It's a win-win: The smaller and faster computers get, the less power they use. The new rankings of notebook and non-expandable desktop computers from TopTen USA exemplify the potential for energy savings through technology—many of these models lead the way, not only in minimizing energy consumption, but in qualities like speed and screen clarity. There's even a specialty gamer's notebook on the list.
TopTen issues quarterly rankings for computer energy efficiency. The laptop topping today's rankings, the Lenovo ThinkPad T430s, uses only 7.4 kilowatt hours of electricity in a year of typical use. The average comparable model uses 28 kWh per year—almost 4 times the energy. On average, TopTen-listed laptops use about half (48 percent) the energy of comparable models.
"Computers using minimal amounts of power can do everything their inefficient competition can do—and in many cases, they do it better," says Norman Dean, TopTen USA's President. "So choosing an inefficient model is just pouring money down the drain and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere."
Dean hopes the efficiency trend will continue. A regular, rapid improvement in computing power has been observed since 1965, when Intel founder Gordon Moore offered the analysis now known as "Moore's Law" tracking the rapidly increasing number of transistors that can fit on a chip. But it wasn't until a year or so ago that the correlating reduction in energy consumption was quantified by Stanford University's Jonathan Koomey and a group of colleagues. They recognized that the number of computations a computer can make using a given amount of electricity has doubled every 1.6 years since the 1940s. For consumers who value energy efficiency—like those who visit TopTenUSA.org—it's a welcome advance every time.
Along with the Lenovo and multiple entries from Apple, including its popular Retina Display laptops, TopTen's rankings included models from ASUS, HP, Dell, Samsung and others. And that gamer's special? The MSi GX60.
