Microsoft Trying To Prove Chrome Is A Battery Hog

Laptops users know all too well that Chrome can be a battery hog. Even though Google has promised to improve Chrome’s battery usage the fixes don’t appear to have made major gains. Microsoft sees an opportunity in this to prove a point: that its Edge browser isn’t a battery hog. The company has conducted an experiment to show how three popular browsers perform against Microsoft Edge on similar PCs.

To prove its point, Microsoft set up four identical Surface Book laptops each running four different browsers and streaming the same video.

The laptops were fully charged and then unplugged. The Surface Book running Chrome was predictably the first to bow out after four hours and 19 minutes. Firefox folded next with five hours and 9 minutes, and Opera followed suit after six hours and 18 minutes.

Only the laptop running Microsoft Edge remains and it continues to run until seven hours and 22 minutes have passed since the test began, and that’s finally when the laptop’s battery dies. Microsoft concludes that the PC running Edge lasted 70 percent longer than the PC running Chrome, 43 percent longer than the one running Firefox, and 17 percent longer than the one with Opera.

To further cement its case, Microsoft has released aggregated telemetry data from millions of Windows 10 computers that reveal both Microsoft Edge and Firefox are more efficient than Chrome.

Microsoft clearly wants people to look at its browsers efficiency and switch over but the fact remains that it doesn’t quite offer all of the features that people get on Chrome, notwithstanding the fact that it’s part of Google’s massive ecosystem which ties in mobile devices as well.

The company says that it’s going to further improve Microsoft Edge’s power efficiency with improvements that will come with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Computers
Tags: google chrome, Microsoft Edge, Windows 10 Anniversary Update