IE8 beats Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari in battery

[7Dreams]

When you think about benchmarking a browser, you typically consider speed, as well as CPU and memory usage. What about battery life, though? Laptop sales are outpacing desktop sales after all, so it only makes sense to choose software based on battery life, in addition to other factors and criteria. AnandTech tested a Gateway laptop with an AMD processor, a Gateway laptop with an AMD processor, and the Asus Eee PC netbook to compare battery life while running Internet Explorer 8, Firefox + AdBlock, Chrome 2, Firefox 3.5.2., Opera 9.64, Opera 10.0b3, and Safari 4. The two Gateways were running Windows Vista, while the Eee PC was running Windows XP SP3. Simple webpages were tested, as well as ones with Flash.

Overall, IE8 performed the best. Here are the test results:

Above are the results when using an AMD processor; IE8 wins. See page three to see the results when using an Intel processor (IE8 wins again) and page four for the netbook results (Chrome 2 comes out on top, while IE8 takes second).

Here's the conclusion of the report:

Overall, Internet Explorer and Firefox + AdBlock consistently place near the top, with Chrome following closely behind. 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.
Based on these results, we can see that if you use your laptop primarily for Web browsing, you can save precious minutes on your how long you can use your computer. Battery life is, however, just one factor. We have to wonder how the results would look if browsers were tested for efficiency: which browser could display the most complete webpages before the battery ran out?

Source: IE8 beats Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari in battery life - Ars Technica

 

[John12]

That's really cool, I'm actually trying to download IE8 right now but you seem to have to pay for this software?

 

[Slimy]

That's really cool, I'm actually trying to download IE8 right now but you seem to have to pay for this software?

No, IE8 is free, just like any browser.

 

[7Dreams]

IE8 is free.

 

[John12]

My bad, I just downloaded from here.
IE8.MSN.com

IE8 is free.

 

[7Dreams]

oh ok

 

[bloke]

i was doing some testing myself last night with ie8(32bit) and firefox 3.5.3 (my default browser) on speedtest.net and i ran test after test immidiately swapping from browser to browser as soon as one would finish, but every time i done the test in ie8 after firefox finished, ie8 would be around 800kbyte/s, as soon as ie8 would finish i flip back to firefox run the test and i was getting double+ of whatever ie8 would get. i done this test for about 30mins with the same results over and over again. i tried altering settings in ie8 to attemp to improve the connection but still no improvement, firefox just kept slaughtering ie8 connection speeds.

i know its a bit off subject as you are comparing battery life but maybe this could be something to do with why ie8 has the least battery consumption, it uses less bandwidth than you actually have? and yes i realize it depends on the time (traffic) but the tests were done exactly one after another like i stated above, on the same website, in the same conditions, both browsers only had 1 tab open ect.

this was my best result in Fox 3.5.3


nice comparison though, but i will stick with my orange fox on any system.

 

[Firestrider]

Is IE8 running with InPrivate filtering? It seems if Firefox uses less power with AdBlock Plus then IE8 would use less power with InPrivate filtering.

I would love to see efficiency results factoring in time to render top sites and total energy consumed for the test. If a page loads twice as fast on one browser compared to another I don't care if it uses a couple more watts.

 

[FZ21Z]

so it only makes sense to choose software based on battery life, in addition to other factors and criteria.

Mine is hardly ever unplugged, so the battery life was never going to be an issue, and the reason I have a laptop and not P.C is because of space limitations.

I will never use anything but Firefox, because I have always found it faster, more customisable, and it's just outright more attractive to look at, and although the bulk of web time isn't limited to browsing MySpace, I.E, 7 or 8 doesn't display profiles properly.

 

[fakeasdf]

i was doing some testing myself last night with ie8(32bit) and firefox 3.5.3 (my default browser) on speedtest.net and i ran test after test immidiately swapping from browser to browser as soon as one would finish, but every time i done the test in ie8 after firefox finished, ie8 would be around 800kbyte/s, as soon as ie8 would finish i flip back to firefox run the test and i was getting double+ of whatever ie8 would get. i done this test for about 30mins with the same results over and over again. i tried altering settings in ie8 to attemp to improve the connection but still no improvement, firefox just kept slaughtering ie8 connection speeds.

i know its a bit off subject as you are comparing battery life but maybe this could be something to do with why ie8 has the least battery consumption, it uses less bandwidth than you actually have? and yes i realize it depends on the time (traffic) but the tests were done exactly one after another like i stated above, on the same website, in the same conditions, both browsers only had 1 tab open ect.

this was my best result in Fox 3.5.3
View attachment 28077

nice comparison though, but i will stick with my orange fox on any system.

That was more than likely something weird with their servers and IE8... Try setting up your own apache, or IIS server on a computer then hit it with FF and IE8. IE8 kills FF on download speed when it comes to servers that can actually max out ff or IE8...

 

[Nibiru2008]

I'll stick with Firefox... the difference is negligible and I'm running a desktop anyway. FF has too many options and add-ons that I use.

IE8 may be good for some people, but M$ is still behind the proverbial 8 Ball compared to FF.

 

[bloke]

That was more than likely something weird with their servers and IE8... Try setting up your own apache, or IIS server on a computer then hit it with FF and IE8. IE8 kills FF on download speed when it comes to servers that can actually max out ff or IE8...

hmmm, networking is my weakness ill admit, so i have no idea what your talking about. so off topic again, but is it like this: ie8 is slower than ff in loading pages, but ie8 has a faster max hit in d/l speed compared to ff? am i right? because when ever i use ie8 it IS slower than ff but i never used ie8 for d/ling, even when i convinced my dad to use ff from ie7 he said its faster.

 

[bloke]

so it only makes sense to choose software based on battery life, in addition to other factors and criteria.

Mine is hardly ever unplugged, so the battery life was never going to be an issue, and the reason I have a laptop and not P.C is because of space limitations.

I will never use anything but Firefox, because I have always found it faster, more customisable, and it's just outright more attractive to look at, and although the bulk of web time isn't limited to browsing MySpace, I.E, 7 or 8 doesn't display profiles properly.

im with you on that one.

here is another thing to poke at IE8 for, memory usage.
here is a snap shot of ie8 vs FF 3.5.3, 3 tabs open same pages, to make it fair FF has a custom theme, some add ons and plug ins enabled, IE8, well i dont use it so no custom content for him. take note that FF only uses one instance in task manager weighing in at just under 80mb, then notice IE8 hogging 4 instances weighing over 390mb total!



so with the fact IE8 uses a huge chunk in memory, i wonder how it is it scores the lowest in power usage? i would have thought it would have been the other way around, less mem usage = less power consumption?

 

[Corpsecrank]

But with such a marginal difference the speed of firefox and crome make both of those browser a better deal for the 5 minutes of battery life they shave off.

If you compare crome and firefox in speed they are so closely matched that they are virtually the same however they beat IE8 by nearly double the speed so for only being a slight amount easier on battery life IE8 still loses in my opinion.

I would gladly sacrifice a few minutes of battery for a browser with double the speed.

 

[bloke]

But with such a marginal difference the speed of firefox and crome make both of those browser a better deal for the 5 minutes of battery life they shave off.

If you compare crome and firefox in speed they are so closely matched that they are virtually the same however they beat IE8 by nearly double the speed so for only being a slight amount easier on battery life IE8 still loses in my opinion.

I would gladly sacrifice a few minutes of battery for a browser with double the speed.

you would get d/l's in half the time and still have power left to open IE8 and do some slow browsing until the second website loads and it shuts down.

 

[bloke]

i suppose another factor is what were they using for the comparison? were they using internal WiFi? or a usb 3g gsm modem dongle? i imagine the dongle would use more power yet again as usb requires something around 5v?? but relying on wifi really elimenates the purpose of having a laptop, as you are relying on airwaves and "wifi hotspots"...hey guys, you wanna go to the shops and use their wifi??...sorry dude im using my usb gsm dongle while im on a jetski in the middle of the atlantic ocean, i wish i was there tho, im only getting 3.6mbit/s here, and my battery is getting low cos im using ie8's slow browser low power technology, man i wish i chose firefox.

 

[fakeasdf]

That was more than likely something weird with their servers and IE8... Try setting up your own apache, or IIS server on a computer then hit it with FF and IE8. IE8 kills FF on download speed when it comes to servers that can actually max out ff or IE8...

hmmm, networking is my weakness ill admit, so i have no idea what your talking about. so off topic again, but is it like this: ie8 is slower than ff in loading pages, but ie8 has a faster max hit in d/l speed compared to ff? am i right? because when ever i use ie8 it IS slower than ff but i never used ie8 for d/ling, even when i convinced my dad to use ff from ie7 he said its faster.

Yes you are correct, it more than likely has to do with the fact that IE is so intertwined into the OS, Not sure tho. I'd say FF is faster in about every other category, personally. IE seems to load pages quickly once the program itself is loaded, but opening IE, opening a new tab, is dreadfully slow compared to FF... IMHO.

On the other note, Check out the disparity between FF and FF with Adblock plus. You know who's fault this is right? Damn adobe and their pos flash player. I wish there was an alternative flash player. Adobe's is such trash, so welcoming of hackers, such an annoying program. Flash is used for Youtube (and other video sites) and Ads. And they don't even try to make it user friendly where a user could stop a flash video, or block it etc. Thank goodness for adblock plus...