---
title: Performance and battery
description: Establish a low-power baseline, measure playback, and add rendering features within the device's thermal budget.
---

Video decoding, scaling, shaders, display refresh rate, screen brightness, network activity, and background services all affect power use. Tune from measurements, not from a copied option list.

## Low-power baseline

1. Use the default configuration or an empty `mpv.conf`.
2. Prefer hardware decoding for supported codecs.
3. Use the classic `gpu` output path when `gpu-next` or Vulkan offers no visible benefit.
4. Disable Anime4K, HDR conversion, ambient effects, and custom shaders.
5. Play a representative file at normal brightness for several minutes.
6. Record FPS, dropped frames, decoder, battery current, and power from the statistics page.

Add one feature at a time and compare it against that baseline.

## High-impact settings

| Setting | Typical cost |
| --- | --- |
| Anime4K | Multiple GPU passes; cost rises with source and display resolution. |
| Shader chains | One or more full-frame passes for every displayed frame. |
| SDR-to-HDR | Additional color and luminance processing. |
| Ambient modes | Repeated blur, sampling, and composition around the video. |
| High-quality scalers | More GPU work during resize and chroma reconstruction. |
| Software decoding | Sustained CPU load when hardware decoding is unavailable. |
| Volume boost | Little rendering cost, but can produce audible clipping. |

## Thermal safeguards

mpvRx samples thermal headroom during playback, caps ambient shader work, and can lower Anime4K quality under pressure. It also reduces some polling while controls are hidden or playback is paused.

These safeguards reduce sustained load; they cannot make every shader chain appropriate for every device.

## Diagnose stutter

- Check whether decoding is hardware or software.
- Remove custom shaders and filters.
- Compare Vulkan and OpenGL behavior.
- Test the No Vulkan build when driver behavior points to Vulkan.
- Disable display refresh-rate switching temporarily.
- Test a local file to separate network stalls from rendering stalls.
- Include source resolution, frame rate, codec, bit depth, HDR type, variant, and dropped-frame data in a report.

For a field-by-field explanation of the diagnostics overlay and Android display
mode switching, see [Statistics and refresh rate](/docs/playback/statistics-and-refresh-rate).