Advanced options
What The TV Running Cost Calculator Works Out
- Per hour: the set's typical watts divided by 1,000 x the electricity unit rate (defaults to the current Ofgem price cap unit rate). A 55-inch LED draws around 75W, about 2p an hour. OLEDs pull meaningfully more than LEDs at the same size (self-emissive pixels versus a backlight), and each size jump adds a band of watts, so a 65-inch OLED roughly doubles a 43-inch LED.
- Per year: watts x hours watched plus about 0.5W of standby for the rest of the day, x 365. Four hours a day on the 55-inch LED is roughly 110 kWh and GBP 30 a year.
- Movie night: three hours at the hourly rate, a few pence. Streaming an evening's TV costs pennies at the screen; the data centre's share appears on no domestic bill.
- Unit rate and own wattage (advanced): use your tariff and the wattage from the energy label, whose kWh-per-1,000-hours figure is the honest comparator at purchase. The ratings slid down the alphabet when the EU rescaled the bands, the same TV dropping from A to F without using a watt more.
- Picture mode (advanced): shop or vivid mode at full brightness and HDR content can add half again over calibrated settings; the eco suite (ambient light sensor, auto power-off, backlight limits) claws it back. The settings card shows the yearly spread for your hours.
- Standby per year (advanced): the cost of the hours the set sits idle. Modern TVs themselves idle at about half a watt; older set-top boxes that never truly sleep were the classic 10 to 20 watt vampire, largely reformed in newer boxes.
- The TV corner all-in (advanced): adds the soundbar and sub, console and streaming stick while watching, and the box's standby draw, each a line of its own. The wall-switch or smart-plug audit of the TV corner is where the residual standby pennies live.
- Number of TVs (advanced): multiplies everything for a multi-screen household. The effective economy is watching the same hours on fewer simultaneous screens rather than watching less.
- Versus the TV Licence (advanced): at GBP 174.50 a year the licence out-costs the electricity of every set on the list, a comparison that reliably lands. Against the household's real heavyweights (the tumble dryer's pounds a cycle, the oven's Sunday shift) the TV is a background hum.