Low power TV?

Hello Everyone,

I am shopping appliances for an off grid solar application. Keeping power consumption as low as possible is my goal.

I have had pretty good luck so far but I am getting conflicting information regarding the LCD tv's that I am looking at. Some of the articles/post that I have read give the impression that the Energy Star testing may not be consistent.

Has anyone here found any good source of info regarding the lowest power TV's?

Anyone measured the consumption of your own TV's? Would you share make, model and results?

Thanks

S.

Generally speaking smaller TVs use less power than larger TVs.  However, modern LED TVs don't use all that much power.  Even many of the 60-65" models use less than 150 watts, many this size use less than 100 watts when set for lower brightness levels.

PC labs does independent testing and posts their results including power use:
https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372085,00.asp

According to them some models like the Samsung UN55NU8000FXZA (55" display) get down to around 70 watts in power saving mode, it can get below 60 watts but the screen gets too dim to be viewable
https://www.pcmag.com/review/360992/samsung-un55nu8000fxza

or the Roku TV which can go down to about 44 watts   https://www.pcmag.com/review/358256/element-roku-tv-50-inch

Of course there are trade offs for low power: Low contrast ratio, narrow color spectrum, etc.

Thanks Peter.

I am looking for something in the 32"-40" range and hope to find something with power consumption between 50-70 watts.

I have been binge reading reviews looking for a match.

As I browse the reviews, I am shocked at the number of $5k-$10k TV's. I guess I am not a big enough fan of watching TV to understand someone spending that kind of $....

Steve Smyth wrote:Thanks Peter.

I am looking for something in the 32"-40" range and hope to find something with power consumption between 50-70 watts.

I have been binge reading reviews looking for a match.

As I browse the reviews, I am shocked at the number of $5k-$10k TV's. I guess I am not a big enough fan of watching TV to understand someone spending that kind of $....

This monitor/tv/display screen is available 32" at 16.5 watts lit and .5 watt on standby. 

https://www.semiconductorstore.com/blog/2014/devices-that-can-be-powered-with-poe/657 

A couple we installed for a few years back have two samsung 32" television displays that use 28w running on the nameplate.

Like Peter said, light requires power. The samsung tv displays they have up there are quite bright enough to me. I would go to a store that will allow you to plug tvs into a watt meter and view them in a brightly lit show floor.

I just realized I completely spaced on another possible lower power solution.

Pocket projectors have come a long way in recent years and many now use LED "bulbs".  I recently bought one of these with a 720P light engine to use on business trips, it's bright enough to throw a decent 40-50 display in a conference room with the lights on.  They claim it can do a 100 inch display in a dark room.

I'm not sure exactly how much power it uses because it has a built in battery that can run it for a couple hours and it will pull from that and the power supply at the same time, but the max the power supply can put out is 40Watts.
Something like this might be ideal for an off-grid setup since you could recharge the internal battery when you have surplus power and then watch it for a couple hours later using just it's internal battery.

It weighs about a pound and is smaller than a paperback book.  You can hook it up to a laptop etc. using HDMI, or store 3-4 movies on it's 5GB internal memory, or plug in a USB thumb drive with movies.

The one I have is sold by Brookstone, who just declared bankruptcy and is going to be closing all of their Mall stores, so if you have one nearby you might be able to buy one cheap on clearance.

Or you can buy one of the other brands that will be around for a while.

Note:  if you're not interested in extreme portability (which was my primary concern for the one I bought)  the larger projectors tend to be cheaper per lumen.   Just remember the more lumens it puts out the more power it will draw.
On the other hand many of the larger models have adjustable brightness, lower brightness, lower power consumption.  
Mine only has two levels: normal and eco mode.

Peter VanDerWal wrote:I just realized I completely spaced on another possible lower power solution.

Pocket projectors have come a long way in recent years and many now use LED "bulbs".  I recently bought one of these with a 720P light engine to use on business trips, it's bright enough to throw a decent 40-50 display in a conference room with the lights on.  They claim it can do a 100 inch display in a dark room.

I'm not sure exactly how much power it uses because it has a built in battery that can run it for a couple hours and it will pull from that and the power supply at the same time, but the max the power supply can put out is 40Watts.
Something like this might be ideal for an off-grid setup since you could recharge the internal battery when you have surplus power and then watch it for a couple hours later using just it's internal battery.

It weighs about a pound and is smaller than a paperback book.  You can hook it up to a laptop etc. using HDMI, or store 3-4 movies on it's 5GB internal memory, or plug in a USB thumb drive with movies.

The one I have is sold by Brookstone, who just declared bankruptcy and is going to be closing all of their Mall stores, so if you have one nearby you might be able to buy one cheap on clearance.

Or you can buy one of the other brands that will be around for a while.

Note:  if you're not interested in extreme portability (which was my primary concern for the one I bought)  the larger projectors tend to be cheaper per lumen.   Just remember the more lumens it puts out the more power it will draw.
On the other hand many of the larger models have adjustable brightness, lower brightness, lower power consumption.  
Mine only has two levels: normal and eco mode.

Thats funny, same here. We have a 100" led projector as our display. We don have any other aside from smartphones. 30w, 12v, all the ports, bright enough, 30,000 hour life, you can hold it on one hand.

1100- 2200 lumen is better, this one is 800lm. There are really nice ones at the electronic and appliance stores.

Steve Smyth wrote:Thanks Peter.

I am looking for something in the 32"-40" range and hope to find something with power consumption between 50-70 watts.

I have been binge reading reviews looking for a match.

As I browse the reviews, I am shocked at the number of $5k-$10k TV's. I guess I am not a big enough fan of watching TV to understand someone spending that kind of $....

I thought I'd add some more info if anyone is still looking.

We recently purchased a 55" TCL series 6  ("Roku") TV because pretty much all of the websites that compared TVs listed it as having the "Best" picture of any of the TVs that cost less than $1,000.  However, one of the websites called it an "Energy Hog", I suspect they were comparing power consumption at the default settings.   With LED TVs the setting on how bright the backlight is can have a significant effect on energy consumption.  The default setting on the Roku TV was maximum brightness and at that setting it draws about 130 watts (varies depending on the image being displayed)
I went through and adjusted the settings to what one of the websites recommended for getting the best picture (most accurate colors, etc.) and a couple of their recommended settings were to set it for "Movie" mode and set backlight to the "Darkest" setting.  With those two changes the energy consumption dropped to ~50 watts when watching movies.

Point is, whichever TV you choose, set the backlight to the lowest setting that produces an acceptable display.

Also, if you haven't selected a TV yet, you might want to look into the 43" TCL series 5 (model 43S517 ).   The 5 Series doesn't offer quite as good a display as the 6 series (smallest series 6 is 55"), but it is still a very good display and you should be able to get the power consumption down to around 40 watts or perhaps a bit less.  The 43S517 sells for about $350 on Amazon.

Note: the 43S517 is sometimes listed as a 43S515.  Different remotes, same display.  The 515 comes with an IR line-of-site remote, the 517 uses an RF remote that includes voice control.

frank li wrote:

https://www.semiconductorstore.com/blog/2014/devices-that-can-be-powered-with-poe/657 

thank you for sharing, I learn something new every day.

Pretty soon I'll figure out that I can run everything that I need in a house off 2 100 watt solar panels

Oh that's right, I can...