BenchmarkXPRT Blog banner

Category: Google Chrome

Chrome OS support for CrXPRT apps ends in June 2022

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on March 24, 2022

Last March, we discussed the Chrome OS team’s original announcement that they would be phasing out support for Chrome Apps altogether in June 2021, and would shift their focus to Chrome extensions and Progressive Web Apps. The Chrome OS team eventually extended support for existing Chrome Apps through June 2022, but as of this week, we see no indication that they will further extend support for Chrome Apps published with general developer accounts. If the end-of-life schedule for Chrome Apps does not change in the next few months, both CrXPRT 2 and CrXPRT 2015 will stop working on new versions of Chrome OS at some point in June.

To maintain CrXPRT functionality past June, we would need to rebuild the app completely—either as a Progressive Web App or in some other form. For this reason, we want to reassess our approach to Chrome OS testing, and investigate which features and technologies to include in a new Chrome OS benchmark. Our current goal is to gather feedback and conduct exploratory research over the next few months, and begin developing an all-new Chrome OS benchmark for publication by the end of the year.

While we will discuss ideas for this new Chrome OS benchmark in future blog posts, we welcome ideas from CrXPRT users now. What features or workloads would you like the new benchmark to retain? Would you like us to remove any components from the existing benchmark? Does the battery life test in its current form suit your needs? If you have any thoughts about these questions or any other aspects of Chrome OS benchmarking, please let us know!

Justin

Posted in Battery life, battery life, benchmark, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, Browser-based benchmarks, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, Chromium, Collaborative benchmark development, CrXPRT, Google Chrome, Performance benchmarking, What makes a good benchmark? | Tagged , , , , , , , , , |

A note about WebXPRT 4 and Internet Explorer

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on February 10, 2022

During some recent internal WebXPRT 4 Preview testing, we discovered that the WebXPRT 4 Preview does not run in Internet Explorer (IE) 11. In fact, before the first workload begins in IE, the WebXPRT 4 built-in WebAssembly (WASM) check fails and produces an error message.

The reason we haven’t tested WebXPRT 4 on IE 11 before now is that Internet Explorer is currently in its end-of-life phase. Microsoft has been removing support for IE 11 in Microsoft 365 and other apps for some time, they did not include the desktop version of IE 11 in Windows 11, and they are removing support for IE 11 in Windows 10 on June 15, 2022. Among Windows users, the most popular browsers are now Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.

We’re proud that WebXPRT has historically had broad, cross-platform compatibility in almost any browser. However, the modern web is rapidly incorporating powerful tools such as WASM that do not work in older legacy browsers. To maintain the benchmark’s relevance in future years, we need to deprioritize some level of legacy compatibility, and this begins with WebXPRT 4 release.

For the WebXPRT testers who wish to continue testing with IE 11, WebXPRT 3 will remain on our site for the foreseeable future. Barring any further changes from Microsoft, the benchmark should continue to run in existing instances of the Internet Explorer desktop app.

The official WebXPRT 4 launch is approaching, and we hope to announce the release date within the next few weeks! Until that time, we will continue to share the latest updates here in the blog. If you have any questions or comments about WebXPRT 4 or compatibility with legacy browsers, please feel free to contact us!

Justin

Posted in benchmark, Benchmarking, Browser-based benchmarks, Cross-platform benchmarks, Google Chrome, Performance benchmarking, Web-based testing, WebAssembly, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 3, webxprt 4, Windows 11 | Tagged , , , , , , , , |

Updated system configuration recommendations for CrXPRT 2 battery life tests

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on February 3, 2022

Recently, we heard from a BenchmarkXPRT Development Community member who was testing Chromebooks in their lab. On a few of the Chromebooks, they saw sporadic CrXPRT 2 battery life test failures where CrXPRT 2 would successfully complete a battery life test and produce a result for the initial run, but then fail at the end of later runs.

After a considerable amount of troubleshooting, they determined that the issue seemed to be related to the way some systems automatically shut down before the battery is completely exhausted, and the way some systems will automatically boot up once the tester plugs in the power adapter for charging. This member found that when they added a few system configuration steps before battery life tests and made slight changes to their post-test routine, the systems that had previously experienced consistent failures would successfully complete battery life tests and produce results.

The added steps are quick and straightforward, and we decided to add them to the Configuring the test device and Running the tests sections of the CrXPRT 2 user manual. We hope this updated guidance will help to prevent future frustration for CrXPRT 2 testers.

If you have any questions or comments about the CrXPRT 2 battery life test, please feel free to contact us!

Justin

Posted in battery life, benchmark, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, BenchmarkXPRT, BenchmarkXPRT development community, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, CrXPRT, Google Chrome | Tagged , , , , , , , , |

It’s time to shop for the holidays, and the XPRTs are here to help!

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on November 4, 2021

The holiday season is fast approaching, and with widespread product shortages and supply chain interruptions in the tech industry, it’s wise to start your holiday shopping now. If you’re considering phones, tablets, Chromebooks, or laptops as gifts, but are unsure where to get reliable information about the devices, the XPRTs can help!

One of the core functions of the XPRTs is to cut through the marketing noise by providing objective, reliable measures of a device’s performance. For example, instead of trying to guess whether a new Chromebook is fast enough to handle the demands of remote learning, you can use its CrXPRT and WebXPRT performance scores to see how it stacks up against the competition on everyday tasks.

A good place to start looking for device scores is our XPRT results browser, which lets you access our database of more than 2,800 test results from over 110 sources, including major tech review publications around the world, OEMs, and independent testers. You can find a wealth of current and historical performance data across all the XPRT benchmarks and hundreds of devices. Learn how to use the results browser here.

If you’re considering a popular device, chances are good that a recent tech review includes an XPRT score for that device. You can find these reviews by going to your favorite tech review site and searching for “XPRT,” or entering the name of the device and the appropriate XPRT (e.g., “Apple iPad” and “WebXPRT”) in a search engine. Here are a few recent tech reviews that use one or more of the XPRTs to evaluate popular devices:

The XPRTs can help consumers make better-informed and more confident tech purchases this holiday season, and we hope you’ll find the data you need on our site or in an XPRT-related tech review. If you have any questions about the XPRTs, XPRT scores, or the results database please feel free to ask!

Justin

Posted in AnandTech, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, Cross-platform benchmarks, CrXPRT, Google Chrome, Laptops, Mobile devices, PCs, Performance of computing devices, Phones, results, Tablets, WebXPRT | Tagged , , , , , , , , , |

Using WebXPRT 3 to compare the performance of popular browsers in Windows 10 and Windows 11

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on October 28, 2021

People choose a default web browser based on several factors. Speed is sometimes the deciding factor, but privacy settings, memory load, ecosystem integration, and web app capabilities can also come into play. Regardless of the motivations behind a person’s go-to browser choice, the dominance of software-as-a-service (SaaS) computing means that new updates are always right around the corner. In previous blog posts, we’ve talked about how browser speed can increase or decrease significantly after an update, only to swing back in the other direction shortly thereafter. OS-specific optimizations can also affect performance, such as with Microsoft Edge on Windows and Google Chrome on Chrome OS.

Windows 11 began rolling out earlier this month, and tech press outlets such as AnandTech and PCWorld have used WebXPRT 3 to evaluate the impact of the new OS—or specific settings in the OS—on browser performance. Our own in-house tests, which we discuss below, show a negligible impact on browser performance when updating our test system from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It’s important to note that depending on a system’s hardware setup, the impact might be more significant in certain scenarios. For more information about such scenarios, we encourage you to read the PCWorld article discussing the impact of the Windows 11 default virtualization-based security (VBS) settings on browser performance in some instances.

In our comparison tests, we used a Dell XPS 13 7930 with an Intel Core i3-10110U processor and 4 GB of RAM. For the Windows 10 tests, we used a clean Windows 10 Home image updated to version 20H2 (19042.1165). For the Windows 11 tests, we updated the system to Windows 11 Home version 21H2 (22000.282). On each OS version, we ran WebXPRT 3 three times on the latest versions of five browsers: Brave, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. For each browser, the score we post below is the median of the three test runs.

In our last round of tests on Windows 10, Firefox was the clear winner. Three of the Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, and Opera) produced very close scores, and the performance of Brave lagged by about 7 percent. In this round of Windows 10 testing, performance on every browser improved slightly, with Google Chrome taking a slight lead over Firefox.

In our Windows 11 testing, we were interested to find that without exception, browser scores were slightly lower than in Windows 10 testing. However, none of the decreases were statistically significant. Most users performing daily tasks are unlikely to notice that degree of difference.

Have you observed any significant differences in WebXPRT 3 scores after upgrading to Windows 11? If so, let us know!

Justin

Posted in AnandTech, benchmark, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Brave, Browser-based benchmarks, Cross-platform benchmarks, Dell, Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Performance benchmarking, results, SaaS, Virtualization, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 3, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Tagged , , , , , , , |

The CrXPRT 2 battery life test is back!

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on October 21, 2021

Last month, we discussed a potential fix for the error that was preventing CrXPRT 2 testers from successfully completing battery life tests on systems running Chrome v89.x and later. Since then, we’ve been testing an updated, unpublished version of the app package across several Chromebook models to ensure that the new build is stable and produces consistent results. We’re happy to report that our testing was successful, and we’ve published the new CrXPRT build (v1.2.0.0) in the Chrome Web Store and it is live as of 12:45 PM EDT today.

Note that it might take some time for the update to appear on your Chromebook and, once it does, you might have to manually approve the update notice.

Neither the tests nor the method of calculating the overall score and battery-life score in this new build have changed, so results are comparable with previous CrXPRT 2 results.

We appreciate everyone’s patience while we found a solution to the error. If you have any questions or comments about the CrXPRT 2 battery life test, please feel free to contact us!

Justin

Posted in Battery life, battery life, benchmark, Benchmark metrics, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, CrXPRT, Google Chrome | Tagged , , , , , , |

Check out the other XPRTs:

Forgot your password?
© Principled Technologies, Inc. 2024   |   Privacy policy

Cookie Notice: Our website uses cookies to deliver a smooth experience by storing logins and saving user information. By continuing to use our site, you agree with our usage of cookies as our privacy policy outlines.

x