Hello everyone, I decided to test out some of the so called lightweight browsers like Midori, PaleMoon and QupZilla. I was expecting some significant differences in either CPU, GPU or Memory Usage. I opened the same 4K YouTube video on all browsers including Firefox. One browser Midori wasn't even able to play 4K videos by default so I immediately uninstalled it. PaleMoon used just as much memory as Firefox and more CPU than Firefox, less GPU than Firefox. QupZilla used a little bit less memory than Firefox, but more CPU and more GPU.
System: Win 8.1 Intel i7 4770k 32GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400Mhz XFX R9 290 Samsung 840 Pro
I know this is not a real benchmark since I haven't posted any data, but I didn't think it was worth the time since the results were so frustrating...
Any idea why these so called lightweight browsers aren't performing any better? Thanks.
I once dabbled in these browsers (except QupZilla), but in the end I found them less convenient than "light weight". I hate to say it but I kind of like Edge, but it still has some compatibility issues here and there. I've heard Chrome is removing some of its bloat too and it has been extremely stable / quick for me lately.
I haven't moved to Windows 10 yet so I haven't tried Edge yet. Even if it is good I'd like to have an alt browser that doesn't spy and doesn't create such a huge footprint. For example as you may know, a browser creates a traceable fingerprint based on version, OS, addons etc. Additionally I'm pretty sure the larger companies track you by additional means as well.
That's not true at all. Most if not all of those web browsers claim faster load speeds and lower resource usage. From wiki: "A lightweight web browser is a web browser that sacrifices some of the features of a mainstream web browser in order to reduce the consumption of system resources, and especially to minimize the memory footprint."
It doesn't make any sense. Why would anyone make a browser that has less features but uses just as much resources.
Midori: "Midori is a lightweight, fast, and free web browser. It aligns well with the Xfce philosophy of making the most out of available resources."
QupZilla: "But from its start, QupZilla has grown into a feature-rich browser." Wiki: "It is reported to consume fewer system resources than the major general purpose browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome."
But seriously: It doesn't make sense to test the "lightweightness" of browsers on a system with that horsepower. If there is free memory and the browser could do things faster by using it, it will do that. And that is fine.