Opera Says Its Browser Provides Better Battery Life Than Microsoft's Edge

Microsoft recently put out a video claiming that its Edge browser for Windows 10 beats all the other browsers in the battery saving game. In its test on a Surface Book, Microsoft showed that the Edge browser lasted longer than the Opera browser (with the battery saving mode switched on). Opera has now lashed back at Microsoft for these claims, and has said that during its own personal tests the results were quite the opposite.

Opera used a Lenovo Yoga 500 laptop for its tests, and it lasted 3 hours 12 minutes on Microsoft Edge, and 3 hours 55 minutes on Opera. The first to give up was Google Chrome, which lasted 2 hours 54 minutes. Opera its browser with native ad blocker and power saver enabled was able to run 22 percent longer than Microsoft Edge, and 35 percent longer than the latest version of Google Chrome. The three browsers were put through identical browsing sessions.

Opera even lashed out at Microsoft for not revealing its methodology for conducting the test. To give perspective, it detailed how it conducted the test. 'We used a Lenovo Yoga 500, 14-inch, i3-5005U, 4GB, 500GB HDD, Windows 10 using the balanced power profile. The backlight was set to 100 percent all the time, Wi-Fi was running in 802.11n mode with RSSI -53 dBm. There was no other software running in the foreground; indexing and background services were stopped. Laptops were placed on a wooden surface for similar heat exchange. The browser was automated using WinAPI event injection," the company mentioned in its blog post.

For one thing, both Microsoft and Opera agree that Chrome is the worst when it comes to saving battery on a laptop. As mentioned above, Microsoft in its test claimed that the Edge browser outrun Opera browser. Opera, with its new battery saver feature stayed in the game for 6 hours 18 minutes before giving up. While the Edge browser lasted up to 7 hours 22 minutes before draining the battery of the Surface Book.