Tweaked Apple TV Offers 'Significant' but Nearly Invisible Power Savings With More Efficient Chip Designs
Following Chipworks' examination of the new A5 chip found in Apple's tweaked Apple TV, AnandTech has performed its own analysis of the device. While many of the A5 chip details have already been covered, AnandTech focuses more on the device as a whole, and interestingly finds that the internal changes have yielded a significant decrease in power consumption compared to its predecessor.
The power savings are nothing short of significant. The previous generation Apple TV wasn’t really a power hog, with platform power maxing out at around 1.6W, but the new model tops out at just a watt. Overall the power savings seem to be around 800mW across the board.
With no change to process technology, I can only assume that the reduction in power consumption came from other architectural or silicon optimizations.
Of course, AnandTech also notes that the power savings are essentially invisible to users given how little power the set-top box used to begin with.
Assuming you’re using the Apple TV for watching video 8 hours a day, every day of the year, you’d save about $0.26 per year on your power bill (assuming $0.11/kWh). You’d break even on the $99 cost of a new Apple TV in about 385 years. Maybe by then we’ll actually have a true replacement to cable TV.
AnandTech also measured Wi-Fi performance on the tweaked Apple TV given that Apple has moved to a new Broadcom Wi-Fi chip and gone back to a one-antenna layout from the two-antenna configuration used in the previous model. Testing revealed that Wi-Fi range and performance is essentially identical between the old and new hardware.
Apple's reasons for introducing a brand-new chip design for the relatively low-volume Apple TV remain unclear, with AnandTech summarizing some of the recent speculation that Apple may be trying to shave costs by stripping out unnecessary components of the A5 or testing the new chip ahead of a broader rollout in other products.
Popular Stories
Apple is expected to announce iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, and new features have already been rumored for many apps, including Apple Music, Apple Maps, Calculator, Messages, Notes, Safari, and others. Below, we recap iOS 18 rumors on a per-app basis, based on reports from MacRumors, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, and others: Apple Maps: At least two new Apple Maps features are...
With the 10th anniversary of the Apple Watch approaching, we thought it would be fun to take a look back at an interesting bit of Apple Watch history. After the Apple Watch was announced in 2014, and before it became available in 2015, Apple sent out custom Apple Watch iPad demo kiosks to retail stores. The Apple Watch and iPad units used for these devices were specially designed, had custom ...
Apple is holding at least five announcements for later in the year that will not arrive at the company's "Let loose" special event next week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. In a report detailing his expectations for Apple's upcoming event, Gurman noted that there are a total of five things that the company is holding for later in the year: AI features: While Apple may tease new...
During today's earnings call covering the second fiscal quarter of 2024, Apple CEO Tim Cook again spoke about Apple's work on generative AI. He said that Apple has "advantages" that will "differentiate" the company in the era of AI, and some "very exciting things" will be shared with customers in the near future. We continue to feel very bullish about our opportunity in generative AI. We are ...
While Apple's upcoming iPad Pro models have been expected to feature the M3 chip for over a year, recent reports have unexpectedly suggested that the new devices will instead feature the as-yet-unannounced M4 chip. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. Last week, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that he now believes there is a "strong possibility" that the upcoming iPad Pro ...
Top Rated Comments
You'd save more money by spending a couple extra seconds thinking about what you want to eat before opening the refrigerator door.
Also I agree this is probably a testbed for something Apple has in the pipeline.
.26 cents a year times 2 million people is a saving of over $500,000 in power consumption.
So like you all are saying, I'm just putting some numbers behind the large scale.
If you go by this logic there's no reason to make anything more efficient.