Microsoft Edge: WAY Better Battery Life! - $h!t Manufacturers Say Ep4
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,167 words · ~5 min read
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Microsoft's been trying their darnest to make their Edge browser happen. An
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uphill battle given Internet Explorer's reputation among consumers. And I would
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say that alongside the strategically placed and I'm going to say this, snarky
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prompts that Windows 10 is always dishing out for you to make Edge your
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default browser. The juiciest peach that
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Microsoft has to entice users to jump ship is their claim that Edge offers
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better battery life than any other
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browser. But does it? In this episode of
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manufacturers say, we explore the current state of browser battery life
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and determine if Microsoft's claims constitute an epic mic drop or an epic
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ball drop.
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I by Power and MSI's new lineup of gaming laptops feature Intel 7th
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generation Core i7 processors. Check them out at the link
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below. For our test, we used four brand
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new identical Inspiron
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157559s loaned to us by Dell. Thanks,
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Dell. So from the moment these landed in our office, careful attention was paid
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to keep them as similar to one another as possible. If steam was installed in
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one machine, it had to be installed on the other three as well. So one thing we
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needed to know was with manufacturing tolerances in mind, just how identical
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are these machines? If we had a lemon,
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we needed to know about it. So, we ran PC Mark8's home conventional battery
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test on each laptop twice. And although
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there is some variability in the test results, we consider all of them to be
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within the margin of error that we've come to expect from PC Mark. And no
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machine was consistently better or worse
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than any of the others across the two tests. Next, we had to control our
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testing conditions. If one of the machines decides to update its
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bloatware value added pre-installed
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software, thanks Dell, halfway through
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an overnight run. That's just too much pee in the punch bowl for that machine's
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results to be meaningful. So, we uninstalled everything with Dell in the
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name, iced McAfee, blacked out GeForce
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Experience, locked down Windows privacy,
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and politely asked Cortana to reenact her death scene at the end of Halo 4.
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Then, having run out of puns, we disabled telemetry, set the brightness
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to 50%, and set the system volume to 15%.
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With our machines sufficiently sanitized, we were ready to move on from
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synthetic tests to reall life loads.
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Starting with Edge running on all four
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machines once again to ensure
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consistency. So, we designed our real world test to reflect actual internet
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browsing. Some social, a dash of news, a
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sprinkle of autosave, and a 6-hour stream of the 4K UL log. Pretty typical
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stuff for this time of year. And wait, what? On the very first test, we had
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machines dying up to an hour and a half
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earlier than the others, even though they're all the same laptop running in
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identical environments with the same
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browser. So, we did the same test two
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more times and got similar results. What
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gives? In order to find out if the
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inconsistencies were due to the browser or due to the machines, we would end up
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needing a lot more tests. So, we
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downloaded Chrome, Firefox, and Opera on
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each machine and ran test after test,
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rotating the browsers across the machines. And as for the results, well,
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there do seem to be some differences between units one to four with machine 3
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towing the border of dud territory, but that's far from the whole story. When we
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ran Chrome or Opera on all four machines, they died within 20 minutes of
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each other. And if we compare the best
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and worst times of individual browsers across multiple tests on the same
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machine, we see that Edge just has the
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biggest range between its lap times. But
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hold on, Lionus. Microsoft never claimed to have the most consistent battery
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life. They claimed to have the best battery life. It's a tortoise in a hair
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thing. Well, no. You hold on because we're just getting started. Not only did
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Edge not trounce the competition in our tests, it didn't even get the high
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score, Chrome did. Well, hold on again,
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Lidus, because Edge just got a huge
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battery life boost with the recent Windows Creators Update. And you guys
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didn't even use the same testing methodology that Microsoft did when they
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made these claims to begin with. You know what? you hold on even harder
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because this project took freaking forever and we actually did tests before
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and after the creators update. And
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although Edge performed very well and
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not to mention much more consistently after the update, it still didn't break
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our longest life record. And besides,
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since Microsoft's testing methodology is public, well, we recreated that one,
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too. and Edge still got
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beat. Gotta calm down here. It's conclusion time. So, prior to the
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creators update, Edge had big winners and big losers, but since then, it's
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closer to the consistently good performance that we observed from
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Chrome. Opera is also a good choice and
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it even has a battery saver mode that well didn't improve our life in our
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tests but did improve consistency. And as for Firefox, well, it's probably not
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your best bet if battery life is your number one priority. So, bottom line, at
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the time of writing, Edge no longer has,
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well, an edge when it comes to battery life, but Microsoft certainly deserves
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props for stimulating, healthy competition that benefits us all. Except
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