14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Edge is Windows 10’s new default browser, and the Redmond-based tech giant is making big efforts to improve this application in a way that would make it faster than its rivals. Recent benchmarks show that these efforts are indeed paying off now, at least as far as JavaScript is concerned.
One of the main focuses in Microsoft’s Edge development was to make JavaScript load faster, and in a blog post today, the company explains that the Chakra JavaScript engine is faster than in any other 64-bit browser currently on the market.
To determine how fast Edge actually is, Microsoft put its new browser to the test in two different benchmarks, namely Octane 2.0 and Jet Stream. In both benchmarks, Edge performed amazingly well, scoring better not only than Firefox and Chrome but also than Internet Explorer.
2 times faster than Internet Explorer
According to Microsoft’s own results, Microsoft Edge is more than 1.6 times faster than Internet Explorer in the Jet Stream benchmark, but also 2.25 times faster in the Octane 2.0 test.
“While winning on a benchmark that is not created by us does feel nice, the key is that Microsoft Edge has already come a long way from IE11 in terms of improved JavaScript performance on both, benchmarks and real world web as it exists today,” Microsoft explains.
In case you’re wondering why Microsoft Edge was put up against Chrome Canary and Firefox Alpha, it’s because Edge itself is still in development, so performing a benchmark between a browser that’s not yet stable and two that are already on the market was less relevant.
What’s more surprising, however, is that Internet Explorer, the browser that Microsoft has been improving and praising for years, got the lowest score in these benchmarks.
Needless to say, this also shows the difference in terms of speed between Edge and Internet Explorer, so if you do decide to move to Windows 10, browsing the web could seem to be blazing fast if you’ve been using Internet Explorer before.