Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

One simple change can increase your laptop’s battery life by 50%

Published Jun 20th, 2016 4:25PM EDT
Microsoft Edge Battery Life Comparison
Image: Microsoft

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

It wasn’t long ago that we were celebrating the release of Opera’s power saving mode, but on Monday, Microsoft decided to prove to everyone that its own proprietary browser might be the best in the market for your battery.

In a new blog post, Microsoft Edge web platform team director Jason Weber explains how Edge can help save your computer or tablet battery.

DON’T MISS: A week with iOS 10: It’s fantastic, and I’m bored

“We designed Microsoft Edge from the ground up to prioritize power efficiency and deliver more battery life, without any special battery saving mode or changes to the default settings,” says Weber. “Our testing and data show that you can simply browse longer with Microsoft Edge than with Chrome, Firefox, or Opera on Windows 10 devices.”

Performing three separate tests, Microsoft compared Edge with the other three leading internet browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Opera. The first was power consumption in a controlled environment; the second was real-world energy telemetry from millions of active Windows 10 devices; and the third was time-lapse videos of all four browsers performing the same tasks at once.

Microsoft Edge won every time, as you can see in the following video:

That not enough for you? Microsoft also says that the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (scheduled to roll out later this summer) will include “even more power-saving improvements, using fewer CPU cycles, consuming less memory, and minimizing the impact of background activity and peripheral content like Flash advertisements,” letting you browse even longer with Edge.

You can read more about the future of Microsoft’s replacement for Internet Explorer in another post by Brandon Heenan over on the Edge Dev Blog.

Jacob Siegal
Jacob Siegal Associate Editor

Jacob Siegal is Associate Editor at BGR, having joined the news team in 2013. He has over a decade of professional writing and editing experience, and helps to lead our technology and entertainment product launch and movie release coverage.