Microsoft Edge fires back, claims even better battery life with Anniversary Update

Kip Kniskern

A couple of months ago, Microsoft posted on some testing it had done on the effects of browser use on battery life, claiming that Edge used significantly less energy than its competitors. Then a few days later, some users started noticing popup notices on their battery icons claiming that “Chrome is draining your battery faster,” and urging users to switch to Edge.

Of course that didn’t sit too well with the likes of Google and Opera, who fired back with rebuttals, but now the folks at Edge are at it again. In a blog post this morning, Microsoft notes that it has made improvements to Edge in the Anniversary Update to make the browser even more energy efficient, and publishes the results of their initial tests, rerun with the latest software:

At the risk of giving away the ending, the results may look familiar! With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft Edge is more efficient than ever, and still the best choice for extending your battery life on Windows 10 – up to 24%-43% more efficient than the competition for general purpose browsing, and lasting up to 23%-69% longer when streaming video.

At the risk of giving away the ending, the results may look familiar! With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, Microsoft Edge is more efficient than ever, and still the best choice for extending your battery life on Windows 10 – up to 24%-43% more efficient than the competition for general purpose browsing, and lasting up to 23%-69% longer when streaming video.

Microsoft takes an almost gleeful tone when noting the turmoil they’ve created with their competitors, noting that they’re “thrilled” with the response their first rounds of tests inspired, but they don’t waste much time before producing another graph showing a comparison of battery browser efficiency across the latest stable builds of the most popular browsers:

Browser battery efficiency
Browser battery efficiency

In response to the initial tests released by Microsoft, Google recently released a test of their own (one that only tested their Chrome browser, omitting any comparisons, so the Edge team went ahead and recreated Google’s test, too, looping a video from Vimeo (Microsoft’s initial video tests used Netflix):

In this test, Microsoft Edge lasted even longer – more than 13 hours! – and still beats Chrome by more than an hour. Microsoft Edge even lasted 62% longer – more than five hours! – when compared to Firefox.

Microsoft has open sourced their lab tests (the full test and the video test) and published their full methodology on GitHub, so if you’re skeptical, you can run the tests yourself.

Microsoft continues to work on Edge, and yesterday’s Windows Insiders Fast Ring update to build 14926 contained a number of improvements to Edge both on PC and mobile.

Are you convinced to try Edge, now that you’ve seen these tests? Let us know in the comments below.