Chrome vs Safari energy usage

Question

Chrome vs Safari energy usage

Late 2010 macbook air with Mavericks installed over Mountain Lion - no issues of note after the upgrade - everything went smoothly.

I've been a fan of chrome for a few years now - I like the tab icons at the top of the window bar and the general clean look and performance. After installing Mavericks, I've been watching energy usage quite closely and chrome turns out to be a hog. As an experiment, I created a safari setup with the same number of tabs (10-12) - downloaded the flash plugin - etc - to mimic a chrome session and found safari was using roughly 1/2-1/3 the energy. I'm hoping chrome releases a more energy efficient update (I run the beta channel typically) but right now, safari is the one to use when I care about battery life.

Anyone else have any observations here?

Posted on Nov 6, 2013 1:49 PM

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Answer 1

drZuk

Level 1

0 points

Nov 6, 2013 2:52 PM in response to Peter Lorraine

This is not really an answer to your question, mor questions based on your message.

That's awesome that you were able to measure the energy. I take it that you are using Chrome and Safari do you have a preference?

Do you feel Mavericks is an improvement on Mountain lion? Thanks!

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Answer 2

Nov 6, 2013 3:56 PM in response to drZuk

From my perspective, Mavericks is an improvement over Mountain Lion. I've had no problems, memory usage is better, notifications and maps are nice improvements, and energy usage over all is lower so battery life has improved. I know not everyone has had a smooth experience upgrading, but I like it a lot.

Regarding, chrome or safari - I favor chrome overall but that's just my opinion. Its fast, gets updated almost weekly, and has a clean interface. I don't like that it appears to use more energy than safari as battery life matters to me. Hopefully that will improve in a future build, or my estimates are wrong. Right now I'm trying to use safari to see if I get used to it.

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Answer 3

Gary K.

Level 1

104 points

Mar 6, 2014 3:14 PM in response to Peter Lorraine

I discovered this after realizing that when I was using my MBP unplugged in the evening my battery seemed to be drainag fast. Since I was mostly web surfing I started to closely observe Chrome's energy usage and discovered the same thing. Every tab spawns its own process and the Mavericks energy stats over time were pretty damning. I switched over to Safari, which I had abandoned for Chrome a few months ago, and discovered that Safari's performance has dramatically improved under Mavericks and seems to use 1/3 to 1/2 the energy cmpared to Chrome. So I am back to Safari as my default browser but still find that certain functions such as Google image Search continue to be buggy in Safari but work okay in Chrome. Finally, the lack of a 64 bit version of Chrome or even a rumor of same does not seem to bode well for the future.

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