Today I received this warning when I opened the Chrome browser in Windows 10. I have never seen this warning before.
Is this really a valid warning?
Added the warning content for the future text search:
Chrome is draining your battery faster
Switch to Microsoft Edge for up to 36% more browsing time.
That's a recent Microsoft's pitch related to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
You can read more in their blog articles Get more out of your battery with Microsoft Edge by Jason Weber (Director of Web Platform Team, Microsoft Edge) and Building a more power efficient browser by Brandon Heenan (Program Manager for Microsoft Edge).
For these browsing activities, our tests show Microsoft Edge is a more energy efficient browser on Windows 10, with up to 36%-53% more battery life to get what you need done.
Microsoft claims to have collected real data from users of Windows 10 (version 1511):
the above image comes from and is directly linked to Jason Weber's article
Microsoft claims to have achieved this by reducing:
From Microsoft's perspective it is a valid advice and a strategy to differentiate their product on the market. Others might perceive it or present it as a "trick".
However, it is not much different from the practices of other vendors. For example Google is recommending Chrome to users who access their services (like GMail or search) with other browsers. Either party does not limit the features or coerce users, but tries to provide and promote an improved experience with their solution.
As the answer by Techraf shows, it can be viewed as a trick. Therotically, windows edge could use less battery as it has more direct access to windows components. But it also depends on your set up and it also depends how the rest of the browsers are set up as well. If you had chrome doing nothing more than just browsing the web, IE no other addons. It could use the battery just as much as Microsoft Edge.
However, to know if this is valid or not, you will just have to perform a test to see if battery drain is faster or slower between the browsers. In my opinion I would just ignore it.
Reason for ignoring it is because it just all depends on your set up etc. and because of this link
This Shows opera coming out on top, with batter power lasting 3 hours and 55 minutes average and Edge at 3 hours 12 minutes. And they even explain how they performed their test so you could perform it yourself.
another test that was done
With PCWorlds test, Edge comes out at top with 6 hours 25 minutes, with Opera in third at 5 hours and 55 minutes.
So between those tests, the numbers vary greatly even if you were to compare it with microsoft's test. So the only way to be sure which beats what, would be to test on your own system how each of them perform and then decide for yourself. Also, these tests performed were only done with out addons or making use of any extra features that these browsers might have. Even those who conducted these tests, especially on PCWorld have even stated, its difficult to test for every use case and to automate a test that would be close to that of what users do when browsing. What is even more difficult, is how many different laptop setups there are with different CPU's and GPU's and types of batteries etc etc. So, these tests don't even take into account, what type of hardware you have either.
