Charging your iPad for a year would cost you less than a cup of coffee

Apple’s brand new third-generation iPad stands out in the tablet world - it’s not only the best selling tablet, it not only has a mind-blowing 2048x1536-pixel display, but it also has the best battery life as a standalone tablet. Good, but when you learn that the battery inside it is of a massive 11,666mAh capacity, you start wondering whether charging the device actually doesn’t cost you a significant amount per year.

Turns out, the answer is a resounding no. “That coffee you’re drinking while gazing at your iPad? It cost more than all the electricity needed to run those games, emails, videos and news stories for a year,” a study by the non-profit Electric Power Research institute concluded.

The exact annual amount comes to a mere $1.36. The usage was measured under the assumption that users would charge the iPad every other day - pretty reasonable given the tablet’s 10-hour battery life - so that over one year the iPad consumes 11.86 kilowatts of electricity.

That’s actually less than a 60-watt fluorescent bulb that would cost you $1.61. And if you compare it to a traditional desktop PC the difference is 20 times in favor of the iPad. Yearly, powering up your desktop computer costs an average $28.21. The average refrigerator sets you back $65.72 per year.

So even if the number of iPads triples from the 67 million now in use, the world would just need one small power plant to power them all. But the environmental effect of switching from a PC to an iPad completely (you judge if that’s viable) would definitely be noticeable.

The Electric Power Research institute is now conducting a study on whether the tablet boom is increasing or actually reducing overall power consumption.

source: AP via parislemon