We are in our new offices in Kalina. After some troublesome paperwork we finally received our high speed internet line. The modem was sold under the name of an Indian company but without any indication of where it was made. I guess, I know where it was manufactured. So do you! As do all such low cost imported products the design was not spectacular but appealing. It was compact and lightweight however the material used looked like it was what you paid for. But what really counts is how well it works. We connected it and yes it is working however within 15 minutes of operation its external surface reached 50C measured to be 22C higher than ambient. We monitored the system for a few days and observed it to be in operating between 18-22C higher than ambient. All that wasted energy is wasted Watts! Wasted Power!
This device has a rating of 6W. So, how much power could it possibly be wasting. Its difficult to get an exact figure but we would expect the device to be less than 50% efficient. Over the lifetime of such a device operating for 7 years continuously (which you would expect a modem to do), we are talking about 184 units of power. Although it might not seem much it is comparable to what you paid for the product, more importantly, perhaps 4-5 times of what little extra investment you would have made for a better designed product. Another more severe issue which you would take immediate notice when it happens, is that operating at these high temperatures reduces the reliability and stability of any electronic devices. You would expect this device to fail more often than a device operating at a lower voltage.
It triggered my curiosity and I was running around with my temperature gun measuring the temperature of each and every electronic device in my way. Nothing was spared! In particular I wanted to test my iPhone. Known to be notorious for heating up. Their glass and metal case do not help and you often have people (including myself) complaining on the how hot this device has become. For running my comparisons I operated my iPhone for over an hour to see how far it heated up. It came in a challenging act of performing some graphic intensive tasks, i.e. playing my favorite football game. Once the surface seemed fairly hot for me to touch I measured the case temperature from various angles and found that the surface was 10C higher than ambient. In retrospect the 22C rise in temperature seems quite high.
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