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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
121 Comments
View All Comments
bigvlada - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
Don't consider, switch. I have been using it since Opera 12 was abandoned. It is it's spiritual successor.StormyParis - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
I tried, but too early (missing features, no Android version), so now I'm invested in Firefox and have no reason to dump it (I give them a month to fix the Android version).Tams80 - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
There is an Android version now (unless you mean you tried it too early).I'm not sure there is much point in testing it though. It's still Chromium.
And I miss proper Opera and there being more competition.
sheh - Wednesday, September 23, 2020 - link
Sadly, Vivaldi still doesn't match Opera 12.Too much focus on esoteric features, not enough on the bread and butter.
Alien88 - Sunday, September 27, 2020 - link
Trying Vivaldi today (normally use Opera) and it's generally quite nice, but it is missing one feature that really has no equal anywhere, and that's workspaces in Opera. Vivaldi has tab stacking but it's not even close to workspaces. I have workspaces set up for different topics and uses, like personal, work, interesting stuff I will look at later, etc, usually use around 5 workspaces. Once you've used this features, nothing else can really replace it, so Vivaldi really, really need to implement their version of it. Oh, and they need to fix their password import capabilities, some come in ok, others are blank, not very helpful.s.yu - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
I'm the sort that leaves dozens of tabs open for weeks and RAM is definitely an issue. 16GB pretty much solves it but with old Edge on 8GB it will eventually crash, I'm worried that if MS makes the new Edge mandatory it would crash even faster.koaschten - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
I don't care how fast a browser renders a site, as long as an ad-blocker gives me multiple times faster load times.... create sensible ads that load fast and are unintrusive and I might consider to stop blocking them.BedfordTim - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
You have hit the nail on the head. They should be testing ad blockers rather than browsers.Tomatotech - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
How much do you pay Anandtechtech for their content? It’ll be a cold day in hell before they ever do an in-depth review and comparison of ad blockers. Any worthy winner will see almost their entire readership adopting it and their ad revenue dropping even lower than it is already.I do agree such a review would be glorious to see but it would be complete economic suicide.
Tomatotech - Thursday, September 10, 2020 - link
(I’m sure the staff all use & have their own favourite ad blockers. But it’s a modern day taboo in this particular situation. )