Quit Chrome. Safari and Edge Are Just Better Browsers for You and Your Computer.

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“Like I need another change in my life right now!” I hear you thinking. Yet I also hear the sound of your laptop’s fan whirring away—not to mention your grumbling when you get up to find your laptop charger because your battery is dead from one too many Chrome tabs.

Updates are coming, but at least for now Google’s Chrome browser is underperforming built-in browsers like Microsoft's Edge and Apple’s Safari. Photo: Emil Lendof/The Wall Street Journal

Updates are coming, but at least for now Google’s Chrome browser is underperforming built-in browsers like Microsoft's Edge and Apple’s Safari. Photo: Emil Lendof/The Wall Street Journal

Fortunately, while Chrome has gobbled up 69% of the desktop-laptop browser market share, according to NetMarketShare, its competitors, all with single-digit percentages, have been laser-focused on kicking Chrome square in the blue dot.

Microsoft’s MSFT 0.23% 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 AAPL 1.16% 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.

Safari, left, and Edge, right, have tools for importing your Chrome bookmarks and other stuff. In Safari, File > Import From. In Edge, Settings > Import browser data. Photo: Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal

Safari, left, and Edge, right, have tools for importing your Chrome bookmarks and other stuff. In Safari, File > Import From. In Edge, Settings > Import browser data. Photo: Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal

If You Have Windows…

I could write a dissertation on browser testing and all its factors: speed, compatibility, mobile syncing, privacy, blahdy-blah-blah. I placed system performance at the top of my list because of the Chrome frustrations I’ve experienced during the lockdown, when my laptop effectively became my whole office.

On Windows, Microsoft’s Edge is a no-brainer. I don’t like how Microsoft is pushing the browser on its users, but frankly, the company hasn’t had a great browser since, like, 1996.

Across my tests, the new Edge used about 5% less RAM and processing than Chrome and Firefox. It may not sound like much, but on a Dell XPS 13, it resulted in an extra hour of battery life—and I got it in both my actual use and in a YouTube HD-video streaming test.

Mind the Battery Gap

Here's how the battery life of two popular laptops performed when using various browsers.

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Dell XPS 13 - Windows 10

MacBook Pro 13-inch

9 hours 56 mins.