There has been some hype about Microsoft’s current advertisement campaign about the fact that their Edge browser consumes the least amount of battery power and therefore provides the longest runtime on laptop/mobile/tablet devices. I would like to share my thoughts.
- Microsoft Edge just simply works. Unless you are browsing corporate websites (which typically are not updated on any basis of frequency), it just works. The pages render fine and it is fast. This is due to the fact that it is a simple program designed to just browse the web. It has no add-ons or plugins to weigh it down. The browser is not glamorous, it doesn’t sync your settings, it has no killer features, it just simply works. Period.
- Google Chrome is horribly bloated and weighed down. When it was launched in 2008, it was lightweight and simple. Eight years later that is all completely changed. Google itself loads seemingly uncountable features that all consume resources on your computer. But there is no denying its success is agreed upon by a gigantic 60% of the world’s Internet users. Unfortunately, Google has forgotten to remain resource-friendly. All the added features and compatibility equals high resource consumption and you pay for that in the lowest battery life of all the browsers.
- Opera still has my support, but has grown stagnant over the past few years. Oh, and they still have not yet fixed the broken sync feature.
- Vivaldi is currently my browser of choice. It reminds me of the Opera that once was years ago and is very fast and feature-rich while being friendly on resources. I invite you to give it a try, especially since it is free.
Of course none of this matters to desktop users, in fact you should install all browsers on a desktop system if you have one. Laptop users have limited abilities if you want to stay mobile for long periods of time.