There's been a lot of discussion about the energy saving features on Xbox over the past few years, and how they initially started out to be quite confusing on Xbox Series X|S, with Microsoft making gradual improvements along the way.
Now, Microsoft is making yet another improvement in the form of a brand-new menu screen for "power options", which renames "energy saver" and "standby" to "shut-down" and "sleep" respectively, and also now indicates how much power your console will use while turned off (depending on the power option you've chosen).
As always, this new energy saving feature is rolling out first to members of the Xbox Insider program, but it probably won't be too long until it rolls out to the wider public as well.
Back in early September, we published a report about how important "energy saver" (or "shut-down") mode could be for your bills in the long run, as it uses around 26 times less energy than the "standby" (or "sleep") mode right now:
Liking the look of this new menu? What power option do you use right now? Tell us below.
Comments 23
Energy saver is a no brainer to me. With quick resume and a fast boot up screen it doesn't make sense to burn 26x as much energy for a couple extra seconds of time saved.
I stick with Energy Saver when I can, but to be honest I use Standby quite a lot as well - it's what I use to download new games overnight on a slow connection. No other way to do it unfortunately.
StandBy (Sleep)
Few things more satisfying than getting home to a brand new game ready to go
You all know the Xbox downloads games even in Energy Saver right? I have used the Xbox app to push games to the console in Energy Saving mode a few times. The caveat is that the downloads don't start right away.
Energy Saver periodically kicks on to check for updates, etc. When that happens, any queued downloads for games will then fire off. How it differs from Standby is that Standby is like "always online" while Energy Saver isn't (unless there is an active download)
EDIT: NOT CORRECT WITH CURRENT FIRMWARE - KEEPING COMMENT FOR CONTEXTUAL PURPOSES
Always have used the Shutdown fully option - even before they added the 'updates' to this mode too now. I use the equivalent power mode on my PS5 too...
I used to use standby, but now with this "gestures at everything" can't really afford that
@Dr_Luigi Very good suggestion!
@GamingFan4Lyf It never seems to work properly for me if I download games that way. I wake up to downloads that are only partially complete... maybe I need to try it again at some point.
It's frustrating that Energy saver doesn't seem to download new games from the app or website. i.e. you get home and they are not ready to go. If this worked I would use Energy saver more often. Also would be be good to choose each on shutdown, sometimes you know you will be back in a few hours other times not for a few days. This shouldn't be buried in settings.
User interface should be designed around a real user experience.
I use energy saver it turns its self on in the middle of the night about 4am and updates my console and games in the middle of the night then turns its self off brilliant
what they should do if they really want to save energy is actually power of external usb drives. the light on mine is on constantly 2 4hrs a day 7 days a week. It only fully turns of an external drive if its media not games
I always complete shut down my consoles. I hate that this option is hidden in the settings somewhere and there is no why to set this as default.
I wish I can shutdown my xbox series x without going through the menu.
I found the power settings quite confusing jumping into Xbox for the first time, so I quite welcome this renaming and also an update to that settings page.
@GamingFan4Lyf I did not know that. I new about updates in Energy Saver but I didn't know about it picking up new downloads that were queued. Thanks for sharing.
@Blue_Rover @FraserG One thing I should probably caveat: I can't seem to get downloads to work from the Game Pass App when using Energy Saver; but if I use the Xbox App to download the game I want, it works. The Game Pass App will error almost instantly.
I just hit the download button and I get a "Your download has started" alert on my phone after a while.
I have an iPhone if it makes a difference.
That's even more confusing because neither one of them are the "Full Shut Down Option"
You should literally just be able to long press the home button at any time and be able to choose:
"Full Shutdown"
"Energy Saver"
"Sleep/Standby"
dont think ive ever actually turned off my xbox i leave it to turn off by itself after 1 hour
@Blue_Rover @FraserG I might have spoken too soon on that - my apologies.
I tried queuing up a download and it's been sitting for way longer than I ever remember.
I forgot that the particular Firmware version I had on there was a couple steps above Alpha Skip Ahead. I only recently switched back to standard commercial firmware after my Xbox became possessed and booted up randomly throughout the day.
So either the feature is coming, or due to the nature of my firmware requiring that I get regular updates meant that my Xbox did things differently than a standard commercial Xbox.
That's kind of a bummer because it was a nice feature to have....
Sleep. Can't remote play otherwise.
Well I like the new names, it's more in line with computers.
Until remote play works in shutdown, it's a no go. Rp barely works from sleep, as it is....
Energy Saver for me. Even if it's not really downloading stuff like it said it should it's still the best option for me. When it comes to start-up there's no real difference between the two, but there's a tangible money saving in power.
One thing I saw recently is how much power a Series X uses when streaming video. While I game a fair amount the majority of time using my Xbox is watching Youtube, Netflix, etc. This uses a lot more power than a Streaming stick or Smart TV does.
So to save on power (aka money) then I think I'm going to stop using it for anything but gaming, and use other, more efficient, devices I have for other stuff.
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