Web Browser Grand Prix: The Top Five, Tested And Ranked

[topgear]

"The fastest browser on Earth."

That's what the Opera homepage has said since Tuesday. After five release candidates and two betas, the boys from Oslo just recently launched the final build of Opera 10.50. That's a pretty heavy claim to make, though, especially with well-establish competition already in the field demonstrating impressive performance at an unbeatably-low price. Does it hold up?

And although you might have missed it due to iPad hysteria, both Mozilla and Google recently released new versions of their browsers as well. Opera isn't the only one making bold statements on performance, either. In the days leading up to the unveiling of Apple's impossibly over-hyped slate, Mozilla dropped Firefox 3.6 and claimed a whopping 20% speed gain over version 3.5. Three days later, Google quietly unveiled Chrome 4.0 stable, though the actual version number is 4.0.249.78.



Let us not forget that Cupertino also offers a Web browser. In fact, Apple claims Safari is "the world's fastest Web browser." Sounds strangely familiar, doesn't it? Even Internet Explorer, which hasn't had a release since last year, is in the headlines lately. But it's the charges being leveled against IE that are drawing the most attention.

We've seen mounting pressure to abandon Microsoft's browser by everyone from Homeland Security to McAfee and Google--even some foreign governments. If it's so horrible, than why is anyone still using it? Is there a performance justification for why almost 60% of Internet users still cling to IE?

We decided that somebody needed to look at these browsers. So, we put all five major Web browsers through a gauntlet of benchmarks and time trials. We did this to conclusively answer the question: which is the fastest browser on Earth (at least until one of these companies launches another major update)?

Read on .....
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...pera,2558.html

[Robin van Persie]

Opera 10.5 is the FASTEST browser on the Earth (personal experience) & without the need of any add-ons. I had tried all myself on Sunspider and Opera was fastest.

Chrome is still 'Beta' & unstable for Linux and Mac,whereas Opera's final builds for *nix will be out shortly....

Firefox on Linux is a resource hog...

[sakumar79]

Who cares that much about speed? It only differs a bit... For most it makes no difference...

Browser choice boils down to individual's preferences...

Arun

[Aspire]

Originally Posted by Grand Prix

Google Chrome is the real speed king.

[Liverpool_fan]

This article doesn't analyze the bundled and extensible features of each browser
Opera would surely come out on top if features as well as speed is taken into account.

[Aspire]

^Which Special Features you're talking about ??

[Liverpool_fan]

Hmm? In built ad blocker? In built Torrent Client? In Built IRC client? Opera Unite? Opera Link? Mail Client? Opera Notes? Opera Turbo? And a lot more

[topgear]

^^ Yup, if you consider other features opera is the winner ... and for me opera is the ultimate winner ( fanboy )

There are little confusions though : ( look at the results here ) :
http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog...-browser-speed

& compare it with the tom's result .. for eg :

[ico]

Who cares about these reviews? Try by yourself.

www.opera.com

[Aspire]

Hmm? In built ad blocker? In built Torrent Client? In Built IRC client? Opera Unite? Opera Link? Mail Client? Opera Notes? Opera Turbo? And a lot more

Yeah, Opera rocks with these inbuilt features, but there are certain add-ons which can get you "most of these" features in other Browsers

[topgear]

Originally Posted by ico

Who cares about these reviews? Try by yourself.

www.opera.com

I second that -- yup, try by yourself and fell and experience the difference, power, sleekness, visual pleasant and speed

[sakumar79]

@Aspire, sure you have addons for Firefox that can "mimic" these features... Some can even go beyond them, I guess... But the more you add on to Firefox, the more it adds to complexity for people like me who work on many computers.... I have a system at office, a system at home and my laptop to start with... Then, as I also help a lot of friends and relatives, I have to work with their systems too... If I had to work with so many add-ons everywhere it becomes a headache... Each time Firefox upgrades, it has to check the functionality of the addon with the new release... This is repeated in each system I work with...

Opera in the other hand is a breeze to work with... The only problem with Opera (and many will argue that this is not really Opera's problem) is rendering of some pages... For those I use other browsers like Firefox, Chrome and IE... But for me, in general, Opera is ten times better than the other browsers... But of course, this is only a personal opinion...

Arun

[ico]

^ good point there.

Summing everything up, Opera is an out-of-the-box browser which has the best feature set available when you install it straightaway.

[Aspire]

Anyway, Chrome's my personal favourite.........
Use Opera only for IRC as i hate Chatzilla...