Does hibernating my PC save more energy than sleeping?

July 6, 2022

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Windows has two main options for shutting down your PC without actually shutting it down: “Sleep” and “Hibernate.” There are some key differences between these two modes, but which one actually uses less electricity? Let’s find out.

What is the difference between sleep and hibernation?

Before we dive into power consumption, let’s talk about why these two modes exist separately. Neither mode completely shuts down your PC, but they do very different things.

Sleep is essentially a “low power mode.” The state of the PC is kept in memory, but the other parts of the PC are shut down. This is what allows you to very quickly resume where you left off when you turn the PC back on. Sleep mode is like a light nap.

Hibernate saves the current state to the hard drive instead of memory. When you turn the PC back on, it reloads that state into memory. Since the state is saved to the hard drive, the PC can shut down completely while continuing where it left off when powered on. However, it takes a little longer to boot from hibernation than it does from sleep.

Sleep mode should generally be used if you are going to be away for a short time, while hibernation is better for situations like going to sleep at night. Both save more power than keeping your PC on when you’re not using it.

RELATED: What is the difference between sleep and hibernation in Windows?

Which uses more energy?

You may have already guessed from the descriptions above, but hibernating saves more energy than sleeping. Is it a considerable difference? There is only one way to find out.

A PC that is hibernating supposedly uses about the same amount of power as one that is completely turned off. As mentioned, this is why it takes longer to boot. While both sleep and hibernation are still technically enabled, sleep mode is more “awake” than hibernation. That requires more power.

To test this, I connected my PC to a smart plug that has an energy meter function. When the PC is on, I tracked it using anywhere around 40W to more than 100W. In sleep mode, that dropped to about 4W. Hibernate left it all the way up 0.2W and even 0W.

Clearly, both modes conserve more power than just leaving the PC on. Sleep mode doesn’t use much power, but hibernation uses even less. That’s the mode you should use to conserve the most power. Don’t even bother shutting down your PC.