TP-LINK TL-WDR3500 Wireless N600 Router Review – Under $50 Wireless Router!

TL-WDR3500 – Power Consumption

Power consumption by your home’s 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.

(Click for larger image)

Benchmark Results: Amazingly, the TP-Link TL-WDR3500 is the most efficient router we have tested. At 2.7 Watts, the engineers at TP-Link have set the standard in low-power or green usage. We actually had to check these numbers twice to confirm that we were getting the correct measurement!

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 consumer’s 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.

(Click for larger image)

Benchmark Results: With the low-wattage consumption of the TL-WDR3500 comes an equally inexpensive cost of use. This chart shows amazing cost savings over other routers on the market. Not only is the up-front cost of the TP-Link WDR3500 inexpensive, the long-term cost of ownership is the most reasonable out of any of our wireless routers.