At the start of this experiment, our individual hypotheses were:

• Apple laptops would use less power than technologically similar PC laptops.
• Blackberries (Research in Motion) would use less power than both the iPhone (Apple) and the Droid (Motorola).
• The iPad and netbook would use equal (or extremely similar) amounts of power.

Which then led to the overarching hypothesis:

• Apple products would use less overall power than rivaling products.

Using the WattsUp Pro, we measured the power output of individual products while they were plugged into a power source. Each product was measured at rest (off/in sleep mode) for 1-2 minutes, then the product was turned back on and used for 2-4 minutes, doing normal daily tasks, such as making calls (on phones) and web browsing (on both phones and computers). Power usage data was then plotted and stored on the WattsUp Pro software.

For mobile phones, we found that the blackberry used the most power, compared to the Droid and the iPhone, which used approximately 3 watts and 5.7 watts on average, respectively. With laptops, the MacBook and PC used between 58-64 watts and 61-62 watts, respectively. While MacBook power usage fluctuated more than the PC, their average power outputs were similar.

The mobile phone results were the most surprising, because we expected the phones that used touch screens to use much more power than the Blackberry, which has a screen and has “QWERTY” keyboard for typing. A possible cause for these results are the internal parts – it’s possible that the Blackberry parts are less power efficient because the company that manufactures them are not based in the United States, while Droids and iPhones both come from American companies.

A large blunder in our project was our inability to measure the power output of mini-computers. Due to the general unavailability of tablet computers (specifically the iPad), we were unable to measure its power output; we were, however, able to measure the output of a PC netbook computer, and the results can be found on our previous post. Other possible confounds in this experiment was be the internal hardware (other than the standard hard drive and RAM) of the Apple products and other products.

A conclusion that we can draw from these results is that Macs are no better than PCs, power wise. If we looked at pure energy costs, using each computer would most likely cost the same. However, the MacBook may be the better buy because Macs can be used for a longer time with every charge (~5-7 hours, versus 2-3 hours on most PCs).