Battery Life: Light vs Dark Desktop Background

Is there a noticeable difference in battery life using a light (white) desktop background vs a dark desktop background?

Does the LCD actually consume more power when it has a white background vs when it has a black background? If so...how much more? (I have a x201, 12" LED)

I like the white background, but would definitely go w/ a darker background if it means using less battery & produce less heat.

 

lcd consumes more power when it has dark background, as the liquid crystal requires the most amount of electrical current to fully twist. White background requires the least amount of liquid crystal twisting, therefore requires less power.

when it is in dark background, the backlight is still on, this is noticeable with cheap LCD which allows light leakage around edge of the LCD.

This is also why letting your LCD on windows screen saver with the bopping logo, is actually not helping out in terms of power consumption or backlight longevity. It is far better off let the LCD shutdown completely to conserve power.

 

@lead_org: Very interesting. Thanks for this info. I originally thought it was just the opposite.

 

intuitively speaking this would be case, as one would relate this to the CRT screen they use to use. This is what i had thought when i got my first laptop in 2002.

Fact or Fiction?: Black Is Better than White for Energy-Efficient Screens: Scientific American

But whether black colour in LCD uses more power also depends on whether the LCD backlight dims itself, usually they don't.

 

I am so glad that I asked.....can't believe i have been doing it completely wrong all these years...

 

Just like everyone else I used to think that a dark background was better for energy conservation until I tried out the battery stretch option on power manager.
When you enable battery stretch it automatically turns your desktop background white. I was confused. But after some googling I was enlightened as to why this was.

 

Theoretically, lead_org is correct. But realistically... it won't make any noticeable difference. I would still prefer to keep a dark background and light coloured text for the ease of readability. The backlight is what consumes most of the power.

 

Read the article linked by lead_org. If you read it all the way through it isn't as simple as yes or no and I'm not sure how he came to his conclusion.

For old CRT monitors the answer is yes, black saves energy. For newer LCD screens it depends upon how it is made. For some it takes more energy to turn the screen black and block the backlight. For others, black is the normal no power state and it actually uses less. It also stated that for more of the recently made LCD/LED screens it is likely to be better to go with black as the LED backlighting is set to respond to a dark image with less backlighting and may also run black as the default state for the LCD pixels.

For a complete answer you would need to check with your screen manufacturer. Otherwise going forward it looks like black may be the more common correct answer.

 

Why exactly does this matter? What are you doing that has you looking at your desktop background while you're on battery that prevents you from just turning the screen off?

 

While lead_org is right in theory, in practice with 95% of modern laptop screens it will not matter at all - backlight consumes about ten times more power that actual matrix even on max usage. This is very easy to confirm if your laptop has built-in wattage consumption monitor (used for battery life estimation usually).
If you want to see noticeable difference, turn backlight brightness down.

 

Yeah, it's the backlight that draws most of the power.

 

Until there are backlit led grid array displays for lcd lead_org will be right.

Those current led displays are just edge lit, same ol theory as the old ones, and no local dimming.

 

this statement pretty much nails it if you're really looking to get the most battery runtime.