Patent ID: 8649698

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an image forming part that forms a toner image on a recording sheet; a fixing part that heats the toner image formed on the recording sheet to fix the toner image onto the recording sheet, said fixing part including a heating unit and a pressure roller that comes in contact with said heating unit to form a fixing nip portion through which the recording sheet is conveyed; and a controller that controls power to be supplied to said heating unit so as to keep a temperature of said heating unit at a control target temperature, wherein in a case where a new image is not formed after a fixing process is performed for the recording sheet bearing the toner image, said image forming apparatus switches to a standby mode to wait for a request for an image forming operation, wherein after finishing the fixing process, said image forming apparatus switches from the standby mode to a power saving mode where power consumption of said image forming apparatus is lower than power consumption in the standby mode, and said controller changes control of power supplied to said heating unit until said image forming apparatus switches to the power saving mode according to a temperature falling speed of said heating unit after said image forming apparatus is switched to the standby mode.