Given up on Microsoft Edge

So after a year of using Microsoft Edge, I have gone back to Chrome. The main reason for it is because i’ve found Edge to be really unstable, but after switching, I realize that Chrome isn’t quite the clear-cut winner either. I’m writing this to share my experiences with the two browsers.

Speed.

Google Chrome feels….kinda slow? Microsoft Edge is screaming fast and Chrome almost feels pedestrian in comparison. Indeed, browser benchmarks show that the race for the fastest browser is sort of a tie between Edge, Chrome, and Opera. In any case, speed-wise, going from Edge to Chrome isn’t quite the upgrade it used to be.

Memory Usage.

Chrome has clearly improved it’s memory usage over the gap year I’ve ignored it. Chrome’s task manager continues to report the “full” memory usage of the individual tabs, but there’s clearly some optimization going on, because looking at the individual processes of Chrome.exe in Windows’ task manager reveals a smaller memory footprint for tabs left in the background.

As a result, Chrome is able handle way more tabs than Edge does on my PC. Edge also uses more memory per tab, worsening the issue. Edge also unloads/suspends tabs in the background sometimes, but the behavior of that is unpredictable. Edge also appears to be not able to plug memory leaks from some complex webpages, and leaving such a tab open with the webpage in the background will just cause its memory usage to balloon over time without your knowledge. Edge will sometimes unload/suspend the tab – but only if you’re lucky

Nonetheless, most of the time, Edge is fine, until you somehow run into the limits of 8gb of RAM.

Stability.

There is no contest. I’ve run into websites in Edge that simply do not play nice, the tab would keep crashing and reloading itself, until it eventually gives up and displays the “there seems to be a problem displaying this page” message. Sometimes this will take the entire browser down, sometimes the browser closes itself for no reason, and sometimes, the browser will freeze up momentarily. These momentary freezes completely mar up an otherwise screaming fast browser.

I’ve also had this problem where sometimes, the browsing history simply will not show up, and sometimes only it will only show *some* history (!).

None of this happens with Chrome, and even when it does, it’s rare.

Scrolling.

I’m singling scrolling performance out in particular because of how god damn good Edge is with it. It’s almost as if you’re using Safari on a Mac. When I left Chrome a year ago, it didn’t even have smooth scrolling. Chrome seems to have decent scrolling now, but it can be choppy on certain websites. On Edge, smooth scrolling is almost always 60fps smooth, even when the page is unresponsive (?!). It’s almost as if the page’s scrolling render is running on a different thread or something. Don’t take my word for it: open the most complex webpage you know of in Edge, scroll around, and compare it with Chrome. Night and day.

Font rendering.

When I left Chrome a year ago, Google was still working on implementing DirectWrite font rendering, and so it wasn’t enabled by default. You could enable with a flag, but it caused stability issues. DirectWrite font rendering in Chrome appears to be enabled by default now. Fonts looks much better, but I am still seeing blurry and jagged fonts. Much better than what it used to be…but it can be better.

Chrome has historically bad HiDPI support before they dropped support for XP, and so I suspect all this would look better at 100% display scaling, but of course, i’m on a modern laptop and I actually need 125%. Would love to do 150%, but that would f%^k up other programs on my computer.

Edge’s font rendering is flawless in comparison. You’d really have to nitpick to find what little problems it has, given if you could even spot them to begin with. It’s really this little bit of eye-candy that gives Edge that modern browser look IMO, more than it’s UI. It’s the way it makes webpages shine……..when it doesn’t crash.

Features and Extensions.

I’m not even going to pretend that Chrome isn’t the clear winner here. Chrome also makes me realize how much I actually miss a browser that syncs with my phone. Logging in with my Google Account in Chrome makes all the magic work, and it actually feels worth it, unlike logging in to Edge with a Microsoft Account.

Chrome also has a bookmark manager – wow! – something which I can’t believe Edge doesn’t have.

Edge has Web Notes – wow! – which I almost never use. It’s a flagship feature of the browser which I think might have been better off being a part of the Windows Ink Workspace and Photos app (which supports ink now) instead of being a browser feature.

Edge also has some extensions now – wow! – and I think people will find that it covers some basics, like uBlock Origin, RES, Ghostery and Tampermonkey, but it doesn’t cover some other basics like LastPass (EDIT – I was wrong, Edge has LastPass!) As some of these important extensions found their way into the Windows Store in less than a year, I think this situation will improve really quickly in the next few years, and all the basics that people expect should be covered. For now, people that need many extensions are going to find it lacking. People like me don’t use extensions, even on Chrome, so the lack of extensions never bothered me.

What I think will bother people, is the lack of cross-device sync and the lack of a f*cking bookmark manager. Seriously! Microsoft, what the f*ck.

CPU usage and impact on battery life.

Some people think this is a weird thing to bring up when comparing browsers, but I think impact on battery life is something people should care about. Chrome and Edge appear to have similar CPU usage when idle, and watching HD video, but when doing heavy surfing and multitasking (multitabbing?) in the browser, Chrome hits the battery much harder than Edge. Both Edge and Chrome report similar CPU usage in Task Manager, but Chrome makes the processor step up it’s p-state more frequently, even hitting the boost clocks, something which rarely happens when using Edge.

It is to be noted that a year ago, Chrome used to make the fans on my laptop come on pretty often, but that seems to be a thing of the past, and it’s a little more reasonable now. However, from what I can tell, you lose around 30 to 50 minutes of battery life when using Chrome compared to Edge. My laptop also runs warmer. Ugh.

Conclusion

I think the lack of a bookmark manager, along with reliability and stability issues of Edge really set it back. While you get better memory usage on Chrome, you also lose battery life, and lose smooth scrolling. Edge gives you amazing font rendering but you lose Google Account sync. It feels like a bit of give and take on both sides, and the gap between Chrome and Edge isn’t as far as what people may think it is. However, the scale tips in Chrome’s favor because going with Edge makes you give up features that people consider rudimentary, such as reliability+stability, and a bookmark manager.

Conversation 32 comments

  • jlv632

    22 February, 2017 - 1:13 am

    <p>Are you talking the current Production version of Edge or any Redstone 2 Builds? </p>

    • rameshthanikodi

      22 February, 2017 - 1:36 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#44207">In reply to jlv632:</a></em></blockquote><p>current production version.</p>

      • jimchamplin

        Premium Member
        22 February, 2017 - 7:49 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#44208">In reply to rameshthanikodi:</a></em></blockquote><p>Edge in the Creators Update is a massive improvement. I don't have the stability issues I had in 14393. </p>

        • rameshthanikodi

          22 February, 2017 - 11:28 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#44219">In reply to jimchamplin:</a></em></blockquote><p>Can't wait to try Edge again when the Creator's Update lands. I will not switch back though, unless the stability of the browser is rock solid. The bar is high, as it should be. I just can't use a browser that is capable of having a complete meltdown on its own.</p>

          • jimchamplin

            Premium Member
            22 February, 2017 - 12:47 pm

            <blockquote><a href="#44264"><em>In reply to rameshthanikodi:</em></a></blockquote><p>I regularly have 8-10 tabs open on a 2GB machine, and it doesn't choke. There's been some weird issues that seem more related to being pre-release. I think so because they've been steadily disappearing as the builds progress.</p><p>I also realized something. The reason for the discrepancy in what Chrome says the memory usage of a tab is vs Taskman. Windows 10 uses memory compression on inactive tasks, which is why they're smaller according to the system, as that's transparent to the app.</p>

            • rameshthanikodi

              22 February, 2017 - 10:18 pm

              <blockquote><em><a href="#44290">In reply to jimchamplin:</a></em></blockquote><p>That is a completely plausible explanation but Windows' Task Manager reports that the total memory compression on my system is only around 40mb and the discrepancy is much more than that, so, I doubt it's memory compression.</p>

              • jimchamplin

                Premium Member
                26 February, 2017 - 3:35 pm

                <blockquote><em><a href="#44367">In reply to rameshthanikodi:</a></em></blockquote><p>Oh… wow… I wonder if Chrome compresses the tab data itself</p>

  • paul1664

    22 February, 2017 - 1:57 am

    <p>Edge has the LastPass extension. It works fine. </p><p>I also use Adblock Plus which is also fine. </p><p>Edge development seems glacially slow and focussed on irrelevant stuff.</p>

    • rameshthanikodi

      22 February, 2017 - 11:26 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#44209">In reply to paul1664:</a></em></blockquote><p>Agreed. Blows my mind that Web Notes shipped before Extension support. </p><p>I did not know that LastPass existed for Edge. It's not listed in the Store! I only found it after Googling for it after you told me it exists. Same goes for uBlock Origin – had to Google that too. Discoverability is a problem.</p>

      • RedSign

        26 February, 2017 - 2:08 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#44261"><em>In reply to rameshthanikodi:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>It has to do with the language of the system in use, I think. You only get the extensions shown in search or in the extensions section that are available for your system language but they are still available if direct-linked to. UBlock origin is one example for my language, since there is no german version of it but LastPass is available since there is a german version for it. </p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      26 February, 2017 - 3:34 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#44209">In reply to paul1664:</a></em></blockquote><p>Ublock Origin is superior. Combine it with Ghostery and those pesky advertisers can cry themselves home! (please whitelist sites you support)</p>

  • lordbaal1

    22 February, 2017 - 10:57 am

    <p>Open the hub, click on <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">favorites. That's the bookmark manager.</span></p>

    • rameshthanikodi

      22 February, 2017 - 11:22 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#44252">In reply to lordbaal1:</a></em></blockquote><p>No.</p><p>Seriously…making excuses for Microsoft like this is getting no one anywhere fast.</p>

      • lordbaal1

        22 February, 2017 - 2:27 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#44260">In reply to rameshthanikodi:</a></em></blockquote><p>How is that not a bookmark manager? You can drag and drop them where you want to.</p><p>So h<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ow is that not a bookmark manager?</span></p>

        • rameshthanikodi

          22 February, 2017 - 8:39 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#44313">In reply to lordbaal1:</a></em></blockquote><p>Multi-select? Search? Even the drag and drop doesn't work well anyway.</p>

          • jimchamplin

            Premium Member
            26 February, 2017 - 3:32 pm

            <blockquote><em><a href="#44366">In reply to rameshthanikodi:</a></em></blockquote><p>In Microsoft Edge, bookmark drags and drops you!</p>

    • peterh_oz

      26 February, 2017 - 10:18 am

      <blockquote><a href="#44252"><em>In reply to lordbaal1:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Agree. They have combined the bookmarks and manager into one. Unlike Chrome where it's semi hidden (from normal users) inside settings. What more do you want to do? Having said that, I use Chrome due to sync with my work PC. Tho we've just upgraded to Win10 so I'll try Edge @ work now.</p>

    • Polycrastinator

      27 February, 2017 - 12:00 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#44252">In reply to lordbaal1:</a></em></blockquote><p>Maybe it's just me, but am I the only one who just doesn't use bookmarks?</p>

  • Jeff Hanna

    23 February, 2017 - 8:08 am

    <p>I stopped using Edge a while ago for the simple reason that it refused to consistently remember the window size and position on my desktop. It would randomly just decide that it should always open full-screen. When that happened clicking the maximize button in the window frame wouldn't restore it to the size and position I had set, instead always going to some default. I got tired of fighting with it. If Microsoft can't be bothered to allow the user to choose where they want to position and size their browser then I will use one that does (Chrome).</p>

    • rameshthanikodi

      26 February, 2017 - 7:36 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#44394">In reply to Jeff Hanna:</a></em></blockquote><p>yeah, that happens to me too. But it seems to be a problem with other UWP apps too. Not sure what's going on. Personally it's not a dealbreaker to me, and I learnt to live with it, it's just a small annoyance to me. I can see how it's a dealbreaker to others though</p>

      • hrlngrv

        Premium Member
        26 February, 2017 - 2:23 pm

        <p><em><a href="#82238">In reply to rameshthanikodi:</a></em></p><p>If it's a broader problem with UWP, that's certainly not good.</p>

        • jimchamplin

          Premium Member
          26 February, 2017 - 3:32 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#83814">In reply to hrlngrv:</a></em></blockquote><p>Feedback Hub! The three things to remember when you have an issue with Windows are…</p><p>1) File feedback</p><p>2) File feedback politely</p><p>3) File feedback politely now</p>

          • hrlngrv

            Premium Member
            26 February, 2017 - 4:18 pm

            <p><em><a href="#84004">In reply to jimchamplin:</a></em></p><p>Perhaps you should direct that to the others in this thread. Myself, I don't use Edge or other UWP apps, so I have nothing to report.</p>

  • Shane

    Premium Member
    26 February, 2017 - 5:34 am

    <p>Ive only just recently tried Chrome. On and off over the last couple of months.</p><p><br></p><p>I have found Edge to be better. A couple of sites I read, Edge renders them not just better but how they should be.</p><p><br></p><p>I like the touch pad control from my Pro 4.</p><p><br></p><p>I will continue to try Chrome but for me Edge works fine.</p>

    • rameshthanikodi

      26 February, 2017 - 7:38 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#81787">In reply to Shane:</a></em></blockquote><p>Scrolling in Edge + precision touchpad = pure web surfing pleasure. There's nothing else on Windows quite like it. The feel of being in direct control of the manipulation, as the scrolling follows your fingers, is just amazing. It's such a big deal I wish more people would take notice.</p>

      • RedSign

        26 February, 2017 - 2:02 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#82249"><em>In reply to rameshthanikodi:</em></a></blockquote><p>You are not alone since this is one if not the main reason for me using Edge on my Surface Book. I really love the scrolling and nothing comes close in that regard. You can get close to it with Chrome and the SmoothScroll extension but even with that it's not as good as in Edge. </p>

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    26 February, 2017 - 11:56 am

    <p>This is quite the post. :)</p><p><br></p><p>I keep trying Edge. The thing is, I really like it. But there's always something that brings me back to Chrome. Some missing extension, missing feature. Something.</p><p><br></p><p>Maybe they get this right in RS3. </p>

  • arunphilip

    26 February, 2017 - 10:13 pm

    <p>Very nice and balanced post. </p><p><br></p><p>I continue to use Edge for regular browsing, and just grit my teeth whenever the various glitches occur (tabs not loading, tabs/browser crashing, etc.). However, when I need something serious done (e.g. a recent video-conference via the browser), I've been bitten far too often by Edge, so I just go ahead and use Chrome. </p><p><br></p><p>I hope the upcoming Creators' Update resolves these issues, because I'll otherwise be annoyed at Microsoft at bloating Edge with new features (EPUB reading, etc.) while not fixing basic browser issues. </p>

  • Polycrastinator

    27 February, 2017 - 12:02 pm

    <p>I still find myself switching back and forth. I do use my Surface Book in tablet mode on a semi-regular basis, however, and so I tend towards Edge on there more than on my desktop because I find the touch performance of Edge to be far, far superior to Chrome (or Firefox).</p>

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