Google's Chrome Browser Gets 'Highest Score Ever' on Speedometer Performance Test

[MacRumors]

Google today announced that its Chrome browser has received the "highest ever score" on the Speedometer 3 benchmarking test. Speedometer 3 is designed to measure browser performance, and it was created collaboratively by Google, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, and Mozilla.

The test is designed to measure web responsiveness through several workloads like HTML parsing, JavaScript and JSON processing, pixel rendering, CSS application, and more.

Optimizations that Google has implemented over the last year have brought a 10 percent improvement in performance since August 2024, which Google says leads to better browser experiences for end users.

The team heavily optimized memory layouts of many internal data structures across DOM, CSS, layout, and painting components. Blink now avoids a lot of useless churn on system memory by keeping state where it belongs with respect to access patterns, maximizing utilization of CPU caches. Where internal memory was already relying on garbage collection in Oilpan, e.g. DOM, the usage was expanded by converting types from using malloc to Oilpan. This generally speeds up the affected areas as it packs memory nicely in Oilpan's backend.

On an M4 MacBook Pro with macOS 15, Chrome 139 achieved a score of 52.35 on the benchmarking test. More detail on the optimizations that were added can be found in Google's blog post.

Apple has not recently shared its maximum Speedometer 3 test results for Safari so there isn't a direct comparison available, and it is worth noting that Google appears to have used Speedometer 3, and not the newer Speedometer 3.1 test.

Article Link: Google's Chrome Browser Gets 'Highest Score Ever' on Speedometer Performance Test

 

[DHagan4755]

But it consumes energy like a drunken sailor compared to Safari.

 

[SnowPenguin]

Nice, since us Brave users will likely get that performance boost as well, but with better privacy.

 

[WilliApple]

Yeah just wait for safari in macOS 16 to be the “worlds fastest browser” again

 

[Six0Four]

I try Safari and Firefox like every year but I still keep coming back to Chrome. Just works 99% perfect.

Safari on iPad tho since extensions will work.

 

[wouwout]

Same here, ran speedometer 3.1 last weekend on safari and chrome. Chrome was significantly faster.

Real world browsing isn’t that much different, noticed a very mild lag in safari sometimes

 

[Plutonius]

I wonder who Google will be forced to sell chrome to ?

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

People who say chrome consumes more ram don't know what they're talking about

I ran tests and chrome consumes less than safari for sure, while being faster .

 

[DutchApplePie]

I noticed this a week ago when I was bored and decided to test a few browsers on my M4 Macbook Air. Score was 50.x. Everything else scored less. Still, not sure about using Chrome, for other reasons lol.

 

[jontalk5]

I switched from Chrome to Firefox when I upgraded to the Mac Mini M1 and find it extremely fast and have it on my phone as well..I also moved from Google to Duck Duck Go for search engine and see little if any difference from Google AND its not impacting my YT either

 

[maxdefcon]

But it consumes energy like a drunken sailor compared to Safari

Do you have a source? I seen a post from late 2024 where Chrome did a little better than Safari. Not a fan boy and use Firefox most of the time myself.

Everyone says Chrome devastates Mac battery life, but does it? I tested for 36 hours to find out.

Long time Birchtree readers know I love data, and love data even more when I can throw it into a graph. I’m also a fan of testing things that everyone generally agrees are true, but no one seems to have any data to back up. That brings us to

birchtree.me

Edit: I think Chrome, Safari, and Firefox have improved in the battery life area that most wouldn't notice a difference.

 

[Boeingfan]

You don’t always need a Ferrari to go buy a bottle of milk.

 

[maxdefcon]

You don’t always need a Ferrari to go buy a bottle of milk.

True, but no one wants milk to spill on the way home either.

 

[TigerNike23]

You don’t always need a Ferrari to go buy a bottle of milk.

What about a Ferrari to a Costco?

 

[gravage]

What score does it get on adblocking? That's all I care about and that's why I don't use it.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Optimizations that Google has implemented over the last year have brought a 10 percent improvement in performance since August 2024, which Google says leads to better browser experiences for end users.

Switch to Chrome, killing your battery now 10% faster!

 

[rm5]

Only reason why I use Chrome is because during the pandemic, many music programs I directed used a program called Upbeat (which has since been acquired by some other company, so idk if it even exists anymore). It used a web app interface that ONLY worked on Chromium-based browsers. Did not work on Safari or Firefox, so I had to resort to Chrome. Before that, I used whatever browser worked, but now I'm fully integrated into Chrome with extensions, synched profiles, etc.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

What score does it get on adblocking? That's all I care about and that's why I don't use it.

Probably as good as any other browser once you get extensions installed.

 

[victorvictoria]

I'm confused. Is the implication that faster web surfing is better web surfing?

 

[justanotherdave]

Don’t care how fast it is, nothing will get me to use that vacuum cleaner data mining software.

 

[DHagan4755]

Do you have a source? I seen a post from late 2024 where Chrome did a little better than Safari. Not a fan boy and use Firefox most of the time myself.

Everyone says Chrome devastates Mac battery life, but does it? I tested for 36 hours to find out.

Long time Birchtree readers know I love data, and love data even more when I can throw it into a graph. I’m also a fan of testing things that everyone generally agrees are true, but no one seems to have any data to back up. That brings us to

birchtree.me

Edit: I think Chrome, Safari, and Firefox have improved in the battery life area that most wouldn't notice a difference.

Activity monitor for the sites I use. One site is TradingView. Data rich site which chrome uses way more CPU cycles than safari does.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

I try Safari and Firefox like every year but I still keep coming back to Chrome. Just works 99% perfect.

Safari on iPad tho since extensions will work.

Any browser other than Safari stutters when scrolling, not sure how you all deal with it.

 

[JosephAW]

The browser is only as fast as your Internet connection, most of us have fair to better Internet connection and don’t see any difference.

 

[Avenged110]

I realize Google is making note of improvements implemented over a year's time, but I find it somewhat amusing that they're using version 139 to promote the culmination of these efforts when (I believe) that's the version to officially kill proper extensions (and macOS 11 support).

Any browser other than Safari stutters when scrolling, not sure how you all deal with it.

Personally, while I use Chromium, whenever I've compared the sites I use between it and Safari, they both stutter about the same, which is to say, very little.

 

[steve333]

I actually downloaded it since Facebook just not work well with Safari and Firefox.
Chrome was no better. I dumped it immediately