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Microsoft Reproduces Google's Battery Life Test To Show Edge Beats Chrome (venturebeat.com) 132

Posted by msmash from the ego-boost dept.
Earlier this year, Microsoft said that its Edge browser was more power efficient than Google's Chrome, a claim that Google refuted with its own findings. But the debate isn't over. An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is at it again -- touting Edge as the most battery-efficient browser on Windows 10. The company has rerun its battery tests from the previous quarter using the latest versions of the major browsers, open-sourced its lab test on GitHub, and published the full methodology. But this time, Microsoft says it also replicated one of Google's tests to show that Edge lasts longer than Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
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Microsoft Reproduces Google's Battery Life Test To Show Edge Beats Chrome More

Microsoft Reproduces Google's Battery Life Test To Show Edge Beats Chrome

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  • Well, yeah (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Hum... so the browser with the most limited set of features requires less power... go figure..

  • Edge (Score:5, Informative)

    by dontbemad ( 2683011 ) on Thursday September 15, 2016 @01:33PM (#52894343)
    Say what you will about M$FT or IE or whatever, but Edge is surprisingly fast and efficient.

    I bought a tiny $80 Windows 10 tablet with around 2gb of ram and a minuscule atom processor, and Chrome will choke at just about everything (especially gmail). Edge opens quickly, browses quickly, and utilizes very little memory.

    Not shilling for Edge or Microsoft by any means, but for what its worth, they definitely improved their web browser pretty substantially.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not shilling for Edge or Microsoft by any means

      For some reason I'm reminded of a funny cartoon of a polar bear sitting among a bunch of penguins wearing a fake beak.

    • Weird, my wife's similarly-specced Chromebook browses quickly and utilizes very little memory.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jwdb ( 526327 )

        My similarly-specced Chromebook doesn't, unfortunately. If I leave a tab with gmail open for a week (because who reboots a Chromebook?), just that tab consumes almost half the RAM and slows the thing to a crawl. I semi-regularly have to open the task manager and close any tabs using more than 400 MB.

        It didn't use to, so either Chrome has become more bloated or gmail has. Considering it's not just gmail, however, I'd guess the former.

    • Not shilling for Edge or Microsoft by any means, but for what its worth, they definitely improved their web browser pretty substantially.

      If I stripped out my car's seats, dash, windows, metal panels on the rear, all the lining, removed the spare tire, speakers, and everything else that wasn't required for steering or pressing on the gas it would run faster and more efficiently too.

      That doesn't make it an improved car.

      I'll be more impressed if I could get Edge to actually work using much of the internet. I don't give a crap about it's battery life.

      • I'll be more impressed if I could get Edge to actually work using much of the internet. I don't give a crap about it's battery life.

        I'm interested to know what specific parts of the internet you are referring to. Granted, I haven't used the browser for terribly much (in case I didn't make it clear in my original post, my browser of choice is still Chrome), but I haven't noticed anything not functioning as intended.

        • Interestingly most of the internet which used to require IE7. Everything from government websites to sites which were optimised for webkit specifically of which there are plenty. The top 10 obviously play well, but beyond that every attempt to actually use edge just resulted in a pissed off user switching it out for Chrome, even on my laptop, even several version back when Chrome was an even larger CPU hog than it is now.

    • Sure, but if you want to use it to view actual web sites you'll often find yourself out of luck. Its unfortunate that websites that require Internet Explorer won't work with Edge. Thats a real problem, but then there are many other sites I require daily as part of business that allow any browser, yet still don't work with Edge. Things like iDrac, or managing vSphere environments. Edge is so poor at compatibility and rendering pages, that its simply a liability. I don't have time to enter my details into eve

  • Duh (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Of course it has better battery life, it has no features and doesn't work with many sites.

  • Pointless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Thursday September 15, 2016 @01:38PM (#52894395)

    Battery life isn't the be all and end all browser test. For me - on mutliple systems - Edge just stalls and stops randomly at the most annoying times - even if I've only got 2 or 3 tabs open. Chrome pretty much never does this.

    What good is extra battery life if I spend 20-50% more time in the browser waiting on it to do something?

    • Battery life isn't the be all and end all browser test. For me - on mutliple systems - Edge just stalls and stops randomly at the most annoying times - even if I've only got 2 or 3 tabs open. Chrome pretty much never does this.

      What good is extra battery life if I spend 20-50% more time in the browser waiting on it to do something?

      I don't like Edge a whole lot, but recently Vimeo has decided to crash in Chrome on but not in Edge. So for some training I've been doing, I've been running it in Edge. I use Chrome for everything else.

  • So Edge is the best browser on Windows 10 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday September 15, 2016 @01:38PM (#52894399)

    Great. It's a bit like being the top dog in the dump.

  • The power of un-documented API calls! I assume Microsoft has a patent on this process.

  • The Microsoft Problem Is Never Performance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alternative_right ( 4678499 ) on Thursday September 15, 2016 @01:43PM (#52894443) Homepage Journal

    Microsoft products generally perform well under the hood. The problem is the other stuff. The interface shows the signs of design by committee, and applications are configured in such a way as to manipulate us into using other Microsoft products and services. That is what we hate, because both of these interrupt the process of work, and replace it with the process of working-around-Microsoft.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Also how secure is Edge? That will be the real test.

    • I don't know if "performing well under the hood" includes programming to the Microsoft APIs, but I find the Microsoft APIs to be hideous (after suffering connecting to them for 20 years). Even when they went to dotNet they couldn't resist stinking the interfaces up with pseudo-Hungarian notation on their interfaces. Yukk. I'm sure many Slashdotters who have never worked with cleaner designs will FEEL that Microsoft has the be-all and end-all of API design. I beg to differ, and I know I'm not alone.

      Per

  • Adblock (Score:2, Informative)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 )
    Unless your browser supports some kind of adblocking it is going to lose a battery life test.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yup. [adblockplus.org]

  • Chrome has made a giant leap. Bravo! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lophophore ( 4087 ) on Thursday September 15, 2016 @01:51PM (#52894489) Homepage

    I say "bravo!" for the Chrome team. Their results are significantly better than the prior test.

    in the last test, Edge lasted 70% longer than Chrome. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    in this test, four months later, the laptop with Edge lasted only 11% longer than Chrome. If I were the Edge team, I'd be watching my back and not crowing so loudly.

    Note that they only tested on Windows 10, because Edge only runs on Windows 10.

    • If I were the Edge team, I'd be watching my back and not crowing so loudly.

      If I were the Edge team, I'd focus on general improvements to my browser and leave extremely marginal performance increases for later. A few more UI options, a few more options under the hood. Last time I tried you couldn't allow pop up exceptions. I suppose they're trying to be Apple and force people to write better websites. In the Enterprise, though, you have to deal with a range of crummy nonstandard sites and software.

  • When you have access to your competitor's source code. Microsoft should belly-up and release their's, then it will be a truly equal playing field. Oh, and they would have to port Edge to (Android) Linux where these tiny power consumption differences might actually matter.

  • I honestly don't care what Microsoft can show regarding Edge. I'm not going to use it.

    First, because Chrome has a track record of complying with standards. Microsoft IE does not. Chrome has become the de facto standard at this point. Most developers that I've talked to in the past couple of years have prioritized testing on Chrome. If you want your website to work, use Chrome. (there's some nice irony here) Second, when they had the dominant browser, it was a disaster. I'm not looking to return to t

    • First, because Chrome has a track record of complying with standards. Microsoft IE does not

      Edge is a completely standards complaint browser, written from scratch. In fact, it technically is more compliant than Chrome. (The delta is in edge cases no one cares about.)

      Chrome has become the de facto standard at this point

      It depends on your audience. If you want an executive at a Fortune 500 company to read your site (from the office), it will work in IE and Firefox, then you test Edge, then Chrome if you hav

      • Actually, I think Google has been worse.

        Ha... no. Sorry. I can't agree with that.

        Microsoft will support the framework you built on forever. Google kills projects and leaves devs high and dry.

        Whether that's good or not depends at least a little bit on perspective. If you expect Microsoft to continue supporting 20 year-old frameworks, I think you'd better brace yourself. I think a lot of the push to force Windows 10 down everyone's throats was to lessen the end-user impact when they start obsoleting a bunch of old stuff that they're not going to support anymore.

        Google spies on me. Microsoft just wanted my money.

        Oh, I wish that were true. Microsoft is spying on you too. What, you think they don't keep

    • Chrome has become the de facto standard at this point.

      This has been a bit of a problem for a while. Web pages have been popping up which state that the page has been designed to work with Chrome. As a Firefox user this reminds me a lot of the "Please use Internet Explorer x" pages of the horrendous past.

      Welcome to the new old web.

  • One of the reasons Chrome uses more power (and more memory) is because it forks a separate process for each tab you have open. That is, each tab is a separate complete instance of Chrome running in its own memory. This makes it tougher for a browser exploit on one site to access memory info on another site you have open in another tab. And it means if one site freezes or crashes, it doesn't take down all the other tabs you have open. It also dramatically increases the memory footprint and power consumpt

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Microsoft has done the same since IE 8. FireFox is the only "major" browser that considered threaded browsing too difficult to implement.

      • Firefox was in last place on these tests, but it's not clear if they used an electrolysis enabled build.
        Servo + browser.html might get them back in the game.

        • I use Firefox on Android.

          It is a Crap browser with a capital "C" there. Inferior to Chrome in every way but one: you can install plugins.

          uBlock Origin on Android? Yes, please.

          I know, I know, I should root and install a system-wide blocker... but rooting is a hassle :-/

          • Inferior to Chrome in every way but one

            How about you name any of them? I've been using Firefox on Android without any problems other than the somewhat unexpected conditions under which your browsing session isn't remembered.

            Yay anecdata!

            • It is very very slow. If I close a tab that had a few videos running, it can take up to 20 seconds until firefox actually acknowledges that the tab is closed and until it happens, other tabs won't load anything at all. It is a memory hog so on a phone with "just" 2 gigs of RAM (Galaxy S5) I get a lot of force closes. It works somewhat better on Sony phones because their premium line of phones and tablets has 3 gigs of RAM. Reflow doesn't work and hasn't for two years or so. It uses its own copy&paste ro

              • You pretty much describe my Android FF performance experience in one shot.

                It also gets into some kind of javascript loop a lot where it will stop responding.

                And of course there's the dreaded blurry scrolldown thing. Something with the way it caches the rendered page, you scroll down and everything is blurry and you have to sit there and wait 5-20 seconds for it to suddenly render it properly.

                I also have a "low" 2 gigs of RAM (Nexus 5).

                Oh, and my favorite pet peeve: in the tab list if you close the bottom-mo

  • Good (Score:2)

    by ndogg ( 158021 )

    Let's hope the Chrome team makes some improvements to turn this around.

    That's really how all this should go.

  • Microsoft Edge’s industry-leading efficiency (Score:3)

    by khz6955 ( 4502517 ) on Thursday September 15, 2016 @02:58PM (#52895009)
    Microsoft tweaks the OS to give the impression Edge uses the battery more efficiently and this gets translated into industry-leading efficiency? A better test would be to compare browsers on another Operating System.

    Microsoft Edge now gets even more out of your battery [windows.com]
  • Do people thing that battery efficiency is the primary factor in picking a browser? I've honestly never, ever heard anyone in the real world suggest that.

    Edge is kludgy to use. It doesn't share bookmarks with my Mac or my iPad or my Android Phone. The "extension" story is all but nonexistent (there appear to be a total of 13 of them). In return, what does it offer? Performance is about the same, and battery might be a little better according to the benchmarks.

    When I am on my Windows 10 gaming machi

    • The interface, such as it is, is also pretty non-intuitive. It really isn't a terribly good browser, regardless of how well it might perform on power savings.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Malc ( 1751 )

      Battery is one of the major reasons I dropped Firefox. That and memory consumption. If they had a process per tab then I could manage these better, which I can with all the other major browsers.

  • Let's not forget, Edge is managing to outperform Chrome, apparently, even while spending significant resources ratting out its users in every way Microsoft can conceive of.

    This is indeed a major accomplishment!

  • Given that most of Edge is actually integrated into Windows 10 OS. What you run as the Edge app is basically a wrapper, whereas Chorme is far more self-contained.
    If they'd have also factored in the power wastage of Windows 10 OS because of that, the results would have been much different.

  • Edge is super efficient, because nobody uses it, and nobody supports it. It accounts for 0% of the battery usage on my windows tablet.
  • I wish they fought instead about whose browser protects the user's privacy best. But being Google and Microsoft (which is trying to become Google) I guess that's not their top priority.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by donaldm ( 919619 )

      I wish they fought instead about whose browser protects the user's privacy best. But being Google and Microsoft (which is trying to become Google) I guess that's not their top priority.

      To be fair you can turn off both Chrome and Edge when you are not using a browser so you can have more privacy. You can even lock down Chrome if you are worried about privacy, it's actually very easy to do.

      A simple test will prove this. Get and install Wireshark [slashdot.org] however before you do this you will have to learn how to use it. if you can't be bothered then stop reading this now.

      OK I assume you have the basics. Run Wireshark on your OS and make sure all your network applications are not running (ie. br

  • I use Edge every now and then, and beside the extension/addon support that is still a bit in its infancy, it's a *great* browser.
    This is my "real life" experience, and keep in mind that I'm biased towards Firefox as my browser of choice - but I like to try to keep an open mind and test things out.

    1) It feels faster than Chrome or Firefox, as in its responsive.
    2) It uses as little energy as them or less, as in my laptop run out of battery later (be it because edge is partially loaded all the time or not, I d

    • 1) Its UI, especially around tab management, is trash. No way to switch tabs in last-used order, no way to see a preview of all open tabs (or even their titles) at once, no way to tell what tab opened another tab, no way to group tabs, can only re-open closed tabs in the reverse order they were closed.
      2) Its cookie management is coarse and barely present. It is very much a mobile browser in that way, and this is not a good thing. Ad-blocking extensions make this somewhat more tolerable, but it's still bad.
      3

      • If you think about it, everything's that hard to do works well.
        Everything thats easier to do isn't great (basically, UI stuff).

        Other browsers are the opposite.

  • Ignoring all the pros and cons about improvements in Edge's functionality, there is one very simple reason why I will never use it. Well, apart from not using Windows 10. I still remember what Microsoft did with IE6, and I will never give them the chance to do it again.

    They simply can't be trusted. Windows 10 is strong evidence that they haven't learned a damn thing.

  • I only care about battery life when travelling on a plane, which is exactly when I'm not using a web browser.

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