So, you’ve just got your hands on a new Windows 10 device running the latest version and build of 1809. You’re a confirmed Firefox or Google Chrome user so what’s the first thing you do? You fire up Win 10’s Edge browser for the first time in order to download your favourite browser installer… but wait! Not only does Edge appear impressively quickly but one of the first things you see onscreen is its speed compared to both Firefox and Chrome:
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Hmm… decisions, decisions. Should you stick with impressively speedy new Edge or go ahead and download your favourite, albeit apparently snail-like, browser?
There’s a couple of things that Microsoft forgets to point out clearly with its ‘in your face’ brightly-coloured and animated speed comparison:
Firstly, the speed comparison is from data that is almost exactly a year old… but you need to know where to look. Ignoring all the bright colours elsewhere, specifically you need to click on the dark blue link on the even darker blue background down in the bottom right-hand corner. This will take you to another webpage which explains that the browser speed comparison was made on 26th March 2018.
Secondly, there are specific reasons why Edge appears so speedily.:
a) Edge loads in the background before you have even signed-in to Windows. That’s right… by the time you get to a stable desktop, Edge is already running in the background… you just can’t see it. This means that if you click on an Edge icon then all it has to do is to flip into view.
b) Edge pre-loads both its Start tab and New tab so once again it can give the impression of speediness.
c) Even if you close Edge down… it doesn’t actually exit. Edge’s background processes* continue to run out of sight and reload fresh Start and New tabs just in case you re-open Edge.
d) Edge’s 4th trick is to second-guess where you’re going to browse next and to pre-load the guessed new destination… because it’s MUCH quicker to load from the local cache than download from the internet.
Two questions spring to mind… firstly, what would be the speed effect on Edge if these tricks were disabled and, secondly, how would Edge compare to Firefox and Chrome as a result? IMO both questions are fairly easy to test.
Methodology:
1. I prepped a Dell Latitude E7440 laptop with a clean install of Win 10 Pro 1809 then kept updating it until it was right up to date (so any tests would not be affected by any downloading of further updates in the background).
2. I downloaded and installed the latest versions of both Firefox Quantum (v65.0.2) and Google Chrome (v72.0.3626.121).
3. I installed a browser pre-loading test from smallenvelop.com. (If you want to duplicate my test use https://smallenvelop.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/simple-pre-loader.zip.)
4. I created a desktop shortcut to the smallenvelop.com local test page so I could right-click on the shortcut and choose to open it with any one of the installed browsers.
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This way each browser would open the same local web page identically then go online and download the main graphic – a 2.1 MB photo.
5. I cleared each browser’s cache before each test. Note that I had to close Edge’s default processes* that run in the background from OS startup before I could clear Edge’s cache**.
6. For each of the browsers I measured the time from when I clicked on ‘Open with…’ (on the desktop shortcut to the local web page) until the time that the photo appeared on screen.
7. For Edge I carried out a second series of tests after disabling its tricks and restarting the laptop.
I carried out the tests many, many times then chose the 5 fastest times for each browser before averaging them to find the fastest time per browser. So, which browser is the fastest – Edge, Firefox (my favourite) or Chrome?
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If my test method is valid then it suggests that Edge IS the fastest browser on average… if its tricks remain enabled. Take away the tricks and it’s actually next to last for speed, with – to my surprise – Internet Explorer the fastest on average and Chrome showing the fastest speed overall. My favouriter browser – Firefox – was slowest on average and also had the ignominy of the slowest speed of all tests. 
I suspect that the results for both Firefox and Chrome (and other browsers) would further improve if they used the same tricks as Edge.
*Edge’s 5 (!) default processes (although only 3 are Edge-specific):
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** Use Task Manager to close all 5 Edge processes then clear Edge’s cache using PowerShell:
$path = [Environment]::ExpandEnvironmentVariables(“%LOCALAPPDATA%PackagesMicrosoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbweAC”) + ‘#!*’ Remove-Item $path -Force -Recurse
Hope this helps…
