It’s completely silly to compare web browser power usage over anything short of hours of usage by people doing the same thing. In this short article i simply leave the browser windows open for a short period of time, idle, and using websites that i use daily. So yes, this is a useless test.
This is a short article showing the power usage of the big three browsers – Firefox, Chrome and Safari. This was done on a MacOS. I have previously read varying reviews answering this same question. So i set out to find the answer myself. In my very simple (perhaps too simple) test, i opened each of the three browsers, opened two tabs, visited the same websites across each browser and then left them for a while, idle.
Chrome: Energy Impact of 13.2. Average Energy Impact of 41.80. Safari: Energy Impact of 3.4. Average Energy Impact of 2.5. Firefox: Energy Impact of 3.1. Average Energy Impact of 15.07.
The above show vastly different numbers for the current and average power usage. This indicates that over time the browsers use varying amounts of power. It’s not fair to show a snapshot as i’ve done and so too the others you’ll read on other websites.
For the record, the websites i used in my test were Gmail and MinuteDock.