A study by BBC calls into question the claim that surfing in dark mode is better for your laptop or smartphone battery. Screen brightness has a much bigger impact.
Light or dark mode: it’s a perennial debate even on the ITdaily editorial staff. Many websites and applications today offer the option to turn a page dark. Proponents of dark mode like to refer to the fact that, in addition to being more pleasant to the eyes, it is better for your device’s battery. But is that really the case?
A research team from British public broadcaster BBC took the test, and found that dark mode can actually be more taxing on the battery in some cases. Whether you surf in light or dark mode is not the determining factor. The brighter you set the screen has a much bigger impact on the battery.
Clarity prevails
Eighty percent of the participants in the trial set the screen brightness much higher in dark mode, so they just used more energy. This is in line with previous studies. Switching to dark mode only has an impact if you set your screen brightness to its maximum level. Turning down the brightness has more of an effect on the battery.
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It’s great that many of us are looking for ways to be more environmentally friendly. But some of the most common sustainability recommendations are too simplistic, to the point that many of them just don’t work as intended – or in the case of dark mode, actually use more energy,” one of the researchers told The Register.
Further, the study could find no correlation between the speed of a Web site or the amount of data a Web site sends on energy consumption. The results are described in a paper.