What is your preferred web browser for the Surface Pro 4?

[saintforlife]

From all accounts, it seems like Edge is not ready for prime time yet, with its lack of extensions. So that leaves us with Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

Which of these alternatives do you guys prefer? Is Chrome still bad when it comes to battery life? Is Firefox lighter on the battery usage?

 

[Ravi Sharma 2016]

I refuse to use Chrome as in my experience it has two major flaws. Security (plain awful) and battery drain.
Google in general is dropping the ball if looking at what they have been doing with Google+,Photo's, Storage space and Gmail Inbox. It's a mess. I have escaped the Google limitations with a local 1 TB free online storage solution, Flickr for Photo's ( 1 TB Yahoo account), Outlook (30 Gb free plan) for mail.

Edge is promising but not up there playing major league. FF is currently my default. Works according to expectations, good syncing on all devices, and does not seem to be a power sucker.

 

[GatsbyGlen]

Chrome. I use Chrome on all devices and I like how Google tracks everything I do.

 

[seremify]

I'm same as GatsbyGlen but I can't figure out why the scaling of Chrome is inconsistent. Sometimes when I launch it, it renders everything in a nice comfortable size e.g. Facebook UI elements, other forums... but then sometimes (like right now), it makes everything small and uncomfortable to use. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong which leads to this seemingly random scaling setting. It always says Zoom is set to 100% so it must be something else causing it.

I like Edge but without extensions, it is useless to me... but then maybe that's what makes it so fast and nice to use

 

[onlysublime]

Firefox is my default because of the widespread compatibility and the extensions. It's terrible as a touch browser though with bad scrolling.

My secondary browser is Edge. The rendering is great when it works right and the touch is very good (though Modern IE for Windows 8.1 is still better as a touch browser). A lot of the roughness of Edge is going away which is a good thing (finally, stuff like in-browser PDF controls are there). And the web notes and sharing features are useful. It only needs better compatibility, and extensions support. Even the forums on Windows Central are awful with Edge (sluggish response including typing text).

I refuse to use Chrome. Google wants to play hardball and gives an FU to Microsoft? Well, I'll give them an FU back. When Google decides to give feature parity to Windows users, then I'll consider them again. Heck, Chrome in ChromeOS is better than Chrome in Windows.

I refuse to use Chrome as in my experience it has two major flaws. Security (plain awful) and battery drain.
Google in general is dropping the ball if looking at what they have been doing with Google+,Photo's, Storage space and Gmail Inbox. It's a mess. I have escaped the Google limitations with a local 1 TB free online storage solution, Flickr for Photo's ( 1 TB Yahoo account), Outlook (30 Gb free plan) for mail.

I hate how Gmail uses Google Drive space (15GB). Every 6 months, I have to download and clear emails from my dad's account for him because he's constantly running out of space due to emails. He's not caving in to the storage upgrade pricing. Once you hit the limit, Gmail refuses to accept any more incoming emails. And if you start deleting too many emails within a short amount of time, they lock the account due to "suspicious behavior."

 

[Eric J F]

I've been using Edge exclusively; I don't really need extensions. When you replace the hosts file with the one from the site below, it works well almost all the time.

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

 

[TrekManOne]

I use Google Sheets a lot for stock and dividend tracking using googlefinance function for realtime updating. Firefox used to be my browser of choice up to Win 10 and Google sheets and Yahoo Finance. Firefox does not like Google sheets or Yahoo finance portfolio editing. Firefox would lock up forever with simple ut/past commands until responding 2-3 minutes later. Yes 2-3 minutes. Edge cannot yet do a ctrl C or V (cut & paste) in Google sheets so that got ruled out. By default I tried using Chrome and it's not so bad. MUCH more responsive to Yahoo Finance portfolio editing and Google Sheets editing than Firefox. So I've remained with Chrome with all it's warts. Chrome is resource intensive. When I have Chrome + 4 or 5 Google Sheets, Yahoo Finance portfolios and Quicken 2015 H&B open I'm at ~5M RAM. Probably why I bought an 8MB i5 Surface Pro 4 and not a 4MB model.

 

[TrekManOne]

One thing in favor of Edge is that it is the only browser to render video at true 1080p for stuff like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube, etc. Both Chrome and Firefox only stream at 720p. So Chrome browser of choice with Edge for video streaming

 

[TheCudder]

I use Edge, it's just way better with touch than any other browser --- Firefox is by far the worst with touch interaction, even though that's my browser of choice on non-touch devices.

 

[ncxcstud]

I use firefox and will switch over to Edge once extensions are available and an extension for Dashlane is released...

 

[zkyevolved]

Chrome when I need my bookmarks and passwords. But I mostly use edge for the day to day. It's super smooth even though it does have its issues which is fine as long as it is constantly getting better, which it is. Sometimes though 2 or 3 tabs eats well over 1GB of ram.

 

[ADifferentWorld]

Chrome, Firefox, Vivaldi

 

[Steve Adams]

IE11. not a battery resource hog, I see NO ADS in any webpage....so I am very happy!

 

[right_mr1]

I use each of edge (my default for browsing on the surface ) chrome if I have my device plugged in and when I want to leverage off its brilliant syncing across devices and Internet Explorer for sky go only.

Chrome is generally my go to browser but it is a power hog on the pro 4 and eats through my battery juice like it's going out of fashion. It is a bit juddery and not as smooth as edge on this device.
It is by far the browser I use the most generally and on a normal pc or laptop it is the only browser I use. It syncs all my data etc perfectly between my various devices. It is quite brilliant but sadly I don't use it much on the pro 4 though


Internet Explorer is a third choice and I only use it for Web sites that demand its use.

Edge
It is butter smooth and fluid on the pro 4.
Has tons of bugs still and doesn't support extensions and doesn't work with my windows 7 work computer. It is my browser of choice for casual browsing and watching videos like YouTube etc.
But it has nowhere near the functionality of chrome which is overall my preferred browser. It can be really frustrating at times due to the bugs. A reboot normally fixes that issue though until the next time something starts to go wrong with it.

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[Delirious D]

Chrome.