Browser Face-Off: Battery Life Explored
by Jarred Walton on September 11, 2009 6:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Closing Thoughts
Outside of Safari 4, which was clearly the worst browser choice for battery life under Windows, the major browsers offer similar battery life. We expected to see the largest difference on netbooks, where we thought the CPU and limited memory would influence the results; instead the opposite was true, where our netbook had nearly identical battery life with every browser we tested other than Safari 4. The AMD platform showed the most differentiation between browsers, so a switch might net you 10% or more battery life. Intel's platform doesn't show quite as much difference between browsers, but you could still get 5% more battery life.
Overall, Internet Explorer and Firefox + AdBlock consistently place near the top, along with Chrome. Opera 10 Beta 3 didn't do as well as Opera 9.6.4, and in a couple quick tests it doesn't appear that the final release of Opera 10 changes the situation at all. Opera in general - version 9 or 10 - looks like it doesn't do as well as the other major browsers. Safari is at the back, by a large margin on all three test notebooks. We suspect that Safari 4 does better under OS X, however, so the poor Windows result probably won't matter to most Safari users.
If you're not set on using a specific browser, battery life might be enough of a consideration to get you to try something new, but most users will probably be more concerned with features and compatibility. Based on user statistics, however, the most popular browsers are already the best choices for battery life, so change may not even be necessary. If you're one of many already using IE8, despite detractors it looks to be a good balance of features, performance, and battery life.
Finally, we're always open for suggestions on other tests you might like to see us run. If you'd like to see more of this sort of testing, let us know in the comments section.
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Nihility - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
I guess IE8 can still be good for some things (besides being the only browser that displays my bank's website properly).I'm also surprised by how big of an impact web browsing (heavy) in general has on power usage. Maybe we can make a push for leaner "green" websites. Sites that use a minimal streamlined design without too much eye candy (not just basic html).
This was a good article.
I wonder why you didn't benchmark Chrome 4.0 and Firefox 3.6. Yes they're betas (alphas/pres) but they're generally stable an a large chunk of the enthusiast community is using them. And if they show any improvident over the previous versions I would expect even more to migrate to them.
RamarC - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
I've never found browser speed really that important. There's a point when it's fast enough and saving 0.5s doesn't really matter to me. I generally use IE8 and Chrome and can't really say that one is faster than the other but it's reassuring to know that neither is needlessly shortening my battery life just to win 'performance' bragging rights.JarredWalton - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
I started testing this a few weeks back and just went with the major releases. Opera was the exception, where I tested 10b3. I don't have the 1005HA any more so I can't test that, but I can run some tests on the two Gateway setups. I'll try to do that this weekend and add results.hechacker1 - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
Does the Power Saver profile really save battery life for bursty web browsing? I thought CPU's are most efficient when they can clock up to 100% to quickly finish the task and go back to sleep. At 50% they could be taking 50% longer but at a lower voltage than max? (Probably more complicated depending on multiplier and voltage ratios).JarredWalton - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
My tests indicate that the battery life improved by about 6% with "Power Saver" instead of "Balanced". That's only on three laptops, but it was consistent so I ran all of the tests under that mode. I would assume the cause may be that web traffic doesn't really need 100% CPU most of the time.Voldenuit - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
I have Opera 10 + flashblock on by default on my laptop since I don't care to have flash waste my processor cycles (and battery) unless it's something I specifically want to see.I understand it's a lot harder to benchmark this scenario (perhaps you could turn flashblock on then off for 50% of the test via a script to emulate selective flash loading), but I am curious to see how it shapes up. Anecdotally, I find I get 20-30 minutes more battery life on my thinkpad X300 with flashblock on, but then I'm doing more than just browsing on the laptop in this time.
neogodless - Monday, September 14, 2009 - link
"If there is interest, we may look at extending this testing two[/] other laptops in the future"Googer - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
These tests leave out Opera's ad filtering and thus leaves out a directo comparioson/competitor to Firefox+AdblockJarredWalton - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
I would assume not having Flash at all (or not playing it by default) would improve battery life by a fair amount. I'll see if I can do some tests with no Flash (or a Flash blocking plug-in) to see if it makes a difference. If it moves the content more to the "Light" end of the spectrum, that could make for a difference of up to 33%.therealnickdanger - Saturday, September 12, 2009 - link
I'd be really interested to see the impact of using a modified HOSTS file would have on battery life:http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm">http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm