Similar to Zoom, Google Meet (aka Hangouts) also has some settings you can adjust to reduce your data consumption. The following article explains more on how to enable this feature, including on other devices: Optimizing Google Meet Data Usage

Gallery view, where all videos are equally a medium size, consumes more overall bandwidth to receive. In Speaker view, only the most recent speaker’s video is large and the rest are smaller thumbnails. If you do need to see others video, you can minimize the data usage for their video feeds by using Speaker view. This can significantly reduce your data usage if you do not need to see the other participants video feed. The latest versions of the Zoom software client have a new feature that allows you to block incoming video.

Note in the screenshot we also enabled the “stop incoming video feature”.

Changing your own video feed settings can reduce the amount of data consumption for your upload, however any participant of the meeting with video enabled will still cause your computer to receive that video feed, consuming data on the download size of the connection. One way to reduce data usage is by disabling HD Video or completely disabling your camera if it’s not necessary for your meeting. Group Video (Gallery View) = 2.0GB / hourģ Use Screenshare with Thumbnail Videos = 1200MB / hourĪs you can see, data consumption for Zoom, Hangouts, and Skype varies by the service, the type of call, as well as the view you choose within a group video call. Group Video (Speaker View) = 1.5GB / hour Video/Audio Call Data Consumption (approximate)Īudio and Screensharing (no video) = 120MB / hourĪudio and Screensharing (with video thumbnail) = 240MB / hourġ to 1 Video Call (non-HD) = 1.0GB / hour

We’ve recorded data usage statistics for various types of calls and also found some ways to help reduce data usage which can help you save money on data when you are paying for cellular or satellite service. Sea-Tech has done some testing with Video and Audio calls with Zoom and Google Hangouts as well as voice calls with Skype. If you are using Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet services there are some ways to reduce the data usage. Video Conferencing consumes ALOT of data.

Zoom audio only conference call