The point is measuring the consumption of a device while you do not need it and it is not performing any meaningful work.

Your fridge is never in that state. Even when the compressor is not working, the fridge is still functioning and performing work. It is sensing temperature and pressure and time and then making decisions based on those inputs.

Your laptop is not performing meaningful work when it is updating while you are away. It can do that in the background while you look at cat pictures.

> the fridge is still functioning and performing work. It is sensing temperature and pressure and time

I believe most fridges use bimetallic thermostats to control a relay to power the pump. And they don't sense pressure or keep track of time.

Have you ever tried to start a super old fridge or AC that you unplugged without waiting the full 3 minutes before plugging back in? It sounds like a diesel truck shutting off in your kitchen.

Modern fridges absolutely keep track of pressure and time.

No, I admit I've never powercycled a fridge nor ever seen a reason to.

Can you explain the mechanism by which a fridge unplugged then replugged a minute later sounds like a diesel truck? The compressor pumps aren't continuous duty, they spend most of the time powered off anyway.

edit: I did some web searching and the only mention of wait times before plugging in a fridge I can find is waiting a few hours before plugging in a fridge if it was stored on its side. Unless you're also flipping your fridge over when you power cycle it, I don't understand why there should be any problems.

It's not specific to fridges, you'll find more results looking for AC/compressors in general: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4695/do-air-con...

Depends on whether or not you have a fancy 'smart' fridge, in which case it could very easily be in a state where it is consuming power without performing any meaningful work. A lot of these IoT devices, while low power vs a traditional PC, are not efficient.

Measuring standby power matters where the alternate option would be to unplug the device or use an extension cord with a power switch instead of relying on an active but low-power state.

Sure, for things that you have the option to do that with and you don't mind the hassle. In cases where that isn't an option (i.e. in the case of a smart fridge) or you're not going to do that, it's still useful to know how much idle/sleep power a device consumes as you might want to either modify the device, replace or get rid of it.