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I am interested in the actual (i.e., measured) power consumption of a Netgear WNDR3800 router (also known as N600 wireless dual band gigabit router)

I couldn't find any reliable indication online, and deriving it from the adapter specs (12V DC @ 2.5A) in the manual is too imprecise.
I found a value for the slightly related WNDR4000 and WNDR3700 (7 - 7.9 Watt) but I am not sure the power values are similar. In this light, the one value I did find online for the WNDR3800 says about 5 Watt, which seems unrealistically low.

Edit: I can't measure the power consumption myself, as I don't own this type of router.

Edit2: I have this router now, so I measured the power consumption and wrote the results in an answer below.

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3 Answers 3

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Decided to buy one, and was able to do some measurements (European 230V situation), so might as well report the results here (which turned out even better than I expected):

No cables connected:

  • Power adapter only, with router turned off: 0.2 Watt
  • Out of the box, no WAN (modem) or LAN ethernet cables connected: 6.3 Watt

Internet (=cable modem) connected:

  • No ethernet connection, both radios OFF : 5.0 Watt (sometimes even 4.9 Watt)
  • No ethernet connection, 2.4GHz ON, 5GHz OFF: 5.7 Watt
  • One 1G ethernet connection, 2.4GHz ON, 5GHz OFF: 6.1 Watt
  • One 1G ethernet connection, 2.4GHz ON, 5GHz ON : 6.9 Watt

I didn't really test with substantial traffic. All of the above values were without any wired or wireless traffic (except perhaps for some light background traffic).

Bottom line:

Bottom line for my situation (one 1G computer connected, 5GHz radio OFF) is 6.1 Watt, going down to 5.7 Watt when my computer goes to sleep (i.e., ethernet connection goes down as well).

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The only thing I could find was at Expert Reviews which stated the consumption to be 8 Watts. That is similar to what you've already found.

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  • Thanks, must have overlooked that as I remember scanning the expertreviews site
    – Rabarberski
    Dec 14, 2012 at 14:42
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Not really the best place to ask this.

30 Watt/hour

Edit:

Here is my explanation then apologies

watt = I x V P = I x V P = 2.5A x 12V Watt = 30

watt/h = Watt/T

As time is 1 hour it is 30/1 = 30 Watt per hour.

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  • The question is at least allowed, based on my interpretation of the FAQ. BTW: you probably mean 30 Watt (as Watt/hour doesn't make any sense), but then again 30 Watt is just the upper limit given by the power adapter rating (12 x 2.5), which is useless for the typical power consumption
    – Rabarberski
    Dec 14, 2012 at 13:34
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    Why is this "Not really the best place to ask this." We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommending it as a solution.
    – CharlieRB
    Dec 14, 2012 at 13:34
  • "Not really the best place to ask this." is commentary and doesn't belong in an answer. It's also wrong considering the question is on topic
    – Ramhound
    Dec 13, 2016 at 23:55

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