When stacked up alongside the Xbox 360 and PS3, the Wii appears to be small and innocent, but a Carnegie Mellon PhD candidate’s research finds that the diminutive console is something of a power-hungry vampire compared to the current iterations of its competitors.

According to Destructoid, the student found that the Wii uses “significantly higher” power than the slim versions of the Xbox 360 and PS3, sucking down 550 Wh of electricity per hour of active use, compared to 125 Wh and 107 Wh per hour for the Xbox and PS3, respectively.

Those figures are based on the use of the Wii’s WiiConnect24 functionality, which allows it to receive messages from other users and notifications from Nintendo when in standby mode. With WiiConnect24 switched off, the student found, the Wii used about the same amount of energy as the Xbox or PS3. The researcher found that the Wii used 97 percent of its power when it was on standby when WiiConnect24 was in use.

This isn’t to say the Wii will run up your electric bill. The student found that even the least energy-efficient console, the launch model Xbox 360, accounted for only 1 percent of the average household’s electric bill as long as it was powered down when not in use.

If you own a Wii, Xbox 360 or PS3, what role does power consumption play in how you game?

Study: Wii isn’t necessarily ‘greener’ than Xbox 360, PS3 [Destructoid]

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