Safari and Edge Offer Performance and Battery Life Improvements Over Chrome ⇥ wsj.com

Joanna Stern, Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft’s new Edge browser, rolling out to Windows 10 machines this summer and available now for download on a Mac, is based on Chromium, the same underlying technology as Chrome — yet it uses less of your Windows computer’s RAM and battery. An independent, Mozilla’s Firefox, the Bernie Sanders of browsers, now puts privacy front and center.

Meanwhile, Apple’s built-in Safari browser has the best blend of privacy, performance and battery to offer on Macs, and it’s only getting better this fall with MacOS Big Sur.

So what do I suggest after weeks of testing? Get serious with one of these other options, or — if you have to stick it out — work through your Chrome issues by adjusting some settings. Google promises big performance improvements in a few months.

No matter how much I prefer using native software, so much of my day still involves spending hours inside a web browser. The Mac that I use away from my desk is a nearly eight year old MacBook Air from which I manage to extract at least four hours of on-battery use — primarily, it seems, because I use Safari rather than Chrome. I am sure there are some websites that really do require Chrome to work properly but, for most, switching my user agent to Chrome is sufficient.

See Also: Beth Dakin and Ronak Shah of the Safari team appeared on the Changelog podcast to discuss Big Sur improvements.