Is Microsoft Edge really the fastest Windows 10 web browser?

TechExpert

Microsoft pushed out Windows 10 build 10240 yesterday to Windows Insider users which is the RTM build of the operating system.

Along with the announcement came the claim that the new default browser of the system, Microsoft Edge, is blazing fast and beating Chrome and Safari on JavaScript performance benchmarks.

Microsoft stated that Edge was beating Chrome on Sunspider by 112%, on Google Octane by 11%, and on Apple JetStream by 37%.

No mentioning of other browsers such as Firefox by the company; reason enough to run the tests on a local system using the following web browsers and specs:

Web Browsers

microsoft edge

All web browsers were run with default configurations.

  1. Microsoft Edge (part of Windows 10, not available standalone)
  2. Google Chrome Stable
  3. Google Chrome Canary
  4. Mozilla Firefox Stable
  5. Mozilla Firefox Nightly
  6. Pale Moon Stable
  7. Opera Stable
  8. Vivaldi Technical Preview 4

The main specs of the machine

  1. Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.30 GHz
  2. Memory: 8 Gigabyte of DDR3 RAM
  3. GPU: NVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
  4. Hard Drive: Corsair Force GT 180 GB Solid State Drive SATA 3
  5. Operating System: Windows 10 Build 10240

The benchmarks

  1. Apple JetStream (higher better)
  2. Google Octane (higher better)
  3. Mozilla Kraken (lower better, time in milliseconds)
  4. Peacekeeper (higher better)
  5. SunSpider 1.0.2 JavaScript Benchmark (lower better, time in milliseconds)
  6. WebXPRT 2015 (higher better)

The results

  Apple JetStream Google Octane Mozilla Kraken Peacekeeper SunSpider WebXPRT
             
Microsoft Edge 191.59 29992 1152 2681 87.2 370
Google Chrome Stable 168.6 28566 1197.3 4009 184.5 419
Google Chrome Canary 168.21 30130 1072.9 4416 205.8 383
Opera Stable 163.49 28561 1317.8 3801 194.8 409
Vivaldi TP4 163.44 28990 1317.8 4368 214 344
Mozilla Firefox Stable 164.18 27803 1218 4668 185.9 433
Mozilla Firefox Nightly 145.75 26684 1277.1 4451 205 340
Pale Moon Stable failed 19211 1645.7 2919 164.9 231

The computer was idle while benchmarks were run. Still, some results were puzzling, for instance that Chrome Stable beat Chrome Canary in some benchmarks, that Firefox Stable performed better in all benchmarks than Nightly, or that Pale Moon failed on Apple's JetStream benchmark (it got stuck while running the cdjs test).

Most results are fairly close when you compare them but there are a couple of exceptions:

  1. Microsoft Edge dominates the Apple JetStream and SunSpider benchmark.
  2. Edge's PeaceKeeper performance was weak by a large percentage.
  3. Pale Moon performed considerably worse than other browsers in most -- but not all -- benchmarks.

There is more to a browser than JavaScript performance, especially if the differences in performance are not that noticeable in the real-world.

Microsoft has been right that Edge performs better than Chrome in the browser's the company selected for comparison. It did not perform as well in others though and here it is Peacekeeper more than any other benchmark where it performs badly.

Is Edge the fastest browser on Windows 10 then? The results leave little doubt that Microsoft has improved the performance of the default Windows browser by a lot but since Edge is not beating all browsers in all benchmarks, it cannot be said that it is the fastest browser on Windows 10.

Now You: What's your take on Microsoft Edge and performance in general?