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We’ve all seen measurements of consoles using raw pixel-pushing and coprocessing megahertz numbers, but one thing we haven’t seen much of is measurements as to how much power the things consume while on or off. Which one of the three do you think drinks in the most raw wattage while running?

Dean Takahasi of Mercury News took a little invention called the Kill-A-Watt to each of the current crop of consoles to measure what they consume, and I was surprised to find that the PS3 wasn’t on the top of the list. The Xbox 360 took top honors with 194 watts, the PS3 second place with 171 watts, and the Wii took the greenest and very last place with just 17 watts. I’m guessing these are measurements made when the consoles were idle, as I’d expect the PS3 to eat up more juice when being put to the test by something like Folding@Home, but the article isn’t clear on what the consoles were doing when measured.

I bought one of these Kill-A-Watt devices some time ago to profile stuff in my house but the manual isn’t that great and I couldn’t figure out how to make measurements that made sense to me. I should dig it out again and see what I can measure for various states of the PS3. That said, I’m not worried. I turn the rear power switch off on my PS3 whenever it’s not on. I’m extra careful with it when it comes to possible power outages. It’s not exactly something that’s cheap to replace.

Via Kotaku.