WebXPRT 4 has been available to testers since
the end of December, and we’re excited to see that the benchmark is already
gaining significant traction in the tech press and testing communities. Several
tech publications have already published reviews that feature WebXPRT results,
and the number of WebXPRT 4 runs is growing by about fifty percent each month, more
than twice the rate of growth for WebXPRT 3 after launch.
As WebXPRT 4 use continues to grow,
and more tech publications and OEM labs add WebXPRT 4 to their benchmark
suites, we encourage you to keep an eye on the WebXPRT 4 results viewer.
The viewer currently has about 120 test results, and we’ll continue to populate
the viewer with the latest PT-curated WebXPRT 4
results each week.
You don’t have to be a tech
journalist to publish a WebXPRT 4 result, however. We publish any results—including
individual user submissions—that meet our evaluation criteria. To submit a result
for publication consideration, simply follow the straightforward submission instructions
after the test completes. Scores must be consistent with general expectations and
must include enough detailed system information that we can determine whether
the score makes sense. If you’ve tested with WebXPRT 4 on a new device, or any
device or device configuration that’s not already present in the results
viewer, we encourage you to send in the result. We want to hear from you!
From time to time, we like to run a series of in-house WebXPRT comparison tests to see if recent updates have changed the performance rankings of popular web browsers. We published our most recent comparison last October, when we used WebXPRT 3 to compare Windows 10 and Windows 11 browser performance on the same system. Now that WebXPRT 4 is live, it’s time to update our comparison series with the newest member of the XPRT family.
For this round of tests, we used a Dell
XPS 13 7930, which features an Intel Core i3-10110U processor and 4 GB of RAM, running
Windows 11 Home updated to version 21H2 (22000.593). We installed all current
Windows updates and tested on a clean system image. After the update process
completed, we turned off updates to prevent them from interfering with test
runs. We ran WebXPRT 4 three times each across five browsers: Brave, Google
Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. The posted score for each
browser is the median of the three test runs.
In our previous round of tests with WebXPRT 3, Google Chrome narrowly beat out Firefox in Windows 10 and Windows 11 testing, but the scores among three of the Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, and Opera) were close enough that most users performing common daily tasks would be unlikely to notice a difference. Brave performance lagged by about 7 percent, a difference that may be noticeable to most users. This time, when testing updated versions of the browsers with WebXPRT 4 on Windows 11, the rankings changed. Edge was the clear winner, with a 2.2 percent performance advantage over Chrome. Firefox came in last, about 3 percent slower than Opera, which was in the middle of the pack. Performance from Brave improved to the point that it was no longer lagging the other Chromium-based browsers.
Do these results mean that Microsoft
Edge will always provide you with a speedier web experience? A device with a
higher WebXPRT score will probably feel faster during daily use than one with a
lower score. For comparisons on the same system, however, the answer depends in
part on the types of things you do on the web, how the extensions you’ve
installed affect performance, how frequently the browsers issue updates and
incorporate new web technologies, and how accurately each browser’s default
installation settings reflect how you would set up that browser for your daily
workflow.
In addition, 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 Edge on Windows 11 and Chrome on Chrome OS. All these
variables are important to keep in mind when considering how WebXPRT results
translate to your everyday experience.
Do you have insights you’d like to share from using WebXPRT to compare browser performance? Let us know!
Now
that WebXPRT 4 is live, we want to remind readers about the features of the WebXPRT 4 results viewer.
We’re excited about this new tool, which we view as an ongoing project that we
will expand and improve over time. The viewer currently has over 100 test
results, and we’re just getting started. We’ll continue to actively populate
the viewer with the latest PT-curated WebXPRT 4
results for the foreseeable future.
The screenshot below shows the tool’s default display. Each vertical bar in the graph represents the overall score of a single test result, with bars arranged from lowest to highest. To view a single result in detail, the user hovers over a bar until it turns white and a small popup window displays the basic details of the result. Once the user clicks to select the highlighted bar, the bar turns dark blue, and the dark blue banner at the bottom of the viewer displays additional details about that result.
In
the example above, the banner shows the overall score (227), the score’s
percentile rank (98th) among the scores in the current display, the name
of the test device, and basic hardware disclosure information. Users can click the
Run info button to see the run’s individual workload scores.
The viewer includes a drop-down menu to quickly filter results by major device type categories, and a tab that allows users to apply additional filtering options, such as browser type, processor vendor, and result source. The screenshot below shows the viewer after I used the device type drop-down filter to select only laptops.
The screenshot below shows the viewer as I use the filter tab to explore additional filter options, such browser type.
The viewer also lets users pin multiple specific runs, which is helpful for making side-by-side comparisons. The screenshot below shows the viewer after I pinned four runs and viewed them on the Pinned runs screen.
The screenshot below shows the viewer after I clicked the Compare runs button: the overall and individual workload scores of the pinned runs appear as a table.
We’re excited about the WebXPRT 4 results viewer, and we want to hear your feedback. Are there features you’d really like to see, or ways we can improve the viewer? Please let us know, and send us your latest test results!
We’re putting
the last pieces in place for the WebXPRT 4 GA, and expect to take the final
build live by this time next week! When we released the WebXPRT 4 Preview and encouraged testers to submit
and publish results, we said we’d try to limit any changes to things that would
not affect test scores. We’re happy to report that we’ve achieved that goal,
and Preview testing results are comparable with GA build results.
If you missed the blog post about the differences between WebXPRT 3 and WebXPRT 4, we
encourage you to check it out. Everything we mentioned about the general and
workload-specific changes in the Preview build holds true for the upcoming GA.
Keep an eye on the blog and WebXPRT.com for more information in the coming week. We look forward to seeing your test results!
We launched a preview of the WebXPRT 4 results viewer just before the new year, and have published over 75 results from a wide range of devices. We appreciate the results submissions we’ve received from independent testers so far, and will continue to populate the viewer with WebXPRT 4 Preview results from both our own testing and PT-curated external submissions.
If
you’ve run the test and have tried to submit results, you may have encountered
one or both of the following bugs, depending on the device type you’re testing:
You filled out the results submission
form, but the Submit button didn’t seem to do anything.
The test automatically downloaded
the results csv file multiple times.
We’ve identified the causes of the two bugs, and have instituted fixes. The bug fixes do not affect the benchmark’s workloads or scores. If you tested the WebXPRT 4 Preview and were frustrated by the results submission bugs, we apologize for the inconvenience, and invite you to retry submitting your results.
If you have any questions or comments about the WebXPRT 4 Preview or the results viewer, please feel free to contact us!
As 2022 gets underway,
we want to take this opportunity to look back on 2021 and review another
productive year for the XPRTs. Readers of our newsletter are familiar with the
stats and updates we include each month, but for our blog readers who don’t receive
the newsletter, we’ve compiled some highlights below.
Benchmarks
In the past year, we released the WebXPRT 4 Preview, CloudXPRT v1.1, and an updated CrXPRT 2 build that included a
fix for prior issues with the battery life test.
XPRTs in the media Journalists, advertisers, and analysts referenced the XPRTs thousands of times in 2021. It’s always rewarding to know that the XPRTs have proven to be useful and reliable assessment tools for technology publications such as AnandTech, Expert Reviews, Gadgets 360, Gizmodo, Hot Hardware, Laptop Mag, Legit Reviews, Notebookcheck, PCMag, PCWorld, TechPowerUp, Tom’s Hardware, and ZDNet.
Downloads and confirmed runs In 2021, we had more than 23,600 benchmark downloads and 228,900 confirmed runs. Our most popular benchmark, WebXPRT, just passed 909,800 runs since its debut in 2013! WebXPRT continues to be a go-to, industry-standard performance benchmark for OEM labs, vendors, and leading tech press outlets around the globe.
Media, publications, and interactive tools Part of our mission with the XPRTs is to produce tools and materials that help testers better understand the ins and outs of benchmarking in general and the XPRTs in particular. To help achieve this goal, we published the following in 2021:
We’re thankful for everyone who has used the XPRTs, joined the community, and sent questions and suggestions throughout 2021. We look forward to an exciting 2022!
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