Battle of the Browsers (Desktop Edition)

Ever wonder which out of the big 5 is the best Web Browser for regular every day use?

Time to find out…

***Note***My Results will most likely be different from yours. I am also running on a older notebook PC. 

Windows 7 32-bit HP Pavilion

Dual Core Processor Clocked at 1.86 & 1.87 GHz

2GB of RAM

Internet Explorer
Developer: Microsoft Corporation
Platforms: Microsoft Windows
Version: 9.0

What I like…
- Full-Screen Browsing
- Bing… but then again it is available on all browsers
- UI is decent
- Through my tests it used the least amount of Ram

What I don’t like…
- Not the fastest browser
- Still feels clunky like previous version of Internet Explorer

Mozilla FireFox
Developer: Mozilla
Platforms: Linux, Microsoft Windows, OSX / Mac, Android, IOS
Version: 15.0.1

What I like…
- You can customize pretty much everything
- Tons and Tons of Add-ons
- Sync Mobile versions
- Overall balanced / Consistent browsing experience

What I don’t like
- Feels like there are too many useless updates nowadays (or at least the feel useless. You normally can’t tell what has changed)



Safari
Developer: Apple
Platform: OSX / Mac, IOS, Windows
Version: 5.1.7

What I like…
- Surprisingly improved since the last time I used it

What I don’t like…
- Theme is meh (reminds me of previous versions of Chrome & IE)
- Boot time is a bit slow





Google Chrome
Developer: Google
Platform: Windows, OSX, Android, Linux
Version: 21

What I like…
- Sync with mobile devices
- Pretty fast and silkily smooth browsing experience when browsing non flash video sites…
- Lots of add-ons
- Like FireFox very customizable

What I don’t like…
- Resource hog (next to opera it uses the most)



Opera
Developer: Opera
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux, IOS, Android
Version: 12.02

What I like…
- Fast
- Theme able
- Opens up to the last page you had open
- Opera Turbo for slow connections
- Also sync able with mobile browsers

What I don’t like
- Resource hog

***Note***

The numbers in test 1 - 4 represent seconds, so the lower the number the better...

.

Test 1

Test 1 - The Review Pre
IE - 7.9 | 6.4 = 7.15
Firefox - 5.0 | 4.2 = 4.6
Safari - 4.4 | 2.7 = 3.55
Chrome - 5.1 | 5.0 = 5.05
Opera - 3.6 | 1.8 = 2.7
Winner = Opera

Test 2 - CNN
IE - 12.3 | 7.0 = 9.65
Firefox - 7.4 | 3.8 = 5.6
Safari - 12.5 / 4.5 = 8.5
Chrome - 4.6 | 5.0 = 4.8
Opera - 3.3 | 2.3 = 2.8
Winner = Opera

Test 3 ESPN
IE - 9.0 | 6.5 =7.75
Firefox - 8.0 | 5.2 = 6.6
Safari - 10.6 | 3.6 = 7.1
Chrome - 10.5 | 4.9 = 7.7
Opera - 11.9 | 6.1 = 9
Winner = Firefox

Test 4 - Youtube
IE - 6.00 | 3.08 = 4.9
Firefox - 6.5 | 3.9 = 5.2
Safari - 8.2 | 2.4 = 5.3
Chrome - 4.0 | 3.5 = 3.75
Opera - 2.8 | 1.6 = 2.2 (though I have to say Opera YouTube page appears slightly different and URL is YouTube.com/lohp)
Winner = Opera

Test 5 - Speedtest.net
IE - 17.74 download | 8.20 Upload
Firefox - 25.29 download | 8.02 Upload
Safari - 23.92 download | 6.12 Upload
Chrome - 22.60 download | 7.89
Opera - 23.85 | 7.79
Winner = Firefox (Download)
Winner = IE (Upload)


Test 6 - BrowserMark
IE - 192836
Firefox - 200400
Safari - 257929
Chrome - 431596
Opera - 214951
Winner = Chrome

Test 7 - HTML5test
IE - 138/500
Firefox - 346/500
Safari - 319/500
Chrome - 437/500
Opera - 385/500
Winner = Chrome

Test 8 - Acid3
IE - 100/100 IMO semi pass wasn’t super smooth
Firefox - 97/100 clunky = fail
Safari - 100/100 did slightly better then IE
Chrome - 98/100 was pretty quick and smooth but stopped at 98 so = fail
Opera - 100/100
Winner = Tie (IE, Safari, Opera)

Resources
IE - 72832+6176+2508= 81516
Firefox - 116252+39180+3752 = 159784
Safari - 116344+23916= 140260
Chrome - 64176+49004+34068+23396+8080+7620+7244+2056 = 168400
Opera - 178332
Winner = IE


Overall Winner = 4ws for Opera
2ws for Firefox
2ws for Chrome
3ws for IE
1w for Safari

***Opera***

My Thoughts:
My Former Choice
Between Firefox / Chrome
I used to use booth Firefox and chrome for different things. If I quickly needed look something up or go to a webpage non flash heavy I would use Google’s Chrome. For everything else I would use Firefox. Now after doing these quick tests I might have to reconsider my choices. Clearly Opera turned out to be the fastest but is speed really everything? I will definitely keep Opera installed on my PC for future use. Will it become my primary browser that is still left to be seen…