At least when it comes to power efficiency, it claims

Dec 29, 2018 11:26 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has already surrendered to Google in the browser market, admitting that EdgeHTML is a failure and it wants to switch to Chromium.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the software giant can’t go on with its typical Edge marketing push, which includes occasional battery tests that put its browser in a good light.

Every time the company rolls out a new OS feature update for Windows 10, it also conducts benchmarks to show how much Microsoft Edge is improving in terms of power efficiency as compared to rivals.

Now that the October 2018 Update is up for grabs, Microsoft did just the same thing, though with a different approach.

This time, the software firm hasn’t publicly talked about how good Microsoft Edge is versus its rivals, but only published the results on GitHub in a place that’s very likely to be missed by many users.

If you’re wondering why, no answer has been provided, but this is probably the result of Microsoft itself admitting EdgeHTML has no future and moving to Chromium being the only way to go.

Microsoft Edge moving to Chromium

Just like in the previous power efficiency tests, Microsoft Edge wins the battle, as it is capable of providing up to 24 percent better battery life than Chrome and an improvement of no less than 94 percent over Mozilla Firefox.

The test came down to running an HTML5 video in fullscreen on a Surface Book with pre-defined configuration settings, like display brightness set to 50 percent and volume set to mute. The same settings were used in all tests and Microsoft Edge was the most efficient browser, offering 16 hours of video playback versus 13 hours with Google Chrome.

Does this mean anything for Microsoft Edge users? Certainly not. With Microsoft moving to Chromium, the difference will pretty much go away, and power efficiency would basically come down to how the company manages to optimize its browser.

As for the new Edge, expect it to become available sometime next year, with a preview to be shipped to users in early 2019.