Browser Speed Tests Mac Edition
Fastest Internet Browser Speed Tests, Mac only: Opera 12.02, Safari 6, Chrome 22, and Firefox 15
From Lifehacker.com and their brilliant team, this article reviews all the newest, most popular Mac Browsers.
Now that Mountain Lion's out with a shiny new version of Safari 6, we thought it time to revisit our browser speed tests. As always, we're pitting the four most popular browsers—this time, on a Mac—against one another in a battle of startup speed, tab loading prowess, and lots more.
We've been testing browsers for awhile, and we've refined our method pretty well. It's a good mix of both manually timed user experience measures and hardcore JavaScript and CSS benchmarks, plus some new tests aimed at features like Chrome's prerendering or Firefox's on demand tab loading can really do. All tests this time around take place on a MacBook Air using a built-in SSD (which is why startup times were so quick). Since it's on a completely different machine and we refine our tests a bit each time, don't compare these numbers to our old tests—just look at the results of the tests we ran this week.
And, as always, remember that speed is not the only thing each browser has to offer. Each browser has a number of unique features and characteristics, all of which you should factor into making your choice of which to use. However, while most features can be listed on their home pages, you can't easily compare their speed just from each browser's changelog, and that's why we've put this together. It's just one more way to compare the browsers as you make your decision. Also remember that everyone's computer and setup is different, and your numbers may differ from ours depending on your resources, the extensions you use, and the sites you visit, but this should give you a good idea of how each browser handles day-to-day use.
Cold Boot-Up Winner: Safari!
Tab Loading Winner: Firefox!
URL Loading Winner: Chrome!
Cold Restore Winner: Opera!
RoboHornet Winner: Safari!
Memory Usage (with Nine Tabs Open) Winner: Safari!
Memory Usage (with Nine Tabs and Five Extensions) Winner: Safari!
Overall Scores
As always, overall scores are pretty meaningless, but everyone likes to see a winner. So for those of you handing out trophies, the scores are:
- Safari: 78%
- Firefox: 64%
- Chrome: 60%
- Opera: 46%
Safari just rules on the Mac, which is no surprise since it's literally built alongside OS X for optimal operation. Firefox fared surprisingly well, with Chrome not too far behind (except in the memory tests) while Opera took a pretty distant last place. As always, you should look at the individual scores above to see which browser is faster in the areas you care about—if you don't like Firefox's new tabs on demand, for example, Chrome may be "faster" for you in the ways that matter.
Our tests aren't the most scientific on the planet, but they do reflect a relatively accurate view of the kind of experience you'd get from each browser, speed-wise. Let us know if your experience differs-or if the speed losses are worth the browser's other features-in the comments.
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