power-hungry Instant On feature, the planet be damned.
Today, just like a computer in sleep mode, an Xbox in Energy Saver mode will wake itself up once a day to check for updates, then go back to sleep. This greatly reduces power usage (down to a couple watts) while also greatly reducing the chance that a user will have 45 minutes of updates to install the next time they have a chance to game.
If you, like me, had setup your console to use Instant On, now is a great time to consider switching to Energy Saver. Here’s how:
From your Xbox home screen, go to Settings > Sleep Mode & Startup > Sleep Mode > Energy saver.
In addition to these power and energy savings, Microsoft’s March 10th Update on Xbox Sustainability Efforts also details other changes they’re making with environmental responsibility in mind. You can also visit that link to learn about the company’s trade-in or recycling of unwanted products.
