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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mode_13h - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
> I thought the browser hair pulling and pinching fight ended in the previous decade.Yeah, because web technologies haven't changed at all, in the past 10 years.
Maybe you didn't know this, but benchmarking CPUs and GPUs was a thing back in the 90's, also. Just because people did it before doesn't mean it's not still relevant.
Seriously, if you didn't find the subject interesting, why'd you even clack on the article? Just so you could grace us with your snark? No thanks. That's something we can do quite well without!
I really appreciated the article. I was looking for something like it, a few months ago. If anything, I wish it went even deeper, delving into areas like multithreading and memory usage.
hlovatt - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
It would be interesting to repeat on a Mac to see how Safari stacked up. I think Edge is available and Chrome and Firefox are.eek2121 - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
All of the browsers are available on the mac OS.I use Edge and it is insanely fast.
Showtime - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
So you'd say Edge is faster than Safari, or are they all insanely fast?Retycint - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Subjectively, Safari feels much faster than firefox/edge on my hackintosh. Safari scrolling and window resizing are perfectly smooth whereas the other two browsers would have occasional stuttering. Safari also scores higher in the browserbench speedometer benchmarkskavi - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Safari on Catalina definitely gets you a much higher Speedometer 2.0 score than in Chrome. That's all I've tested though.Kangal - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Safari is still the king on OS X (aka macOS).It may not be the prettiest, or have the most features, or necessarily be the absolute fastest, but it's very very smooth and the battery life is unparalleled. To the point, where little to no other Windows laptop can match.
...with that said, I use Firefox because last year there was a major update to Firefox that improved everything tremendously AND because I accidentally updated to Catalina. It broke my extensions for Adblocking in Safari. And my 32-bit Applications no longer run. I'm too lazy to roll back, and I'm just putting up with it. So yeah, stay on High Sierra for as long as you can manage. The handful few of iPad Apps that are now supported by Catalina, and the buggier new Safari browser are simply not worth the trade-off. Especially for anyone with a Late 2015 Retina MacBook Pro 13/15, the gold standard of Macs.
cheapodev - Monday, September 21, 2020 - link
You're just like me!!! I have a late 2015 15" Macbook Pro and I will remain on High Sierra for as long as I can. I'm not giving up my older Safari with the better browser extension support, they're not taking away my fully functional ublock! My major issue is that since upgrading from Sierra to High Sierra, I have to do a reboot from time to time or else WindowServer will keep sucking up RAM and hard crash my laptop.I will say the smaller bezels and lighter weight of the 16" macbook pros is making me real jealous. I'm going to hold out for the Apple SOC Macbook Pro though.
tipoo - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Yeah I'd love to see Safari tested, especially on Big Sur, with their eyebrow raising claims that it renders pages 50% faster than Chrome.ABR - Saturday, September 12, 2020 - link
This. I know Windows is still king, but yes, I stopped reading when it got to Safari - "not tested".