Web Browser Have Impact On Battery Life
A recent Anandtech study suggests that web browsers have an impact on a mobile PCs battery usage.
The test, which analyzed battery performance under various popular web browsers and three websites, can probably not be seen as representative but it may act as an indicator as to which browser uses less battery power to operate.
A test with additional websites and over a longer period of time would certainly help to get a final result on the issue.
Still, test results were surprising as the difference between the best and worst performing web browser was larger than two hours. This means in effect that you may spend more time browsing the web without a charge depending on the browser that you are using.
The web browsers included in the test were: Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5.2 with and without adblock add-on, Google Chrome 2, Opera 9.64, 10.0b3 and Safari 4.
Three laptops were used in the test. Two entry level Gateway laptops with AMD and Intel cpus and the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA netbook.
Gateway NV52
Gateway NV58
Asus EEE PC 1005HA
Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 is the web browser that drains the least amount of battery on both entry level laptops.
The majority of web browsers with the exception of Safari come close to that results, especially Firefox with the adblock add-on. The benefit of the adblock add-on suggests that web advertisement does have an impact on battery usage. Safari 4 is the only web browser in the test that performed the worst in all three tests.
Google Chrome 2 was first in the netbook test with all other web browsers close by except for Safari which completely drained the battery of the netbook more than two hours earlier than the other web browsers.
Even if the test needs to be replicated with a larger website sample size it seems to indicate that laptop users are better off without the Safari web browser. Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox with adblock and Google Chrome were the best performing web browsers in the test.
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