Help Desk - PS4 Rest Mode Power Consumption Pros & Cons

In this edition of PlayStation LifeStyle’s Help Desk, we take a look at one of the things a lot of PlayStation 4 owners most likely have been doing ever since they got their console a few years ago, and that’s leaving it in “rest” mode instead of turning it completely off.

While there’s quite a few benefits in leaving your PS4 in rest mode, which we’ve outlined some below, putting your PS4 in rest mode won’t save power as much as you’d assume. Just how much? Well, thanks to the fine and trustworthy folks at Digital Foundry, they’ve tested putting the original PS4, PS4 Slim and the PS4 Pro in dash mode (no games being played and just in the dashboard) and the consoles in rest mode. You can see the comparison of how each device eats up power in dash mode and in rest mode in the gallery below.

Quite surprising, no? For those who normally don’t use rest mode and just turn their consoles off after use, there are quite a few advantages to using this feature.

Pros of Leaving Your PS4 in Rest Mode:

If it’s set to auto download game patches, console firmware updates, etc., you won’t have to worry about turning your console on, and manually updating your games
Suspend and resume for games is not possible when not in rest mode, so you’ll need to load the game up from the very start and we all know how much of a drag that can be
If you have a PS Vita, you can turn on Remote Play to play your PS4 on the go or remotely, assuming your ‘net connection can handle it
You can queue games for download via a browser by going to the PlayStation Store’s web version and have it ready by the time you get home

Cons of Leaving Your PS4 in Rest Mode and Turning It Off Completely:

As can be seen in the slideshow, it eats up a lot more electricity than most people would believe
You can’t use the PS4’s suspend and resume feature, and will have to boot games from the very start
Not being able to queue games for download via a web browser
Patches, and other system and game updates not downloading and installing automatically

As you can gather from the short pros and cons, leaving the PS4 in rest mode has a lot of advantages. Now, the question here is, are you willing to spend a little more on electricity for those benefits?

Do you leave your PS4 in rest mode or turn it off completely after using it? What other advantages and disadvantages did we forget to mention? Share your thoughts in the comments, folks!

Got a tech or game question that you want help from the PSLS staff? Ask away in the comments and we’ll do the best we can to answer ’em. Heck, we might pick the best questions and answers in the comments and feature it as the next PSLS Help Desk entry.