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Chrome Sets Browser Speed Records on M5 MacBook Pro

MacRumors said:


Google's Chrome browser hit new records on browser benchmarking tools Speedometer 3.1 and JetStream 3, Google said today.

Chrome-Feature-22.jpg

Chrome earned a score of 61 on Speedometer, a five percent improvement since last year. It earned a 469 on JetStream 3, a 10 percent improvement since the beginning of 2026. Tests were done on an M5 MacBook Pro running macOS 26.0.1.

Google says it holds a dual record across all browsers, beating every other Mac browser, including Safari.

Google reworked JavaScript handling to boost its benchmarking scores, skipping unnecessary execution steps and inlining asynchronous operations. Inlining "fast paths" for common operations resulted in speed gains across multiple daily tasks.

Improvements were also implemented for WebAssembly workloads and the Blink rendering engine, with details available on Google's Chromium blog.

Google says the benchmarking wins translate into a "meaningfully faster" browsing experience for Chrome users.

Article Link: Chrome Sets Browser Speed Records on M5 MacBook Pro
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Try recover your many open tabs after a reboot and you Mac is dead for 30min! 🙁
 
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Benchmark results do not always equate to best experience. Aside from the privacy angle, Chrome is a giant resource hog on the machine - and, over time, actually slows down your computer overall. Its updater, "Keystone" has been known to be the cause of many of those over time - even when Chrome isn't even in use/open! I noticed my scrolling speed getting awfully slow recently - and I was in Safari at the time! - did a bit of searching and, after removing Chrome (and all the refuse uninstalling still leaves behind) and, lo and behold - my speed issues went away.
 
I tend to use Firefox. Because uBlock is decent it’s faster on the real world web than chrome was or ever will be since Manifest v3. Plus less privacy risk.
 
As much as I’d like to switch to a more privacy-focused browser, Chrome still wins by too large a margin for my personal use cases.

The UI is good, it’s fast, extensions are easy to install, Gemini integration, webpage translation works great, and I run into fewer bugs than I do with many other browsers.
 
Unfortunately there are some web sites (yes they are less than 10 percent of sites I've used but still a PITA) you're forced to use it or something other than Safari since Safari misbehaves with the way some sites are coded............ That is a disappointing fact........
 
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Steve Adams said:
I find safari noticeably slower than edge and brave on my iPad. Add in the fact that it's terrible at ad blocking. Using the internet without ad block is a truly horrible experience now. You are completely bombarded with garbage.
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I block ads directly at the router

Even my phone and other remote devices run through my router via Tailscale when I’m not at home

Don’t see any ads anywhere ever
 
zarmanto said:
Sometimes, it is indeed deliberate -- but it's not always the developers who make the decisions. Story time!

Once upon a time, in a job many, many years ago in a cubicle far, far away...

The internet was young, and people were just starting to wrap their brains around what it could accomplish. I was directed by management to create a prototype of a web-based implementation of the computer based training modules that I and my fellow developers had been writing in an entirely different tool. The browsers available at that time were Netscape Navigator 3 (the predecessor to Firefox) and Internet Explorer 3 (shudder). I would have been more than happy to make this module work equally in both browsers -- in so much as that was possible -- but that was not management's plan. See, IE had one very specific feature that Navigator could not match, at the time: there was an ActiveX control that enabled the browser to go full screen. They directed me to use that control, and to label the resulting training module as IE only.

(They also directed me to deploy this monstrosity onto a cd-rom, and to use AutoRun to launch it directly into full screen mode.)

Developers aren't always the bad guys... sometimes, they just work for the bad guys.

Grudgingly.
Click to expand...

So thankful that I haven’t even thought of activeX in longer than I can remember
 
MacRumors said:


Google's Chrome browser hit new records on browser benchmarking tools Speedometer 3.1 and JetStream 3, Google said today.

Chrome-Feature-22.jpg

Chrome earned a score of 61 on Speedometer, a five percent improvement since last year. It earned a 469 on JetStream 3, a 10 percent improvement since the beginning of 2026. Tests were done on an M5 MacBook Pro running macOS 26.0.1.

Google says it holds a dual record across all browsers, beating every other Mac browser, including Safari.

Google reworked JavaScript handling to boost its benchmarking scores, skipping unnecessary execution steps and inlining asynchronous operations. Inlining "fast paths" for common operations resulted in speed gains across multiple daily tasks.

Improvements were also implemented for WebAssembly workloads and the Blink rendering engine, with details available on Google's Chromium blog.

Google says the benchmarking wins translate into a "meaningfully faster" browsing experience for Chrome users.

Article Link: Chrome Sets Browser Speed Records on M5 MacBook Pro
Click to expand...
So MacBooks are better than chrome books?

Got it.
 
I used both Safari and Chrome for years but recently had to switch completely to Chrome as it consumes way less resources (sic!) and does not drain the battery of my sleeping M1pro MB in couple of night (Safari does it somehow)
 
cjsuk said:
I tend to use Firefox. Because uBlock is decent it’s faster on the real world web than chrome was or ever will be since Manifest v3. Plus less privacy risk.
Click to expand...
UBlock Origin lite blocks all the ads in Chrome for me. Firefox is terribly slow and if a web page is not going to work it will be on Firefox. Safari is better than Firefox in almost every way.
 
TheMacDaddy1 said:
Brave feels like a browser for cult members with all that weird crypto stuff going on.
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you have a wrong impression. While the crypti stuff is built it, you do not have to use it. You go in the settings and disable it. Thats what I did for a couple of years.

Even more so, Brave just released Origin . Its a paid version of their browser debloated for $60 lifetime license and up 10 devices use (iirc). It strips away:-

  • Leo (built in AI)
  • News
  • Playlist
  • Rewards (and Brave Ads)
  • Speedreader
  • Talk (their version of Zoom)
  • Tor
  • VPN
  • Wallet ( Crypto and Web3 domains)
  • Wayback Machine
  • Web Discovery Project
 
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