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Category: WebXPRT 2013

A bit of house cleaning at BenchmarkXPRT.com

When we’ve released a new version of an XPRT benchmark app, it’s been our practice for many years to maintain a link to the previous version on the benchmark’s main page. For example, visitors can start on the WebXPRT 4 homepage at WebXPRT.com and follow links to access WebXPRT 3, WebXPRT 2015, and WebXPRT 2013. Historically, we’ve maintained these links because labs and tech reviewers usually take a while to introduce a new benchmark to their testing suite. Continued access to the older benchmarks also allows users to quickly compare new devices to old devices without retesting everything.

That being said, several of the XPRT pages currently contain links to benchmarks that we no longer actively support. Some of those benchmarks still function correctly, and testers occasionally use them, but a few no longer work on the latest versions of the operating systems or browsers that we designed them to test. While we want to continue to provide a way for longtime XPRT users to access legacy XPRTs,  we also want to avoid potential confusion for new users. We believe our best way forward is to archive older tests in a separate part of the site.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be moving several legacy XPRT benchmarks to an archive section of the site. Once the new section is ready, we’ll link to it from the Extras drop-down menu at the top of BenchmarkXPRT.com. The benchmarks will still be available in the archive, but we will not actively support them or directly link to them from the homepages of active XPRTs.

During this process, we’ll move the following benchmarks to the archive section:

  • WebXPRT 2015 and 2013
  • CrXPRT 2015
  • HDXPRT 2014
  • TouchXPRT 2014
  • MobileXPRT 2015 and 2013

If you have any questions or concerns about the archive process or access to legacy XPRTs, please let us know

Justin

WebXPRT’s mirror host site in Singapore

If you’ve ever spent time exploring WebXPRT.com, you may have noticed a line that says, “If you are in East Asia, you can run WebXPRT from our Singapore host,” followed by a hyperlink with Simplified Chinese characters. We realize that some people may not know why we have a WebXPRT mirror host site in Singapore—or how to use it—so today’s post will cover the basics.

When we first released WebXPRT 2013, some users in mainland China reported slow download times when running the benchmark. These slowdowns affected initial page and workload content load times, but not workload execution, which happens locally. As a result, subtest and overall scores were still consistent with expectations for the devices under test, but it took longer than normal for test runs to complete. In response, we set up a mirror host site in Singapore to facilitate WebXPRT testing in China and other East Asian countries. We continued this practice with subsequent WebXPRT versions, and currently offer Singapore-based instances of WebXPRT 4WebXPRT 3, and WebXPRT 2015.

The link to WebXPRT 4 Singapore on WebXPRT.com

The default UI language on the Singapore site is Simplified Chinese, but users can opt to change the language to English or German. Apart from a different default language, the WebXPRT mirror instances hosted in Singapore are identical to the instances on the main WebXPRT site. If you test a device on WebXPRT Singapore and WebXPRT.com, you should see similar performance scores from both sites.

The start page for WebXPRT 4 Singapore, with the default Simplified Chinese UI

We hope that the WebXPRT mirror host site in Singapore will make it easier for people in East Asia to use the benchmark. Do you find the site useful? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Also, if you encounter any unexpected issues or interruptions while testing, please let us know!

Justin

WebXPRT runs: A decade of growth

In our last blog post, we celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the WebXPRT launch by looking back on the WebXPRT team’s accomplishments over the last decade. The incremental steps and milestone improvements we discussed all contributed to carving out a lasting place for WebXPRT in the benchmarking world and helped to grow its reputation for being a reliable, effective, and easy to use measurement tool.

WebXPRT’s growth is most evident when we look at the rising number of completed test runs over the last 10 years. Since the first WebXPRT launch in 2013, we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of tests people are running. To put the increase in perspective, we had more runs last month alone (17,300) than we recorded in the first 10 months that WebXPRT was available (11,984).

That growth has helped us to reach and surpass the million-run mark, but the most exciting aspect of seeing a consistent increase in WebXPRT testing is the knowledge that the benchmark is proving to be useful to more people in more places around the world. In our next blog post, we’ll discuss WebXPRT’s truly global reach and some of the surprising cities and countries where people have been using it to test their gear.

We’re grateful for all the testers that have helped WebXPRT grow during the last decade. If you have any questions or comments about using WebXPRT, let us know!

Justin

Celebrating 10 years of WebXPRT!

We’re excited to announce that it’s been 10 years since the initial launch of WebXPRT! In early 2013, we introduced WebXPRT as a unique browser performance benchmark in a market space that was already crowded with a variety of specialized measurement tools. Our goal was to offer a benchmark that could compare the performance of almost any web-enabled device, using scenarios created to mirror real-world tasks. We wanted it to be a free, easily accessible, easy-to-run, useful, and appealing testing option for OEM labs, vendors, and the tech press.

When we look back on the last 10 years of WebXPRT, we can’t help but conclude that our efforts have been successful. Since those early days, the WebXPRT market presence has grown from humble beginnings into a worldwide industry standard. Hundreds of tech press publications have used WebXPRT in thousands of articles and reviews, and testers have now run the benchmark well over 1.1 million times.

Below, I’ve listed some of the WebXPRT team’s accomplishments over the last decade. If you’ve been following WebXPRT from the beginning, this may all be familiar, but if you’re new to the  community, it may be interesting to see some of the steps that contributed to making WebXPRT what it is today.

In future blog posts, we’ll look at how the number of WebXPRT runs has grown over time, and how WebXPRT use has grown among OEMs, vendors, and the tech press worldwide. Do you have any thoughts that you’d like to share from your WebXPRT testing experience? If so, let us know!

Justin

Looking back on 2022 with the XPRTs

Around the beginning of each new year, we like to take the opportunity to look back and summarize the XPRT highlights from the previous year. 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 from 2022 below.

Benchmarks
In the past year, we released WebXPRT 4, and the CloudXPRT v1.2 update package.

XPRTs in the media
Journalists, advertisers, and analysts referenced the XPRTs thousands of times in 2022. It’s always rewarding to know that the XPRTs have proven to be useful and reliable assessment tools for technology publications around the world. Media sites that used the XPRTs in 2022 include AnandTech, Android Authority, Benchlife.info (China), BodNara (South Korea), ComputerBase (Germany), DISKIDEE (Belgium), eTeknix, Expert Reviews, Gadgets 360, Hardware.info (The Netherlands), Hardware Zone (Singapore), ITC.ua (Ukraine), ITmedia (Japan), Itndaily.ru (Russia), Notebookcheck, PCMag, PC-Welt (Germany), PCWorld, TechPowerUp, Tom’s Guide, TweakTown, and ZOL.com (China).

Downloads and confirmed runs
In 2022, we had more than 10,800 benchmark downloads and 183,300 confirmed runs. Users have run our most popular benchmark, WebXPRT, more than 1,135,500 times 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.

XPRT media, tools, and publications
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 2022:

We’re thankful for everyone who used the XPRTs, joined the community, and sent questions and suggestions throughout 2022. We’re excited to see what’s in store for the XPRTs in 2023!

Justin

Looking forward to an important WebXPRT milestone

February 28, 2013 was a momentous day for the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. On that day, we published a press release announcing the official launch of the first version of the WebXPRT benchmark, WebXPRT 2013. As difficult as it is for us to believe, the 10-year anniversary of the initial WebXPRT launch is in just a few short months!

We introduced WebXPRT as a truly unique browser performance benchmark in a field that was already crowded with a variety of measurement tools. Since those early days, the WebXPRT market presence has grown from a small foothold into a worldwide industry standard. Over the years, hundreds of tech press publications have used WebXPRT in thousands of articles and reviews, and the WebXPRT completed-runs counter rolled over the 1,000,000-run mark.

New web technologies are continually changing the way we use the web, and browser-performance benchmarks should evaluate how well new devices handle the web of today, not the web of several years ago. While some organizations have stopped development for other browser performance benchmarks, we’ve had the opportunity to continue updating and refining WebXPRT. We can look back at each of the four major iterations of the benchmark—WebXPRT 2013, WebXPRT 2015, WebXPRT 3, and WebXPRT 4—and see a consistent philosophy and shared technical lineage contributing to a product that has steadily improved.

As we get closer to the 10-year anniversary of WebXPRT next year, we’ll be sharing more insights about its reach and impact on the industry, discussing possible future plans for the benchmark, and announcing some fun anniversary-related opportunities for WebXPRT users. We think 2023 will be the best year yet for WebXPRT!

Justin

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