Microsoft Edge saves power versus Chrome (says Microsoft)

OREANDA-NEWS. June 27, 2016. If you ask Microsoft, its Edge browser is a power miser.

In a new blog post, the company claims that using the Edge browser instead of Chrome, Firefox or Opera delivers 36 percent to 53 percent more battery life for users of the Windows 10 operating system.

According to Microsoft, the tests were run in a controlled lab environment with an automated sequence of tasks like opening websites, scrolling through articles, and watching videos, using common websites like Facebook, Google, Amazon and Wikipedia.

Microsoft once ruled the browser game with Internet Explorer, the predecessor to Edge, but over the last decade it has seen a dramatic decline in usage as alternatives, especially Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, rose to prominence.

At its Build conference earlier this year, Microsoft outlined a number of improvements in the works for Edge. High on the list: technology that will let you customize the browser's behavior by, for example, installing ad-blocking extensions.

CNET hasn't tested the effects of browser use on battery life recently, so we can't verify the claims. In a hands-on evaluation last year, we preferred Edge to Internet Explorer, Microsoft's other browser, but we still liked Chrome and Firefox better.

According to ZDnet, only a quarter of Windows users are using Edge versus competitors, even though the browser is included in Windows 10 by default. The free Windows 10 Anniversary update is due next month.