Thanks for the interesting write-up!

Thanks, I’ll have a look. It’s an universal mains power supply with no voltage switch.

How were you measuring the current in the power cable? Is this with a Kill-o-watt device or perhaps with a clamp meter and a line splitter?

For the current both with a line-splitter+clamp and checked with an in-line meter. For the power factor, since I don’t have any actual instrument to measure It, and I just needed a ball-park figure to discern actual consumption from a capacitor, I used this diy method: https://www.giangrandi.org/electronics/cosphi/cosphi.shtml , which measured 0.04 ( with great approximation ).

As for why there is a capacitor across the mains input […]

I have the basic on how a switching power supply work, but I was asking because it seemed weird to me that commercial appliances didn’t take any stand-by meaures to avoid “keeping the wires warm”… is this the norm?

Government care that you are in the condition to pay as much taxes as possible. Which honestly is not bad, considering how selfish humans are…