Belkin Conserve lineup will make you feel even worse about all the electricity you're wasting
By Laura June 
posted June 17th 2010 1:21PM
posted June 17th 2010 1:21PM
Belkin's just made four new Conserve products available for pre-order. The Conserve Insight tracks your actual devices' electrical usage and tells you how much they cost you on a yearly basis. It also calculates CO2 emissions produced by usage of a given device on either a monthly or yearly basis. The Conserve Smart AV is a greener power strip with five regular outlets and one green outlet for your television, which can auto-detect the power state of your teevee and turn off your peripherals. The conserve Valet is a four device capacity charging station which turns off automatically once devices are finished juicing up. Finally, the Conserve Socket is plugged into your wall outlet and boasts a timer for automatic power offs. The Conserve products will all ship mid-July, and they range in price from $9.99 to $39.99. Gallery of all four devices below.
thats pretty cool. i always wondered how much my 1kW PSU on my computer actually consumes
@wako Meh, better to get a UPS with this functionality.
Unclean power and brownouts can damage some devices, and losing your work thanks to a brief power blip sucks.
@wako A LOT!
@wako
There's not a system in existence that needs 1kW. Congrats on an educated purchase.
@wako
P.S. The PSU only uses what your components are drawing. If you parts use 400w then this is the same on an 600w PSU and a 1kW PSU. The only other factor is its efficiency.
@AdamSpruijt
is it summer already? i hate it when kids get out of school and have no homework and get on the internet. you always have these dumb kids going on the internet trying to prove they are smart with things that are common knowledge
@AdamSpruijt Dude just wants to see how much peak power he's actually using compared to his PSU's theoretical capacity (which its rated for in an ice-box most of the time and isn't overkill for some multi-GPU setups, homeslice).
Does the display give a readout how much energy it's wasting as well?
@rutter9 I have one of the original Belkin Conserve units that has a built-in RF radio that listens for a signal from a battery-powered wall switch to turn itself off and on.
I wondered exactly how much power was required for that feature, so I hooked it up to a Kill A Watt to discover it was... 0w. It didn't even register (and the Kill A Watt is fairly sensitive).
I'm sure it's the same case with their energy monitor.
Nice version of the Kill-A-Watt basically. I approve.
@liquidkernel Took the words right out of my mou^H^H^H finger tips.
Why pay $40 for this when you can get a Kill-A-Watt for usually $19 at most places?
@benr The one in the picture wont require you to bend over to read it. Lazy you may say, but I say it's more ergonomic! What I can't stand is the CO2 emission estimator. Some of us actually draw power from renewable resources... I also can't wait to punch the first guy in the face when I hear "I'm saving 30lbs of CO2 in the atmosphere lahdehdah." It's going to be like those morons who say "I have the latest Intel Processor. It's 2Ghz which is blazing fast!"
@Honis
I was totally feeling you, right up until the processor quip. I think I'm missing something.
@Honis i just cant stand the CO2 estimator because its a piece of technology i just dont care about. If anything, i would be proud of myself if my electronics produced 1 ton of CO2.
It looks like the digits don't go high enough - a 3rd column is needed.
@Don Corleone
I thought so too, but I think they just drop the decimal point when it's over $100. That way they can report in thousands how much my entertainment options are costing you.
Cool,
Now I can ensure that my carbon footprint is way above average at all times and laugh at people who thing the climate natural changing is going to kill us all!
@kjb434
Laugh all you like. There are a lot more reasons to use energy wisely than just climate change (which is happening, with or without your head in the sand).
@kjb434 Haha!!! we need to send Al Gore a few so we can see how much he uses on that new mansion he bought by scamming all those greenies money!!
@JamesR
My head is only in the sand when they air Mohammed on Family Guy.
@JamesR
My head isn't in the sand. Climate change is happening. We just didn't have anything to do with it just like it has been since the dawn of time.
I still haven't had a man-made climate change believer explain how the Vikings inhabited and farmed vast prairies that don't exist today because it is under ice in Greenland.
As long as I pay for the energy I use, I can use as much as I want. It's a simple product of supply and demand. If I want more, then someone will have to make it. If there isn't much there, then price goes up.
This product is for people who let guilt about things that aren't necessary run their lives.
@kjb434
I'm with you. The sun is much more powerful when it comes to altering our climate than all humanity, over the course of a year. Some study I read...
@kjb434 "This product is for people who let guilt about things that aren't necessary run their lives."
No, this product is for people who want to figure exactly what each item they're using is costing them, and come up with ways to reduce usage and save money. Not everyone just blindly pays whatever their electric company charges them every month; some of us like to save money for more important things.
@kjb434 Yeah, and you can laugh at all the kids and their doubled asthma rates and health problems with all the pollution you're proudly producing!
Just don't stick this to the outlet connecting to your new GeForce 480M equipped laptop, it needs all the juice your outlet can handle.
"Belkin Conserve lineup will make you feel even worse about all the electricity you're wasting"
waste is subjective imo.
@BrianH Yup.
I'm not "wasting" anything.
And if Engadget thinks I am. I definitely don't feel bad about it.
These actually seem useful and reasonably priced...two features not often included on a "green" product/gadget.
i've always thought the american socket design looked like a terrified face.
now i know why...
How much does this cost to run? Does its reading include the energy it's using? Seems like a false economy to me when switching the damn thing off is equally effective.
@beatupunit The answer is "next to nothing". I doubt if the energy monitor and LCD readout even approach consuming a single watt.
Think of it as similar to one of those watch-battery powered calculators you have in the junk drawer. You know, the one that still runs off the tiny battery after 5 years of neglect.
The kids are gonna be pissed when you plug this in and turning off the TV powers off their game console that was left intentionally on because the game they are playing doesn't have frequent enough of save points.
Hey now that I think about it, I wonder how much power is wasted in the world due to lack of save points? I think it is time for a green gaming initiative (mostly because I can't stand games without frequent save points)
Or feel better now that i can see all the exp points i'm getting!
I wish they'd make a "networked" Conserve Insight... plug everything into the electric sockets with one "central hub" that the others communicate to and let you know how much is being used throughout your apartment, house, etc, then either the hub has the display like this one, and/or you go to a website (built in or served by a company) and it tells you everything.
What the heck is that thing on the last photo?!
@nutmac Most people would call it a curling iron, since its a round cylinder that's only purpose is to generate heat to curl hair it probably uses a lot of it.
[Not wasting your money on the] Belkin Conserve lineup will make you feel even worse blissfully unaware about all the electricity you're wasting.
I didn't get my strikethrough on that last one... Let's try that again with just edits:
Not wasting your money on the Belkin Conserve lineup will make you blissfully unaware about all the electricity you're wasting.
Not able to pre-order. The link to amazon is erroring out.
So when you just want to listen to a CD/mp3 you have to turn on the TV, otherwise nothing works. Brilliant!
No homeplug? Would be much more attractive if I could collect all the data from the sensors in one place.
Wait, you think I'm going to PAY you so that I can feel guilty about the electronics that I'm using? Good luck with that one...
@Guardius It helps you determine what you can replace with units that are more energy efficient, and lets you analyze where it might make sense to add a surge protector you turn off.
For instance, my Kill A Watt let me know my home theater cost me about $50 a year in electricity drawn when all the devices were off!
I know this sounds silly, but I think Belkin does some pretty innovative things with surge protectors. I have a three-outlet Belkin mini surge protector that features two USB ports and two of the original Belkin Conserve surge protectors that allowed you to turn the power strip using a remote switch. I love them all!
I have my eye on that energy monitor now! I have a Kill A Watt, but it's often awkward to read if my wall outlets are in a confined or dark place. Having that wired monitor with big LCD readout attached to the cord is a killer feature!