By now, it’s pretty clear that Google Chrome is a battery hog. I mean, just by using it for a little while you’ll start to experience some pretty major drops in juice, especially on your laptop whether it’s running Windows or macOS. And it appears that one of Google’s biggest competitors wants to prove it once and for all with a couple of tests…
Microsoft has released a video which demonstrates them using four laptops all running different browsers to determine which is the most efficient for your system. This is test two of two which is run by using the computers like any consumer would, like scrolling through various web pages, watching HD video, and opening different websites. Unsurprisingly, the company’s Edge browser ranks on top, however it’s a bit shocking to see the rest of the results unfold.
As you can see in the video, it looks like Edge, Firefox, and even Opera use less energy than Chrome, with each killing their operating machines in 7 hours, 22 minutes, 7 seconds, 5 hours, 9 minutes, 30 seconds, 6 hours, 18 minutes, 33 seconds, and a mere 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 50 seconds respectively. This data’s obviously intended to lure users into using Microsoft’s new built-in browser, however it’s still rather interesting to see such a test performed by such a big company.
The first test Microsoft conducted was internal, however they did release the data of millions of Windows 10-powered PCs to better prove their point which, unshockingly, displays Edge’s victory in a bar graph alongside Chrome’s defeat.
Google has stated in the past that Chrome will become more efficient in the future, however we still haven’t seen this “promise” come to pass. One of the main reasons I believe the browser isn’t good for battery life is because of the fact that Flash is still preloaded, and if you know Adobe’s world-famous plugin very well, you know that it’s both a performance and energy hog. So by having it built into a browser used by many consumers every day, it’s bound to get a pretty bad rep for draining their battery very often. However, if Google just makes the switch from Flash to HTML 5-based content, these numbers being presented will likely greatly change. But nevertheless, I’m not surprised even Firefox is better for battery life. Now all we have to do is wait for Apple to run one of these tests on the MacBook running macOS Sierra to see what we should be using on our Macs to surf the web…
Source: The Windows Blog via The Verge
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