Browsers and Battery Life-

[SRVwannab]

My son (who is kind of a huge Windows fan) - set up my SP3 and installed his favorite browser (Pale Moon). I've really grown to like it as I've never gotten comfortable with the look and feel of IE on the SP3.

Quick question- relative to battery life, are their some browsers that are better or worse? In advance, thanks! This is a great community and I appreciate all of the experts around here that frequently chime in.

 

[VickiFL]

I hear Chrome is a battery killer. I use Chrome, but I also leave my SP3 plugged in most of the time, and only drain the battery a couple times a month.

 

[GreyFox7]

Pale Moon being a Firefox derivative (Fork) will likely behave similarly. I would expect that it wont be as efficient as MUI IE on battery usage but not as bad as the battery sucking horror Chrome is.

I don't recall anyone posting anything about Pale Moon before so let us know how your battery life is.

 

[Nicola]

I believe Chrome has solved the problem with energy.
If I run the powercfg with Chrome open I don't get the alert about the clock frequency anymore.

 

[GreyFox7]

I believe Chrome has solved the problem with energy.
If I run the powercfg with Chrome open I don't get the alert about the clock frequency anymore.

I think it may be somewhat improved over its prior sorry state but has more work to do.

 

[vsherry]

I always use Chrome. No wonder I have disappointing battery life. Well, that and I insist on max brightness.

 

[Haldi]

Here is the test: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8327/browser-faceoff-battery-life-explored-2014/

and here Chrome 37 Beta: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8397/browser-battery-life-chrome-37-beta-revisited



Oh yeah... and i'm also using Firefox... which sets the windows timer to 1 instead of 15ms ~.~ but i still get about 6-7h battery life on low brightness

 

[GreyFox7]

Here is the test: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8327/browser-faceoff-battery-life-explored-2014/

and here Chrome 37 Beta: http://www.anandtech.com/show/8397/browser-battery-life-chrome-37-beta-revisited



Oh yeah... and i'm also using Firefox... which sets the windows timer to 1 instead of 15ms ~.~ but i still get about 6-7h battery life on low brightness

Excerpt from second updated article:

The bad news is that if you have been avoiding Chrome due to its HiDPI rending issues, Chrome 37 resolves those issues but also appears to provide worse battery efficiency compared to Internet Explorer. On our XPS 15 that equated to about an hour less of mobility.​

 

[jnjroach]

Also, those test were done on a traditional laptop, not a Connected Standby Enabled Machine like the SP3 or Intel ATOM Tablet, which Chrome's cheat tends to break more optimizations built into power management.

 

[SeanP]

Chrome is the absolute WORST for battery. If I leave it open with charger unplugged it's drained in 3.5 to 4 hours. They need to fix it. I use GMAIL and need Chrome to check some with SFDC extensions that I need. As it stands, I open it, check email, close it. Total nightmare.

 

[vsherry]

This is really bad news for me, as I have a strong preference for Chrome. I really don't want to use IE.

 

[kevinlevrone]

Do an easy test: start a YouTube video. Chrome will consume 15% CPU while IE will consume 5% CPU. It may be that IE offloads more to the GPU, but the GPU is more optimized for graphics so it's still better. For me, I switched from Chrome to IE, otherwise the battery life really suffers.