Microsoft wants to show what a profound difference a browser can make to the battery life of one’s laptop, notably how its own Edge browser is far less demanding than Google Chrome in terms of power consumption.  In what Microsoft dubbed a Microsoft Edge Experiment, rival browsers including Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera were pitted against each other in a series of tests using Surface Book laptops.

You may not be surprised that in a test conducted by Microsoft, its own browser looks pretty good. Microsoft said this is the case, as Edge was created from ground up to “prioritize power”.

With the first test, in a lab-controlled environment, Microsoft measured the actual power usage during browsing with each Surface Book using one of the browsers set to do the same activities; scrolling through social media sites, watching videos, reading articles, etc., to see which browser was more energy efficient.

Of the above Microsoft states: “Average power consumption in milliwatts for identical workloads in Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera (with battery saver mode enabled). Unless specified, all browser settings were left at their defaults.”

Secondly Microsoft took telemetry data from millions of Windows 10 machines,  which Microsoft said proves Edge is more efficient in day-to-day use than its competition.

Lastly Microsoft ran a streaming high-definition video on each Surface Book to see which device died first. Edge came out well in all tests, according to Microsoft, with results showing that the Edge browser streaming the video lasted more than three hours than the machine using Google Chrome. Similar tests on battery have been done outside of Microsoft and the results were much the same, such as was revealed in this article by The Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft rival Google had promised in 2015 that it would make its Chrome browser less of a “battery hog” and fix the bug that had been making Chrome such a deplorable, power hungry browser. Still, it seems Edge looks to be way out on front when it comes to power efficiency, and that should get better this summer on the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Microsoft delineates here on how Edge will be even more efficient with this update.

Photo credit: Microsoft