Tag: Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge Chromium Browser Release Version Impressions

On January 15th Microsoft released a stable version of the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser, you can read more about that announcement here.

Before I go into my impressions on the Microsoft Edge Chromium stable release version I just want to state that I used (not as my daily browser) the beta and dev channel versions of the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser and even the legacy version of Microsoft Edge. To check out those impressions then you can go here and here, enjoy. If you are interested in trying out the beta, dev or even canary channels of the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser then head on over using this link.

Now that I have that out of the way, let’s go into my impressions on the released version of the Microsoft Edge Chromium browser. I tested this on both my Surface Book 2 (my main personal laptop) and my Surface Pro 3 (primarily used to watch videos online). I’m not going to break down this impressions into each device but sort of summarize what I experienced.

Nothing is breaking

As with my original two posts about using Microsoft Edge Chromium and Microsoft Edge Legacy respectively, the Chromium version (in beta and dev) had absolutely no issue in loading up web pages whereas the same pages would take longer to load, not render content correctly or not render at all. I can say that nothing has broken after leaving beta and being released as a stable version. This I believe comes down to using Chromium under the hood. Generally any site that Google Chrome can load, Microsoft Edge Chromium can load too. So off to a good start.

That seemed fast

Microsoft Edge Legacy I found generally (but not always or consistently) tended to load web pages quicker (if it could load the page). Is the page loading noticeably faster than Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge Chromium? Not really, but if you launched both browsers and navigated to a web page for the first time Microsoft Edge Legacy would load ever so slightly faster. Microsoft Edge Chromium loads web pages about as fast as Google Chrome. So again, between beta and release nothing has broken or regressed there. Again, so far so good from the team from Redmond.

Slightly ore RAM available and more battery life

We all know how much of a RAM hog Google Chrome can be. We have all seen the memes and we have all experienced our RAM slowly be eaten away by Google Chrome.

Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1501180-google-chrome-ram-hog

So much like Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge Chromium uses more RAM than Microsoft Edge Legacy. However what I did find on both my Surface Book 2 and my Surface Pro 3 it used about 10%-15% less RAM than Google Chrome consistently. So I guess that is a good thing 😀

Now to battery life. Much like my beta impressions post, the battery life is about what I was expecting with something running the Chromium engine under the hood. It is slightly better than Google Chrome (I was seeing about 1 hour more battery life on my Surface Book 2), but Microsoft Edge Chromium is nowhere near as battery efficient as Microsoft Edge Legacy. This is especially noticeable on my Surface Pro 3 and less so on my Surface Book 2. You will not get the same level of battery performance on the Surface Pro 3 when running Microsoft Edge Chromium compared to Microsoft Edge Legacy. It mirrors Google Chrome nearly identically in regards to battery performance on my Surface Pro 3.

One point to note is that on my Surface Book 2 is there are no fans, so I do not hear anything when my CPU starts to pick up speed and my machine starts to get a little warm. This is in extreme contrast to my Surface Pro 3 where when I use Microsoft Edge Chromium and watch YouTube videos in anything greater than 720p the fans kick in and it starts to get hot. The Microsoft Edge Legacy browser did not have this issue at all even at higher resolutions as I noted in my original post, so this is something to consider.

Everything else

Much like the beta and dev channel, the appearance of Microsoft Edge Chromium is nearly identical. It looks much like Google Chrome, so if you like how that looks and are comfortable with that, then you will feel right at home.

One area where Microsoft has done a fantastic job is in regard to your privacy settings. You get a very solid choice of options and I feel it gives the user more control of what you share and with whom. Google really needs to update their browser to be a little more restrictive and enforce some stronger privacy policies. But then again it is not in their best interest as they make most of their money from advertising. So I am giving Microsoft a big kudos here in ensuring the right things can be blocked and letting the user decide who has access to what information while they browse the net.

Feature parity with the Microsoft Edge Legacy browser is coming and new and exciting features are also coming down the road; currently you are missing some sync functionality for example. Google Chrome extensions now work on Microsoft Edge Chromium which is fantastic because the Microsoft Store is lacking some extensions that you may use daily.

Overall I feel that Microsoft has made a very good browser that can keep up with the best of them (thanks to running Chromium). And by contributing to the Chromium community not only will the browser get better but so will other browser that run on Chromium like Google Chrome. If you are “trapped” in the Google ecosystem, then it may not be enough to change browsers, but if you use a Microsoft account instead and the current legacy version of Microsoft Edge then this browser can easily replace Google Chrome. Now it is really up to the web developers and Microsoft to ensure that this browser is made compatible with what is out there and ensure that it does not break over time. Would I recommend this browser to someone who does not want to use Google Chrome? Yes, yes I do with no hesitation.

Where to download

You can get the released version of Microsoft Edge Chromium using this link.

Google Chrome VS Microsoft Edge (Chromium Version) Initial Impressions

Google Chrome is my go to stable browser at the moment for my Google Pixel 3, my Surface Book 2, my work Macbook Pro, and my Windows gaming desktop. Previously I used Microsoft Edge but like I had posted about previously there were website compatibility issues but it came with far superior memory and battery management. Now there is a change in the wind with the Microsoft Edge browser.

What Microsoft has done (it appears) is to finally accept the open source Chromium project and modify their Edge browser to now support and be built off Chromium. Absolutely amazing news if you ask me (but not according to Mozilla). When they announced that they will be releasing canary (daily updates) and dev (weekly updates) channels so that people can try out their early builds I jumped right in. As of 25/05/2019 the macOS version of Microsoft Edge only appears to have the canary channel available whereas the Windows version has both canary and dev channels.

If you are on Windows 10 then you can go ahead and download the in-development Microsoft Edge Chromium version from here.

If you are on macOS then you can go ahead and download it from here.

On my Surface Book 2 I have been using the dev channel as my daily driver while on my Macbook Pro I have been using the canary channel. Initial impressions are positive (except for an update that happened mid week that caused my Edge browser to not launch at all on my Macbook Pro – but that did get fixed quickly).

Complete Compatibility

One area that I was critical of the original Microsoft Edge was that some websites were not compatible with the rendering engine that was used, so some sites either failed to render content correctly, or render at all. Other browsers like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox rendered the content perfectly fine.

Using the Chromium version of Microsoft Edge gives an extremely positive first impression. All the websites render their content correctly and there has been no website that fails to render at all. It is on par with other browsers I would say from my usage so far. It is off to a good start for the in-development browser.

Fast Performance

Microsoft Edge was quick at loading some sites but was slow at loading other sites (or not at all). Other browsers were generally fairly consistent and loaded most sites quick. Obviously the loading speed of the site will depend on the content that is trying to be loaded. Comparatively the speed is on par with Google Chrome.

At the moment I found no speed or performance issues when loading various websites. So not only is the website compatibility good, the speed at which the content is displayed is quick. Navigating around the settings and just generally using the browser is also a fairly smooth and quick experience.

Solid-ish Resource Management

For a portable machine like my Surface Book 2 and Macbook Pro, managing my systems resources (including battery) is extremely important. I don’t want to travel around with my charging adapter; a good laptop should last a full business day under normal use for me.

Google Chrome has gotten better at managing the amount of system resources it uses (it also depends on what extensions, etc. you have installed) but it is still a resource hog. Battery drain has also gotten better but it can still be a problem. I don’t notice it as much on my Surface Book 2, but on my Macbook Pro it is definitely noticeable. Note that even without using Google Chrome my Macbook Pro has extremely poor battery life compared to my Surface Book 2. Overall though Google still has room to improve here.

Microsoft Edge has always been good at making sure the battery drain is minimal and even the management of your system resources is balanced and efficient. The Chromium version is good but still does not match that of the non Chromium version of Microsoft Edge. The battery life is slightly worse and seems to be using more system resources. I need to spend some more time here but from what I have seen it is slightly better than Google Chrome, but not by much.

The underlying problem could be Chromium itself. Hopefully now that Microsoft is going to be contributing more to the open source project, it can help Google and the other developers in ensuring that Chromium provides the most efficient browser for all devices. I am hopeful that this is the case and look forward to the improvements that will be made.

Trimmed and Slim

Right now Microsoft Edge (Chromium) does not have all the features of the non Chromium version of Microsoft Edge. This is expected as it is not fully released and is still in early development, not even beta, at the moment. You do miss some of the features like setting tabs aside, etc. but Microsoft did say that they will come to the Chromium edition.

On the plus side being on Chromium there is greater extension support and availability. You still cannot have all the extensions that Google Chrome supports at the moment and it will get better with time as both will be using the same underlying engine so that is a plus.

Overall I am impressed at the in-development and early release channels that Microsoft has made available. Would I use it as my stable and go to main browser at the moment? No. But once released I feel it will give Google Chrome a good run for its money because if it can perform close/if not slightly better right now in regard to system resource management and battery drain. Good job Microsoft and welcome to Chromium 🙂

Revisiting Google Chrome VS Microsoft Edge on my Microsoft Surface Book 2

Just under a year ago I wrote about the my experience using Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (it can be found here). Several months later once I purchased my Microsoft Surface Book 2 I did a very similar comparison between the two browsers (it can be found here). Now I am revisiting my experience using Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge on the same Microsoft Surface Book 2. The good news I can tell you is that Google has caught back up to Microsoft in my books.

With my original Microsoft Surface Book 2 (and Microsoft Surface Pro 3) experiences blog posts there were two areas that I was fairly critical of Google’s Chrome browser when comparing it to Microsoft’s Edge browser and why I chose to use Microsoft Edge over Google Chrome. Those were (and I am not the only one to notice these pain points when using Google Chrome):

  1. Negative impact on the device’s battery
  2. Resource usage and management

The current version of Google Chrome that I am using on my Microsoft Surface Book 2 is version 68.0.3440.106 (Official Build) (64-bit). With this build I can say for 100% certainty that Google has made some improvements in regard to battery life (well I notice better battery performance). Using Microsoft Edge I could easily get 8 hours (1 full work day) of battery life no problem (this includes browsing the web, consuming different media, etc). With the version of Google Chrome I am using now (and the ones in between), I can get roughly the same amount of hours, performing the same tasks. I tested this over a couple of weeks and made sure that I was having my device fully charged before use and browsing roughly the same sites and watching similar content. So kudos to Google in fixing this. If you have a mobile device like a laptop then battery life is very important. The difference between using an application that drains the battery faster than another application that does the same tasks could be whether or not you need to bring your charging cable. I can safely say for me, I don’t need to bring my charging cable with me when I am now using Google Chrome.

Google Chrome is known to be a resource hog as well, and I make note of this in my original experience blog post (there are plenty of memes out there that make fun of Google Chrome and how it handles RAM and CPU usage; this one here is one of my favourites). Has it gotten better with the later releases? Yes, sort of. When I see what processes and services are taking up what resources, I can see that Google Chrome is sitting high on this list compared to Microsoft Edge (even now with the build that I am looking at). However comparing it to the last time I was monitoring my resources, Google Chrome is no where near consuming as much RAM (even with the same extensions, websites, etc running) and the load on the CPU is smaller. Microsoft Edge still uses less resources so in the long term you will get slightly more battery life than if you used Google Chrome (but not by much), and you get slightly more heat generated on the device but nothing that makes it difficult or uncomfortable to use on your lap.

Google Chrome now performing very similar to Microsoft Edge in regards to battery life and resource management, there is very little reason to stay on Microsoft Edge. Google Chrome is leaps and bounds ahead of Microsoft in regard to:

  1. Extensions – so, much more options. You just get a large number of options. The popular ones are appearing on Microsoft Edge but even the ones that are there, the Google Chrome ones are updated more frequently and seem to be treated like first class citizens compared to the Microsoft Edge counterparts. The situation here is just like any app on the Windows Store in general.
  2. Rendering web pages – Google Chrome has no issue rendering if not all but most web pages (probably 99.99% of them) whereas Microsoft Edge I find sometimes does not correctly render web pages correctly and I either have to refresh or switch browsers for it to load. I am not the only one to experience this with Microsoft Edge, I have found some friends say the same thing to me when using Microsft Edge.

So in the end, Google Chrome is being used as my primary web browser on my Microsoft Surface Book 2 again, until something breaks the Google Chrome build that returns it to the battery draining and RAM usage hog of the old days. I’m sorry Microsoft, but Microsoft Edge is just not worth using anymore even with all the improvements and changes made (which I really like too). There is nothing wrong with changing what products you use, what products you like, etc. as they are always changing and your situations also change. I constantly switch what Android apps I use and on my Windows PC this is no different. I will continue to use products that help me be more productive, and for longer periods. In this case Google Chrome is that browser. Let me know what you think. Have you seen improvements in the same areas with the later Google Chrome builds? Let me know in the comments.

Microsoft Edge and Paid YouTube Content

This evening I decided I wanted to watch some YouTube content on my PC using Microsoft Edge. I have a decent list of purchased movies and TV series through the Google Play Store. After looking over the list of paid content I settled on a movie and I clicked on it ready to watch on my second monitor while I was doing some other stuff on my primary monitor. To my surprise I was greeted by a playback error. To be exact I got the following error message in the video player (I have blacked out some content that I deem not relevant).

YouTube Paid Content Playback Error

The exact message reads, “An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: MLeXgYpv05LH1Uhq)“.

I decided to click the “Learn More” link which would hopefully provide some informative information as to why I got this error. But in typical Google fashion I have found it was little to no use. I decided to try their troubleshooting steps.

YouTube Paid Content Playback Error Troubleshooting Page

I first closed every tab that I had open except the YouTube tab and tried again. No luck got the same error message, a different Playback ID error code was presented though. The next step was to restart my router, did that and still no luck. I restarted my computer to see if that would help like it said, again the same error message. The second last option was to verify that I was using the latest version of my browser; there was no Windows updates and I am unaware of any other way to update Microsoft Edge (if there is please let me know). The absolute last resort is to use Google Chrome. I’m sorry Google but this isn’t going to happen and really is not a troubleshooting step.

Curiously I decided to try some videos from some of my subscribers and those videos played absolutely fine with no issue on Microsoft Edge. In fact I am watching one of my favourite YouTubers playing XCOM 2: War of the Chosen as I write this. So clearly there appears to be an issue trying to stream paid content through YouTube on Microsoft Edge. I quickly tried my Android phone and using the official YouTube app I had no issue playing the same video (so it was not a licensing issue) and the video plays absolutely fine on my Xbox One X using the YouTube app.

Finally I decide to try Google Chrome. Low and behold the video starts with no issue. I tried again on Microsoft Edge and I get an error message. To me it seems that Google is doing something in back that is restricting content being played on Microsoft Edge or Microsoft has something in Edge that Google does not like, blocking paid content from being played. Perhaps being paid and licensed content I thought maybe there was a setting that was causing issues, but Netflix on Microsoft Edge had no issues playing. Has anyone else had the same issue? If so did you get it resolved or does the problem persist? Generally I have found Google to be near useless when it comes to any support and their response to issues is down right abysmal (the only other company to be close or worse is Valve and Steam Support). Looks like when I am on my PC or laptop I won’t be streaming any paid content from YouTube until this is fixed.

Google Chrome VS Microsoft Edge On My Surface Book 2

Now that I have moved on from my Surface Pro 3 and have been using the new Surface Book 2 since it was released on a daily basis, I thought it would be a good time to do another comparison between the two browsers. If you want to check out my previous comparison of the two browsers on my Surface Pro 3, it can be found here. This time around I put Google Chrome up against Microsoft Edge on my Surface Book 2, and the results surprised me a little. If you want to read about my Surface Book 2 experience then click here.

Normally it is standard practice to install another web browser as soon as you install a version of Windows. Nearly everyone I know uses either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox (no kidding, I maybe know a handful of people who use Microsoft Edge and they all live in my house). No one even bothers to give Microsoft Edge a go and see if it does the job, which is a real shame. Whatever Microsoft has done with the Fall Creators Update and subsequent updates to the Microsoft Edge browser has made it extremely more stable, responsive and well, usable.

Here is just a short list of gripes I had with the Microsoft Edge browser that resulted me in having to install Google Chrome when I was using my Surface Pro 3:

  1. Lack of first, and third party extension support.
  2. Web pages failing to load and render.
  3. Tabs would become unresponsive too often.
  4. Constant crashes after not being able to recover web pages and tabs.

Now as you can see some of these issues are problems that make the browser not usable in one’s day to day browsing, I mean who would really want to properly render and load a web page without it crashing?

Once I setup my Surface Book 2 I did not install Google Chrome, I wanted to give Microsoft Edge a fair go. On paper Microsoft Edge has all the features a user would want and more. Since using Microsoft Edge I have noticed little to no issue with web pages failing to load and render, tabs are very rarely becoming unresponsive if ever and when they do become unresponsive they recover quickly and do not cause the browser to lock up and crash. Come to think of it I have not had Microsoft Edge crash on me once during my time using it on my Surface Book 2, and I have not had to force close it either.

Microsoft Edge has had no negative effects such as causing my Surface Book 2 to generate a large amount of heat or spin up a fan (my Surface Book 2 does not have a fan because I have the 13.5” i5 version), and the battery life has been extremely good. The only thing I wished was better with Microsoft Edge was the support for extensions, and from the extensions that are available most are buggy or do not function as well as their Google Chrome counterpart. With all this positivity I still wanted to see how Google Chrome performs on my Surface Book 2. After installing Chrome and using it for a couple of days, it showed me how far Microsoft has gone in catching up and passing Google when it comes to web browser optimization.

Google Chrome is known to be a resource hog and to Google’s credit it has been improving the resource management of the web browser with each subsequent release. Google Chrome chews up a large amount of your available RAM, unlike Microsoft Edge. But chewing up your available RAM is not the major problem here; I mean really using up available resources is not an issue (it is there to be used for a reason). The absolute worst part about Google Chrome on the Surface Book 2 is the drain on the battery. With Microsoft Edge I can get solid day’s worth of use on my Surface Book 2; Google Chrome on the other hand cannot give the same amount of battery life doing the same browsing. A solid day to me is 8 hours and using Microsoft Edge with other tools running easily passes this. Google Chrome and the same tools running can only last me around 6 hours. To some people 2 hours is not much, but that 2 hours can determine whether you leave your charger at home or now.

The issue where watching YouTube on Google Chrome would spin up my CPU fan of my Surface Pro 3 did not happen on my Surface Book 2. The primary reason for this is because my Surface Book 2 does not have a fan. What did happen though was that my device was a little warmer when watching YouTube on Google Chrome than on Microsoft Edge, it was not too hot to use on my lap but there was a noticeable difference.

Overall I think I’ll be sticking with Microsoft Edge completely now on my devices (on my Android device I have switch to Microsoft Edge and will most likely change my default browser back to Microsoft Edge from Google Chrome on my gaming PC), especially on my Surface Book 2. With the fixes that Microsoft have done to the Edge browser, if you have not given it a chance then try it out; it will surprise you I think at how well it performs compared to Google Chrome, and if you have a device you take on the go with you then it will probably drain less of your battery.

Well done Microsoft in really taking the time in optimizing your default browser, now if people only could shake the bad taste of Internet Explorer out of their mouths, they may give Edge a go.

A Microsoft Twist on Google’s Android

Update: Within 6 hours of me posting this Microsoft sent me an email about the availability of the Microsoft Edge browser on Android, in Preview. You can find it here in the Google Play Store. Enjoy your new browser.

I have stated this before but I’ll do it again. I am a HUGE Android fan, I love Android. I like being able to customize my phone (from a stock Android experience) and use the full range of supported first party apps. However, I am a HUGE Microsoft fan as well; even bought the original Surface RT (R.I.P. Windows RT). When I read that the Redmond software king was coming out with a new Android launcher called Microsoft Launcher (seems to be a re-skinned Arrow Launcher from their Microsoft Garage team) and Microsoft Edge I was over the moon. You can read more about the announcement on the Windows Blog here.

I have on and off used the Arrow launcher previously on my Android device, and I use Microsoft Edge on my Surface Pro 3 and Gaming PC (alongside Google Chrome. See here about my experience running Edge and Chrome on my Surface Pro 3). I could not be happier to try out these two new apps from Microsoft on my now nearly no longer security supported Google Nexus 6.

Note: As of writing this blog post the Microsoft Edge browser is currently only on iOS, you can however sign up and get informed when the Microsoft Edge becomes available to use on Android. See here for more information about the Microsoft Edge browser for Android availability. The Microsoft Launcher for Android is in Preview aka Beta and already available.

Several days later my heart sank slightly. The high I was on from the new software announcement did not last. I read that Microsoft is officially not going to be adding new features and build new hardware for Windows 10 Mobile; see here for more info about that news. I was really and truly hoping for a Surface Phone (still am, even after the announcement). Sure I don’t have a Windows 10 Mobile supported OS but it is always good to have competition and the experience I had on the Windows Mobile ecosystem was acceptable with the exception being the lack of first party supported apps. A real shame because the performance and UI to me was superior to that of the all too similar iOS and Android platforms.

With a new launcher in use and a new browser coming to my Android phone all coming from Microsoft I decided to have a look at the apps and services I use on my phone. What I saw was a little shocking at first, I used to primarily only use Google’s services and apps. As time went on my needs and preferences must have changed which in turn led to changes to the apps and services I use. The Google launcher I was using is now a Microsoft launcher, I will no longer be using Google Chrome but use Microsoft Edge (once it becomes available), and I don’t even use Google’s AI assistant, Cortana is my go to AI (she syncs with my Windows 10 PCs so easily it is stupid of me not to use her). The majority of my day to day apps or services are Microsoft now. Recently I even purchased a subscription to Office 365 so having that extra space on OneDrive and having the Office suite on my phone has Google’s suit of “Office” products obsolete.

I have always been dependent on the Google ecosystem (from Chrome to Gmail), but now I feel that I have finally managed to escape Google’s tight grasp. It isn’t that I don’t like their services or apps, it is just that I have found better services and apps. What Microsoft is offering on the Android platform is fantastic and the clear differentiation between the two technology giants is that Microsoft understands that synchronization and integration between mobile and desktop is important, plus getting people to use their services no matter the platform is important. Google’s lack of proper app support on desktop is a major problem for me as doing everything through a browser is not amazing plus the features on their browser supported products pale in comparison to the Microsoft offerings. Google Docs does not come close at all to what I can do in Microsoft Word, even Microsoft Excel completely destroys Google Sheets. What Microsoft offers with Office 365 is light years ahead of what Google offers.

So it appears that even though I am running stock Android (mainly for the performance and security updates), my time with Google’s apps and services appears to be coming to a close with Microsoft’s apps and services easily taking over. Nothing Google showed at Google IO this year has changed my mind and even the hardware they showed in early October has me avoiding their products (no 3.5mm headphone port, really, are you serious). Microsoft may be slowly abandoning their own platform but they are building a strong foundation on both Android and iOS which can in the long run position them extremely well in the mobile space. It is not about having your own platform to gain market share in the mobile space, it is about getting the mobile user to use your services to gain market share which I feel is more important and Microsoft now realises this.

Time will tell now whether I stay on the Microsoft apps and service bandwagon or I jump back on the Google apps and services freight train. What about you guys? Do you mix and match, or are you staying loyal to a single provider?

Google Chrome VS Microsoft Edge On My Surface Pro 3

There have been many tests, and comparisons between Google Chrome and Microsoft’s browser, Edge. Now it is my turn to talk about my experience using both browsers. I am not going to be doing a technical breakdown, but will be doing an experience breakdown, specifically on my Surface Pro 3.

I have been using Google Chrome for an extremely long time and it is still my go to browser at work and on my primary desktop PC at home. When I purchased my Surface Pro 3 and used Google Chrome, my experience using my new device was disappointing. The battery life was extremely poor, I was only able to get three hours out of my device at best and the fan would spin at what would seem full speed whenever I watch online videos making the back right of the device Hell hot. So using Google Chrome on my Surface Pro 3 was a no go it would seem, as it made my mobile device essentially a stationary device.

Luckily Microsoft came prepared with their own browser, Microsoft Edge. I decided to give it a go. At first it was tough to get used to the new browser. I didn’t mind using Bing, it performed just as good if not better than Google for some search results (props to Microsoft there). All the extensions that I used in Google Chrome were not present in Microsoft Edge (at the start Microsoft Edge did not even support extensions, but now it does and it has all the ones I need, so props again for listening to your consumers). But the extension issue I had was not the major problem with Microsoft Edge, loading and viewing web pages was the biggest problem. Not all pages would load correctly, the tab would constantly become unresponsive, UI elements on the page would not behave correctly, etc. Microsoft Edge still has this problem even in 2017 which is extremely frustrating. On the plus side of using Microsoft Edge I would easily get six hours out of my device, the fan would not spin up when watching online videos, and the device would not get hot at all.

So do I use a browser that essentially ruins the mobile experience due to poor battery performance and an insanely loud fan spinning while watching online videos making the device too hot to touch or do I use a browser that keeps the battery charge, has the fan spinning at a reasonable speed, but lacks the ability to perform when it comes to loading and viewing some web pages?

Right now I use both to try and get the best of both worlds. If I need to do some web browsing then I turn to Google Chrome, but if I need to watch any online videos then I always use Microsoft Edge. It may not be the best solution but neither Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge perform as expected on my Surface Pro 3. Maybe Google will work on optimising Google Chrome to ensure that it doesn’t take up all your resources, and reduce your battery to nothing in a short period. Or Microsoft can look into the issue where Microsoft Edge fails to load and display web pages correctly, because really that is the only show stopper for me; and for a web browser it if pretty important to have pages loaded and correctly displayed.

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