Spatial and time-resolved characteristics of a single surface dielectric barrier discharge (sDBD) actuator are experimentally and numerically investigated. The paper also focuses on the efficiency of sDBD actuators used as flow-control devices. The motivation is the need for developing a cost-effective way to optimize the balance between control performance and actuator power consumption. The study considers the steady state as often employed in experiments as well as the transient regime. Experimental methods to obtain the active power are revisited, and for the first time, the commonly used simplified phenomenological Suzen–Huang model (SHM) is used for the computation of electrical characteristics. The SHM represents fair qualitative features of the starting vortex. However, it fails when time-resolved velocity profiles are compared. Results show that even with an optimized parametrical analysis of the “tuned” plasma variables, the model is not able to fully reproduce the induced wall-jet neither spatially nor temporally. Furthermore, it underestimates the power consumption by more than 80%. The intrinsic challenge of accurately measuring the alternating current of the DBD and the instantaneous mechanical power, together with the failure of representing time-resolved velocity profiles and the underestimated electric power by the model, highlights that a better phenomenological model including gas dynamics and electric characteristics or using a fully coupled physical plasma model is required.