Microsoft released a video in which they were conducted a battery testing on four laptops running four most popular browsers of today: Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. The actual testing presented laptops streaming one HD video for hours and hours. The results showed that Microsoft Edge was the most battery friendly browser of them all (this was expected since Microsoft did the testing), but it is interesting that Chrome had the worst result, by far.
Although Google keeps promising that they will improve Chrome’s power consumption, it seems that their browser is still a battery hog. The results are shown below (hours, minutes, and seconds):
Microsoft Edge: 7:22:07
Opera: 6:18:33
Firefox: 5:09:30
Chrome: 4:19:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjrxOOfi54k
As you can see, the laptop running Chrome lasted almost one hour less than the one running Opera, the second worst contender. This isn’t good for Google, it just demonstrates that software giant has a lot of work to do before their browser becomes battery-friendly. Microsoft Edge lasted 70% longer than Chrome, almost doubling the battery life. Also, Microsoft stated in a blog post that “We [Microsoft] designed Microsoft Edge from the ground up to prioritize power efficiency and deliver more battery life, without any special battery saving mode or changes to the default settings.”
It is worth noting that Edge still doesn’t support extensions, unlike Chrome and Firefox, so it will interesting to see will Edge still be as efficient as its now, when extensions became available for Edge in the Anniversary Update. Microsoft promises that they will manage to keep the same level of battery optimizations. We just have to wait and see.