Internet

This is the Internet you spend if you watch an hour of YouTube

How much internet do you consume per watch a YouTube video? That is what we are going to deal with in this article. Sometimes it’s important to know, as you could drain your mobile data if you don’t control how much do you consume and you watch, for example, a one-hour video. You will see that it depends on several factors and you could even configure it to save data and not run out. You can take the same into account for other Streaming platforms where you go to watch videos.

Basically, consuming more or less Internet data when watching a YouTube video will depend on the image quality, as well as time. A 4K video is not the same as a 480p video, for example. Nor is it the same to see 5 minutes as 5 hours. For this article we are going to use a video that lasts an hour as an example.

How much does a YouTube video consume?

He Internet consumption of a YouTube video It will be the same if we are using a Wi-Fi network, connected by cable or through mobile data. However, it is in the latter case that we must be more careful. If you’re on a capped rate, data can run out without you realizing it.

If you enter the YouTube help page, you can see the Bit rate that the platform recommends based on quality. This is important. What does this mean? It is what allows us to calculate the amount of data you will need. For example, for 720p quality it recommends a bit rate between 1500 and 4000 Kbps. For 480 quality it recommends 500 to 2000 Kbps or for 4K quality it recommends 13,000 to 34,000 Kbps.

If we take the 720p quality, which is quite common, we can use an average of 2750 Kbps. We can translate it to 2.75 Mbps which, when divided by 8 to convert it to megabytes, would be 0.3437 megabytes per second. A minute would consume about 20.62 MB and an hour would be about 1,237 MB. Basically, an hour of YouTube video at that quality and with that average bit rate that we have put, would spend a little more than 1GB of data.

But of course, what happens if we use the maximum 4K quality? In this case, always according to YouTube recommendations, I would use an average of 23,500 Kbps for a 2160p video at 30FPS. Making the same account, we would go from 10 GB of data every hour of video playback. A significant amount if we compare it with the 720p quality.

Viruses through YouTube videos

Quality control is key

Therefore, as you can see, it is important to correctly control the playback quality of YouTube videos. If you are at home connected to Wi-Fi and have good coverage, it does not matter if you put it in 4K. You will not run out of data, since you will connect to your router with fiber optics and it does not matter if you consume more or less.

On the other hand, if you are going to connect from the phone, through mobile data, it is essential that you have watch out for video quality What are you going to put. Nowadays, thanks to 5G and 4G, you can watch 4K videos without any problems. But that can cause your fare to run out quickly. In the example we have given, you could spend 10 GB simply with one hour of video. If you have a limited rate, more or less than that capacity, you can melt it down in a while.

To control consumption, our advice is to use 480p or 720p quality. For the mobile phone it may be more than enough to watch videos correctly and you will be better controlling data consumption. This will prevent your rate from running out, without you realizing it.

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