How much does it cost to run a 65 W work laptop? Remote work power math
A 65 W ultrabook running 8 hours a day at a realistic 60% load costs about $20.52 a year at $0.18/kWh, $1.71 a month. That's 114 kWh annually, the electricity of about four loads of laundry.
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How this is calculated
65 W is the typical USB-C / Thunderbolt charger rating for ultrabooks like the 13" MacBook Air, Dell XPS 13, ThinkPad X1, and similar. Actual draw is almost always lower: 10-25 W in normal office work, briefly up to 40-55 W when compiling, transcoding, or running a Teams call with battery saver turned off. A 30 W TDP Mac silicon chip can spend entire workdays averaging 8-12 W, making these machines roughly 5× more efficient than an equivalent gaming PC used for the same tasks.
Verdict
$21 a year is a rounding error on any office's IT budget. For remote workers covering their own electricity, the difference between a 65 W ultrabook and a 500 W desktop working the same hours is about $130/year, not negligible over a 3-year deployment.
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Frequently asked questions
How much electricity does a standard office laptop use?
Does a fast charger use more electricity than a slow charger?
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