By: Dave Cooper, RackNerd

I’m sure you’re thinking not another browser test! 

But in 2020 I had some time to sit down and do some tests with the various browser offerings for mac. Over time I have noticed Safari getting slower and other popular browser like Google Chrome getting slower at loading pages and handling multiple tabs. 

Thanks to www.speed-battle.com I was able to measure the differences in browsers, but numbers weren’t everything when it came to my tests. Looks, functionality and real-world speeds came into consideration. 

Here is what I found. 

Chrome 

What a browser well at least I thought however when it comes to a Mac OS it does not perform as well as you think. I found my fans on my computer spin up when I had multiple tabs open and that’s just plain annoying.  

Speed Battle Results in Chrome (Higher Score is better)

Then I moved onto Chrome Canary thinking it may be better less bloated and in the Speed Battle results I got a slightly higher result, however, I was still hearing fans spinning up with multiple tabs open. 

Speed Battle Results in Chrome Canary (Higher Score is better) 

Next was Safari, as expected Safari is sleek and well-integrated to Mac OS and it feels it, I did notice however there are still a lot of websites that Safari seems to have issues with rendering web pages which is a shame, but it did top Google Chrome on performance.  

Speed Battle Results in Safari  (Higher Score is better) 

Now we move onto the latest offerings Microsoft Edge browser for mac, this is based on Chromium engine, so my expectations were low for any speed increase here are the results. 

Speed Battle Results in Microsoft Edge  (Higher Score is better) 

Lastly Firefox, this was the winner for me, the team at Mozilla seem to have been playing catchup for quite a few years but was pleasantly surprised on how fast their new browser is.  Firefox usability has been enhanced, the performance has increased, and the product now feels very polished. I was not receiving spikes in CPU usage or memory blowouts. 

Speed Battle Results in Mozilla Firefox (Higher Score is better)

As you can see Firefox came out on top in all aspects on Mac OS.

Should you switch? Well that’s up to you, I have noticed a productivity bump moving to the latest Firefox so give it a try and see if it works for you!