How many watts does a PS5 use?
A PS5 draws **216.8 watts** playing a PS5 game and **46.4 watts** sitting on the home menu doing nothing. Both numbers are measured and published by Sony itself. The second one is the interesting one: a console left on the dashboard costs about **a quarter of what playing costs**, and almost nobody counts those hours.
Work it out with your own tariff
Residential sector, US average, as published in Electric Power Monthly released 23 July 2026. This is a revenue-weighted average across all residential customers and utilities, not a tariff any single household pays. In the same month the state residential averages ran from 12.35 cents in Idaho to 52.00 in Hawaii, with California at 33.25 and New York at 29.93 — a spread of more than four times. Use the figure from your own bill; the default here is a placeholder, not an answer.
| Period | Cost | Hours counted |
|---|---|---|
| One hour running | $0.04 | 1 hour |
| A full 24 hours on | $0.95 | 24 hours |
| A day of typical use | $0.32 | 8 hours |
| A month | $9.50 | 8 h/day × 30 |
| A year | $116 | 8 h/day × 365 |
132 W × 8 h ÷ 1000 = 1.06 kWh × 30¢ = $0.32 for a day of typical use.
Calculated at 132 W, the middle of the 46–217 W range. Rate defaults to 18.44¢ (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026-05) — a national average, which is wrong for you specifically, so put your own in above.
The menu is the number nobody looks at
Every article about console power quotes the gaming figure. The published table has a row underneath it that matters more to your bill, because of how consoles are actually used.
| What it is doing | Measured draw |
|---|---|
| Playing a PS5 game | 216.8 W |
| Playing a PS4 game | 92.8–107.5 W |
| 4K Blu-ray | 80.4 W |
| Streaming video | 56.3 W |
| Sitting on the home menu | 46.4 W |
| Rest mode, default | 0.31 W |
| Rest mode, everything enabled | 3.8 W |
Forty-six watts is roughly a small desk lamp, held on indefinitely, to display a grid of icons. An hour parked on the dashboard costs about a quarter of an hour of play. If the console lives on the menu while you decide what to do, or while someone else is talking, or overnight because nobody pressed anything, that time is not free and it does not feel like usage.
Rest mode is four numbers, and the default is not the one you are using
This is the part that is genuinely buried. Sony publishes four separate rest figures, not one:
- Rest, default low-power setting: 0.31 W. Effectively nothing.
- Rest, staying connected to the internet: 1.2 W.
- Rest, supplying power to the USB ports: 3.6 W.
- Rest, everything enabled: 3.8 W.
Between the default and the configuration most people end up with — controllers charging overnight, console staying online for downloads — there is a twelvefold difference. Both are published; the gap between them is not something you will find in an article about phantom power.
It is still small in absolute terms: 3.8 W held for a year is about 33 kWh. Worth knowing, not worth panicking about — and that is the honest reading, in both directions.
The same evening costs half if you play an older game
Backwards-compatible PS4 titles run at 92.8 to 107.5 watts on a PS5, against 216.8 for a native PS5 game. Same console, same evening, the draw halves depending only on what is in the drive.
Nothing follows from this about what you should play. It is here because it makes the shape of the number visible: consoles do not have a wattage, they have a workload, and the chip draws what the game asks of it.
The newer, smaller model uses more, not less
Worth stating because the intuition runs the other way. The launch PS5 measured 196.9–199.6 W playing PS5 games. The slim model currently sold measures 216.8 W. A smaller box is not a more frugal one, and the published figures say so plainly.
What this does not account for
These are the manufacturer's own measurements, and that is unusually strong. Sony publishes them under the UK Games Console Voluntary Agreement, per model and per mode, with a test date of 26 January 2024. Most consumer-electronics wattages in circulation are either the rating printed on the power supply — which is a ceiling, not a draw — or somebody's plug-meter reading of one unit.
The gaming figure is an average of three games, not a maximum. A demanding title runs above it and a menu-driven indie runs well below. Sony states the method; we are repeating it rather than smoothing it away.
Figures are for the CFI-2016, the slim model sold now. The launch models measured 196.9–199.6 W and the Pro 215.2–216.1 W playing PS5 games. If yours is not the slim, the number moves.
The band used by the calculator runs from menu to gameplay. That is deliberate: both are the console switched on. If your hours are all active play, use the top of the range; if the console idles on the dashboard, your real average sits lower and the total is smaller.
Rest mode is excluded from the hours you set. It runs in the remaining hours of the day, and at 0.31 to 3.8 W it adds between 3 and 33 kWh a year depending on your settings.
This is electricity only. It says nothing about the television it is plugged into, which on this site has a page of its own.
Sources
- 01PlayStation Ecodesign — measured power consumption by model and mode (UK Games Console Voluntary Agreement)Sony Interactive Entertainment ·
- 02Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3 — average price of electricity to ultimate customersU.S. Energy Information Administration ·
How these figures are produced: see our methodology.
Figures are calculated from published wattages and a published tariff, both dated above. They are good for comparing devices, not for predicting your bill: your rate, settings and usage all differ.