The benefits of adaptive power reconfigurability in WPAN receivers are investigated. The analysis is based on a direct-conversion IEEE 802.15.4 receiver and is focused on the analog baseband block. High-level power models are built for the baseband filter and the ADC which are, then, optimized for minimum total power dissipation to decide on the reconfiguration strategy. The optimum is reached with a first-order filter together with an ADC that is reconfigurable between 21.0 dB and 69.8 dB (corresponds to 3.2-bit and 11.3-bit ENOB). An illustrative operating schedule is derived to evaluate the possible power reduction that can be obtained through adaptive power reconfigurability. In the end, it is found that the average power dissipation can be reduced from 602 μW to 24.1 μW by using a power-reconfigurable ADC, which corresponds to a reduction by a factor of 25 (14 dB).