MyBroadband has tested how much data Disney+ consumes in South Africa and found that the video streaming service’s “Data Saver” mode does not work.<\/p>\n
We previously tested the data consumption of various streaming services<\/a><\/strong> in South Africa.<\/p>\n To ensure our results were comparable, we used the same\u00a0setup as before \u2014 streaming through Google Chrome on a Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 with a 2496\u00d71664 display.<\/p>\n For our first test, we streamed two hours\u00a0of The Book of Boba Fett<\/em> using the default “auto” setting.<\/p>\n We recorded the data consumption using Glasswire, and the 2 hours of streaming consumed 1.2 GB of data.<\/p>\n The highest resolution we could set the stream to was full HD \u2014 1080p.<\/p>\n However, given the amount of data used compared to services like Showmax that features 720p content, “auto” on Disney+ seems to default to 720p.<\/p>\n We then set the streaming quality to the lowest option, where it does not give a resolution, but only states “Data saver”.<\/p>\n After streaming another two hours we found that Disney+ had consumed another 1.2 GB \u2014 exactly the same as before.<\/p>\n To try and verify our results, we streamed for two hours on the HD (720p) setting, which is between the low and full HD settings. Once again, it used 1.2 GB.<\/p>\n While this is a reasonable data consumption for 720p “HD Ready” content, some users may want to stream using capped mobile data plans.<\/p>\n For them,\u00a0Data Saver mode is an essential feature.<\/p>\n When we tested data saving settings on other prominent streaming services, DStv went as low as 258.5 MB for two hours of streaming in its 360p mode \u2014 nearly 5 times less than Disney+ uses.<\/p>\n This may be an issue that Disney+ is still working on, as we noticed many users reporting glitchy experiences<\/strong><\/a> after its South African launch.<\/p>\n MyBroadband contacted The Walt Disney Company Africa for comment and it said it was investigating the issue.<\/p>\n