Apparently, Teams is now 50% more power efficient than it was in June 2020.

Have you noticed any difference?

In a blog post by Robert Aichner, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft in the Intelligent Communication and Conversation Cloud (IC3) group, the company has been explained how it achieved these impressive gains.

Microsoft says this not only helps in energy savings but also helps create a good experience on Windows devices using lower-end hardware:

In addition to reduced energy costs, these optimizations lower the burden on an organization’s hardware and improve the consistency and efficiency of Teams meetings and calling experiences across devices.

One of the challenges brought on by the ubiquity of Teams is the need to create equitable experiences across an incredibly diverse Windows device ecosystem. We’re committed to ensuring great calling and meeting experiences for users on low-end hardware as well as those on high-end workstations and high-resolution monitors.

In brief, Microsoft has worked on:

Camera optimizations to reduce CPU loads
Improving Teams’ video re-scaling when working with different resolution group calls
GPU-based hardware acceleration