The 2020 Browser Battle: Surfing With Speed
by Brett Howse on September 10, 2020 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Software
- Browsers
- Mozilla
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Edge
HTML 5 Compatibility
Finally, to see how many HTML 5 features are supported by each browser, each one was run against http://html5test.com/ which compiles a score out of 555, with scoring being based on how many HTML5 specifications, popular draft standards, and WebGL, and IndexedDB / Web SQL. A higher score means the browser supports more of the tests, which in theory means that the browser should be more compatible with more websites, although that is certainly not always the case.
Web Browser Battery Life
It would be hard to argue with how pervasive and important the internet is, so “browsing the web” is a critical function for laptops. Gone are the days of browsing static content on Geocities and instead the web is now the home to critical business applications, communication, and of course, entertainment. Finding a few more minutes of battery life just by using a different browser might be the difference between getting through a workday, and not.
To see how each browser performed, the Surface Laptop 3 15-inch had the brightness dialed into 200 nits, and each browser was run through our quite demanding web workload until the system turned off, and then the test was repeated to ensure there were no anomalous results. All the browsers were tested at least twice, with the exception of Internet Explorer 11, which was not tested, because you should really not be using it.
One of the biggest questions going into this was what impact Microsoft would see moving from their EdgeHTML and Chakra based browser in the classic Edge, to the Chromium version. Microsoft touted their battery life significantly when Edge was the new browser on the block, and for good reason. As you can see, classic Edge provided significantly better battery life than any other browser used. When your pool of energy is a fixed size, squeezing out extra runtime is not a trivial undertaking, and Microsoft has certainly given up some battery life to provide a more compatible browser.
Looking at the Chromium based browsers, which are the new Edge, Chrome, and Opera, and they all more or less fall in the same range, with only twenty minutes of runtime between the three, but as we saw with the scripting tests, Edge was able to provide just a bit more battery life than the others.
Firefox, while competitive, is over thirty minutes behind its closest competitor. It is likely not enough of a difference to spur anyone from moving away from Firefox if they are happy with its other features, but the Mozilla team is not quite up to par in terms of energy use.
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biofrog - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Thanks, very interesting.I thought I'd try my real-life test opening a 49MB HTML log file. Time to finish loading was:
Chrome: 14 minutes 46 seconds
Firefox: 7 seconds
Edge: cant even open local files
IE: 12 seconds
Nope, still not going to use Chrome until they get that fixed. It used to work around v50-ish. At roughly 12,657 times slower than Firefox, it seems Chrome isn't feasible for my work.
Khenglish - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
Can we get a RAM usage comparison for similar tasks? Historically I used to see Chrome use the most memory, and edge classic use the least. Lately Firefox seems to be using ridiculous amounts of memory. It'd be good for a more in depth comparison.RickyBaby - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
I'll echo the sentiments of several others. My #1 concern is the ability of a browser to protect my privacy and block ads. NOTHING ELSE COMES CLOSE. Why doesn't AT or any other site respect our wishes and provide the details we actually want to know ? And, yes, you already know the answer. GOOGLE IS EVIL. Apple, MS are no different. Is it true that FF is owned by the Chinese and our data is mined and sent there ? That's what we really want to know ... along with which plug-ins work best is stopping the spying ? How about a review of TOR browser ? Yeah. Right. We get it. AT and all the other tech sites are owned by the same EVIL we are trying to avoid. Pretty much figure that I just got banned. And since I'm going down ... FB is EVIL too. Twitter is EVIL. Both ban anyone who isn't complicit to their EVIL. What the hell happened ? Speaking for the average geek ... we want our internet back and yes it was stolen from us. Thanks.The Garden Variety - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
So, other than that, Ms. Lincoln, how was the play?Tewt - Thursday, September 24, 2020 - link
I agree, RickyBaby. I think there is too much curation on the internet. The fun of discovery of new sites and ideas appears to have vanished. Now, most of my results always bring back just the top news(political, tech, life, etc) sites or retailers. It feels like there are no new discoveries. I used to be able to go back 10, 13, 20 pages and there would be a ton of different websites. Now, each page is mostly the same. That is boring and stifling.lmcd - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
None of these benchmarks would even be relevant if Mozilla had the muscle that the Chrome team does. Instead, all of our JS libraries would interop with asm.js utility libraries, and Chrome's weak optimizations there would lead to massive performance wins for Firefox.It's disgusting to me how the Chrome team gets to pick and choose the standards that win. Their selections are regularly wrong, sometimes outright harmful.
Sivar - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
I like Edge overall, but it occasionally freezes when loading a website. The browser is still responsive, the "Loading" notification appears, but that tab is permanently defunct. It will never, ever load the page. It won't respond to a refresh request. I have to close it and open the same page in another tab, which has so far always immediately loaded.This happens on both Windows 10 and iPhone, with or without extensions.
six_tymes - Friday, September 11, 2020 - link
the new edge has been the fastest browser since December of 2019.OreoCookie - Sunday, September 13, 2020 - link
Edge has replaced Chrome on my Mac. Their UI isn't as good as Safari, but it is a capable and fast browser. The only criticism — which isn't really Microsoft's fault — is that the number of ads in Youtube has exploded. That shows me *how much* Google syphoned off my personal data in return. Not cool and I am glad to suffer a tad to have a shred more privacy.GeoffreyA - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
Have been using Firefox for a few years and am quite happy with it. Used to use Chrome on the desktop, though admittedly, still on my phone (along with Opera). As for IE, with all its faults, I think many, like myself, feel a bit nostalgic towards it.