Is One Browser Really Faster Than Another?

If you were to remove any add-ons, widgets and plug-ins, is it possible to actually differentiate which browser is quicker than another? Today, when most internet users are using broadband of some sort, whether through cable, phone or satellite, I believe it’s really difficult to differentiate the faster web browser.

I tend to go between different browsers. Initially I was a loyal IE user, of course, but I was particularly attracted to Firefox because of its security features and tabbed browsing. Over the summer I was having a lot of problems with IE7 and coincidentally Chrome had just come out so it was a no brainer for me to test it out. I regularly go between IE, Firefox and Chrome, but Chrome is my default browser at the moment. There are different advantages to each. When I’m on StumbleUpon, I use IE because the toolbar doesn’t work in Chrome. Whenever I need to use some add-ons like the TinyURL Creator or the SeoQuake plug-in, I’ll switch to Firefox. I guess since I’m a PC man I rarely use Safari or Opera, they just seem so Mac. However, I will use them to checkout layout/programming issues on pages before posting anything to the web.

When selecting a browser I’m usually after convenience and what’s most secure and secondarily speed. But, speed is one of the things that every web browser seems to boast about; they all advertise that they are the fastest:

I did a bit of an experiment to test each browser’s speed and thought you may be interested in a table which compares them all. Below are: Internet Explorer 7, FireFox 3.0.2, Chrome, Opera 9.6 and Safari 3.1.

The basic process I took was to open each browser, clear the browsing history, cookies and temp files, disable all add-ons, plug-ins or toolbars and manually type in the address bar http://www.seesmic.com/. This is a site I visit often that consistently takes quite some time to load due to the flash.

Test 1
Opera – 12 seconds
Chrome – 11 seconds
Firefox – 10 seconds
Safari - 10 seconds
IE – 12 Seconds

Test 2
Opera – 17 seconds
Chrome – 14 seconds
Firefox – 10 seconds
Safari - 12 seconds
IE – 11 Seconds

Test 3
Opera – 10 seconds
Chrome – 11 seconds
Firefox – 12 seconds
Safari - 13 seconds
IE – 12 Seconds

Wow, it seems pretty pointless to determine which is fastest with such a close range of speeds. Obviously there are other variables here too. This is affected by my connection speed and the speed of the server the site is hosted on as well as the programming behind site, there are so many factors involved in how fast web pages load.

I guess I’m back to my first thought, they’re all too close to differentiate them based upon speed alone. Tell me what you think…..