We are going to test this browser performance with two most popular browsers today – Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. When the final version of Windows 10 came out later this month, we will update our Web Browser Speed Comparison post.
Microsoft Edge Speed Test
Microsoft Edge is still under development, but it is very stable and responsive – even in this version. So, let’s go and see how we are going to test performance of this new web browser from Microsoft.
Microsoft Edge vs Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox (Speed Test)
As we are using a 64-bit version of this browser, we are going to use an official 64-bit version of other browsers:Google Chrome 43.0 (64-bit)
Mozilla Firefox 41.0 (Developer Edition 64-bit)
We are going to use Microsoft Edge 20.10162.0.0 version of this browser in our speed and performance test.
As usual, we are going to test performance in several different tests and we are going to show you the results for each test individually.
Microsoft Edge – Start Time
This is a test where we measure how fast web browsers open at start, or how long it takes you to start using your favorite web browser. I used a stopwatch on my smartphone to measure the start time.
Microsoft Edge starts much faster than Chrome and Firefox!
As you can see, Microsoft Edge is the winner in start load time.
Unlike other browsers in this test, Microsoft Edge is a Windows App and probably because of that it is much faster in this test.
Memory Usage Test
Web browser is probably the most used software on your computer. Because of that, it is quite important to use less RAM resources and make your computer faster and more stable.
For this test, I will measure how much memory each browser (without add-ons and extensions) uses when I open 1, 5 and 10 same websites and at the end I will compare these results:
Edge also uses much less RAM than Chrome and especially Firefox.
MEMORY USAGE TEST (AVERAGE IN MB):
1. Microsoft Edge: 24.2
2. Google Chrome: 46.2
3. Firefox Developer: 166.3
Thanks to the powerful Windows App engine, Microsoft Edge was an absolute champion in this test. Edge uses 63% less memory than Chrome and 149% less memory than Firefox!
JavaScript Performance
JavaScript is the programming language of HTML and the Web. It is a common part of almost any website or online service. Because of that, JS performance is very important.
For this test, I will use two popular JavaScript benchmark services:
-Octane Benchmark
-Kraken Benchmark
These two tools are going to benchmark JavaScript performance of your favorite web browser and here are the results:
Edge performs as the best browser in Octane JavaScript benchmark.
Kraken Browser JavaScript benchmark score – lower value is better.
As you can see, Edge is quite fast in JavaScript. We can see Microsoft gave a lot of effort by optimizing their JavaScript engine.Web Animation Performance
By using a modern CSS3 transitions and JavaScript libraries we can also create a simple animations inside our web browsers.
This is a HTML5 Animation test which was created by jQuery customized plugin by GreenSock. We are going to test three different levels of this test, which are presented in the chart below:
Web Animation Speed (modified jQuery version)
Animation performance is measured in frames per second (FPS). The higher value means better performance. As you can see, results are close for all browsers and Edge works good in this test as well.Conclusion
As we can see, Microsoft Edge – even in this early development version is a very good product and performs much better than IE.
With further developement , especially with future support for HTML-based extensions, I look forward to see how Microsoft Edge is going to grow in the future.