Cisco Linksys EA6500 Smart Wi-Fi Router Review

Linksys EA6500 Power Consumption

Power consumption by your homes electronic devices continues to be a very important issue so we have made an attempt to present some simple power consumption tests on the various routers that we had. To measure idle usage, we reset each wireless router to the default settings and plugged them with no devices connected to them. We then measured the power draw from each router at the wall with our P3 International P4400 Kill-A-Watt electric usage monitor.

Benchmark Results: Power Consumption for the Linksys EA6500 measured about the middle of the road for wireless-ac routers. The 9.7 Watts used is the same power usage that our Buffalo and Netgear AC routers used. It is interesting to note how much hungrier these 802.11ac networking devices are when compared to other legacy devices. (Click on chart for larger image)

Since most people will have their routers turned on for 24-hour a day operation, we think that examining power usage is an important benchmark. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is an important financial estimate that helps consumers direct and indirect costs of a product. In our TCO calculation we will be figuring up how much it costs to have a wireless router running per year in an idle state with the unit being installed 24-hours a day. We will be using 12.7 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) based on the bureau of labor statistics report from April 2012 showing that amount as the national average.

Benchmark Results: With the Yearly Energy Costs based on Power Consumption we see that the Wireless-AC routers are bunched together costing the consumer slightly more than a router without the latest available wireless technology. (Click on chart for larger image)