Microsoft Edge: the war with Google Chrome continues

Microsoft Edge kicked off a full-fledged battery life war with Chrome and Opera earlier this year, and Google finally responded last week. Some original Microsoft tests showed exactly how low the laptop battery life is for Chrome, but Google’s answer was packaged in the release. by Chrome 53 with pretty sharp improvements in power consumption for video playback. Google even made a video with Surface Bookjust like Microsoft, to compare its battery life improvements over previous versions of the Chrome.

Microsoft is not convinced however that the latest update of the Google browser is much better than the previous ones. In a new blog post, Microsoft tested the battery life of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on a Surface Book with the latest versions of Chrome and Edge (from the Anniversary Update). Using the same Netflix test – a streamed video loop – Microsoft claims Edge lasted 8 hours and 47 minutes, compared to 6 hours and 3 minutes for Chrome. That figure would represent 45 percent more than Chrome, and 69 percent more than Firefox. The only browser that comes close is operating with 7 hours and 8 minutes of battery life, but Edge lasts compared to that 23 percent more.

Microsoft Edge: Better than Chrome in the test

Netflix video streaming it’s not the only way to test battery life, and there are a number of different services. “The Chrome team recently released a video where they focused on comparing the latest version of Chrome for a release over last year to demonstrate some improvements, however they don’t include other browsers in this test,” says a Microsoft spokesperson. “Because the format was so similar to our tests, we shot a second video to make a comparison between browsers, this time using their methodology: looping a video from Vimeo, instead of Netflix.” The Vimeo test once again showed that Edge outperforms Chrome for more than an hour in this respect, but the gap was clearly narrowed in this experiment. In this case, in fact, Edge only lasts 11 percent longer than its rival.

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Microsoft it also released real-world data regarding browser power consumption of millions of devices they are using Windows 10. Microsoft’s latest stats show that Edge’s power consumption is nearly half that of Google Chrome, and the company claims this is in line with its own lab tests. While Microsoft is highlighting Chrome’s poor battery performance, Google’s browser is still the most popular on the desktop. StatCounter data suggest that Chrome is still growing in popularity on the desktop, despite Microsoft’s efforts with Edge. Microsoft still has a long way to go in convincing Windows users to give up on Chrome.

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