Microsoft battery life test gives Edge a leg up on Chrome and Firefox

There's no doubt that your choice of browser can have a noticeable impact on your battery life, and now Microsoft is hoping to leverage that fact to convince you to use Edge. Now that the Windows 10 Creators Update is here, Microsoft has pitted its Edge browser head-to-head with Firefox and Chrome in a battle for battery supremacy, and the results are fairly substantial.

As part of the setup, Microsoft used three identical Surface Book laptops running on Windows 10 Pro build 15063. You can get a closer look at the full methodology from Microsoft, but a number of features like location and the ambient light sensor were disabled, while the volume was muted and the cache for each browser was cleared.

There's always reason to be skeptical of first-party tests like these, of course. That said, the Creators Update does introduce a range of improvements to Edge, and these results largely echo findings from a similar test conducted last year. Given browser choice is usually driven by many other personal preferences, however, it'll be interesting to see if Microsoft's case for battery efficiency can win over any stalwart Chrome or Firefox users.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Former Editor-in-Chief

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl.