Microsoft Benchmarks Browser Power Consumption

Power consumption is a topic that we spend a fair bit of time talking about through a lot of our content, especially with regards to graphics cards and processors. But, I can honestly admit that one piece of technology where power consumption has never come to mind is… with a Web browser. Admit it… you likely haven’t either (and if you have, kudos!).

While the power consumption of a Web browser might seem like a simple thing on the surface, it was a major concern when Microsoft was designing Internet Explorer 9. And, since it just so happens that IE9 delivers the best power consumption results according to Microsoft itself, an entire blog post has been dedicated to explaining the reasons why with the help of actual results.

Benchmarking power consumption can be tough, but I can honestly admit that the author of this post puts our methodologies to shame. While we can’t afford some mega-array of National Instruments power measurement units, Microsoft can, and it can measure at least 12 different components in a PC individually at a time… now that’s specific.

With the help of an Intel reference PC, Microsoft benchmarked five market-leading browsers across four tests: idle, popular news site, HTML5 Galactic and FishIE. When all said and done, IE9 came out on top, able to prolong a laptop’s battery-life better than any other, with a result of around 3h 45m. In second place came Firefox 4’s 3h 35h, with the others ranging between 2h 43m ~ 2h 56m.

What’s most interesting to me is not that IE9 came in first place (though independent tests would be great to see), but the fact that Firefox 4 was the only browser that could consistently match up. Opera 11 proved to be the worst performer of the bunch with both overall power consumption and the total inability to run one of the HTML5 tests.

Power consumption is an important consideration in building a modern browser and one objective of Internet Explorer 9 is to responsibly lead the industry in power requirements. The more efficiently a browser uses power the longer the battery will last in a mobile device, the lower the electricity costs, and the smaller the environment impact. While power might seem like a minor concern, with nearly two billion people now using the Internet the worldwide implications of browser power consumption are significant.