Remember, I began my testing about two months ago so the browser versions are what was current at that time. I used a LInksys 802.11n router for the tests, which was about two feet from the test laptop. To test the accuracy of the benchmark, I ran repeated tests in Chrome (each of which took several hours) and the results were within four minutes of each other. Once I updated the laptop, it stayed off the Internet to keep the OS at a consistent state. The laptop was running Windows 10 Home with the latest updates installed prior to starting the tests. I ran all of my tests at 155 nits, which is a reasonable brightness for an office environment where you are trying to save power. That’s to be expected though, as both 4K resolution and touch can be draining.

With its 41-watt battery, battery life is a little underwhelming. This laptop has a Core i7 Skylake CPU, 8GB of RAM, an M.2 SSD, and an Ultra HD 4K panel with 10-point touch. I used the same Toshiba Radius 12 that I used for my media-player shootout. I used a Toshiba Radius 12 for the bulk of my testing. I figured people don’t browse that way so what’s the value of it. I configured BrowsingBench with a rather long “dwell” time on each page, rather than just jamming through a bunch of pages. The pages are stored and served by the benchmark, which means every single page and every single Flash ad is the same. You select between page types, how long you want the test to dwell on a page, and even set the bandwidth you want simulated. With EMBC’s BrowsingBench, you can test browsers in a controlled environment.

You boot into Ubuntu on a laptop that’s connected via ethernet to a wireless router, and then connect your test laptop to that router’s Wi-Fi. The benchmark runs on Linux from a USB key. That’s not even mentioning that the route the packets take to reach your screen could differ considerably moment to moment. These and other uncontrollable variables are enough to scare me off of running comparative tests using the live internet.ĮMBC is a small benchmarking outfit that claims its BrowsingBench test removes the variability in testing browsers.

Microsoft edge battery mode takes off