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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

The power efficiency isn't even close. The 2016 MBP battery lasts about 10 hours running Safari versus 3 hours running Chrome. I've never particularly liked Safari, but I'm close to switching myself because Chrome is such a disaster.

From the energy impact tab on the Activity Monitor:

Chrome: 43

Safari: 0.3

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+1. I use Safari for everything work, personal stuff like banking and news. Chrome incognito for you know what.

Purchasing secret presents, the use case incognito was designed for ;)

You joke, but if you make the mistake of looking at a possible present in a non-incognito window, Amazon ads will now obnoxiously feature said present in all websites that you visit...

Yeah, Safari kills all JavaScript threads - even on active tabs - after 90 seconds or so.

I haven't checked this recently, but in the past Chrome always turned on the dedicated GPU on my MBP, whereas Safari ran just fine with the integrated one.

It's great, right? :)

10 hours vs 3 hours for current browser versions, running equivalent tabs/extensions/settings? Sorry but I don't believe you.

Can you point to battery benchmarks or is this an off the cuff personal test?

Are you talking about an old version of Chrome? You're aware they've been making progress recently?

https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/06/google-chrome-mac-battery-per...

>>10 hours vs 3 hours for current browser versions, running equivalent tabs/extensions/settings? Sorry but I don't believe you.

My experience is the same. I have a 2011 MBA. With Safari, the battery lasts 4 hours. With Chrome, about 90 minutes. My browsing habits are the same between browsers.

Are you aware of the recent improvements in Chrome 53 energy use? Are your numbers before or after this?

What was your test methodology, or was this ad-hoc?

If there were reliable sources reporting similar numbers it would be easier to swallow, but I can't find a single source that claims it's this bad.

Yes this was within the last couple weeks, using Chrome 55 and Safari 10. The difference is enormous and unmistakeable, if you have an MBP then just try it yourself.

Spotted the Chrome dev.

I don't work for or advocate for Google.

I'm just skeptical about such a massive difference that I've never seen written about, and where only commenters report it, with no methodology, process, or repro steps.

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro with Chrome and anecdotally I don't notice a 3x battery difference with Safari, but I wouldn't make a strong claim about it without some rigor as I mention above.

'Tis the internet! In this case, your experience is everyone else's when it's good, no one's when it's bad.

You better get to believing, because it is right within the realm of reality. Chrome is _terrible_.

Believing what? I know it's terrible I'm just skeptical its that degree of terrible.

Already other people here are posting different ratios. Its just a loose claim.

On my preview MBP it was about half. 6 hours on Safari meant I got 3 hours on Chrome.

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