Netgear Nighthawk R7000 AC1900 Wireless Router Review

Netgear Nighthawk R7100: 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 routers 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: The NetgearR7000 is one of the most cost effective routers we have tested. It is interesting that for a router with double the processing power and much faster speeds than other routers on the market, the power consumption at idle should be so low. We even took a peek at the power consumption while we were testing our wireless speeds and the router didn’t really go past 11 Watts. Very impressive!

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 showing that amount as the national average.

Benchmark Results: More evidence that the Nighthawk R7000 router is cost efficient. After having the R7000 in your possession for a time, you can see how those savings add up to real money.