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Helpful tips for WebXPRT 4 results submission

Back in March, we discussed the WebXPRT 4 results submission process and reminded readers that everyone who runs a WebXPRT 4 test is welcome to submit scores for us to consider for publication in the WebXPRT 4 results viewer. Unlike sites that publish every result that users submit, we publish only results that meet our evaluation criteria. Among other things, scores must be consistent with general expectations and must include enough detailed system information to help us assess whether individual scores represent valid test runs. Today, we offer a couple of tips to increase the likelihood that we will publish your WebXPRT 4 test results.

Tip 1: Specify your system’s processor

While testers usually include detailed information for the device, model number, operating system, and browser version fields, we receive many submissions with little to no information about the test system’s processor.

In the picture below, you can see an example of the level of detail that we require to consider a submission. We need the full processor name, including the manufacturer and model number (e.g., Intel Core i9-9980HK, AMD Ryzen 3 1300X, or Apple M1 Max). Note that we do not require the processor speed reported by the system.

Tip 2: Include a valid email address

It is also common for submissions to not include a valid email address. While we understand the privacy concerns related to submitting a personal or corporate email address, we need a valid address that we can use as a point of contact to confirm test-related information when necessary. We don’t use those addresses for any other purposes, such as selling them, sharing them with any third parties, or adding them to a mailing list.

We hope this information explains why we might not have published your results. We look forward to receiving your future score submissions. If you have any questions about the submission process, please let us know!

Justin

A great start for WebXPRT 4!

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!

Justin

Using WebXPRT 4 to compare the performance of popular browsers

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!

Justin

Exploring the WebXPRT 4 results viewer

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!

Justin

How to submit WebXPRT 4 results for publication

Each new XPRT benchmark release attracts new visitors to our site. Those who haven’t yet run any of our benchmarks may not know how everything works. For those folks, as well as longtime testers who may not be aware of everything the XPRTs have to offer, we like to occasionally revisit the basics here in the blog. Today, we cover the simple process of submitting WebXPRT 4 test results for publication in the WebXPRT 4 results viewer.

Unlike sites that publish all results that users submit, we publish only results—from internal lab testing, user submissions, and reliable tech media sources—that meet our evaluation criteria. Scores must be consistent with general expectations and, for sources outside of our lab, must include enough detailed system information that we can determine whether the score makes sense. Every score in the WebXPRT results viewer and on the general XPRT results page meets these criteria.

Everyone who runs a WebXPRT 4 test is welcome to submit scores for us to consider for publication. The process is quick and easy. At the end of the WebXPRT test run, click the Submit your results button below the overall score, complete the short submission form, and click Submit again. Please be as specific as possible when filling in the system information fields. Detailed device information helps us assess whether individual scores represent valid test runs. The screenshot below shows how the form would look if I submitted a score at the end of a WebXPRT 4 run on my personal system.

After you submit your score, we’ll contact you to confirm how we should display the source. You can choose one of the following:

  • Your first and last name
  • “Independent tester” (for those who wish to remain anonymous)
  • Your company’s name, provided that you have permission to submit the result in their name. If you want to use a company name, please provide a valid company email address.


We will not publish any additional information about you or your company without your permission.

We look forward to seeing your score submissions. If you have suggestions for the WebXPRT 4 results viewer or any other aspect of the XPRTs, let us know!

Justin

WebXPRT 4 is live!

We’re excited to announce that WebXPRT 4 is now available! Testers can access the benchmark at WebXPRT.com. If you’ve already been using the WebXPRT 4 Preview, your Preview test results will be comparable with results from the current official build.

Longtime WebXPRT users will notice that WebXPRT 4 has a new, but familiar, UI. The general process for kicking off both manual and automated tests is the same as with WebXPRT 3, so the transition from WebXPRT 3 to WebXPRT 4 testing should be straightforward. We will continue to make WebXPRT 3 available for legacy testing.

If you missed earlier XPRT blog posts about WebXPRT 4, here is a quick overview of the differences between WebXPRT 3 and WebXPRT 4:

General changes

  • We’ve updated the aesthetics of the WebXPRT UI to make WebXPRT 4 visually distinct from older versions. We did not significantly change the flow of the UI.
  • We’ve updated content in some of the workloads to reflect changes in everyday technology, such as upgrading most of the photos in the photo processing workloads to higher resolutions.
  • We’ve updated the base calibration system for score calculations, and adjusted the scoring scale. WebXPRT 4 scores should not be compared to scores from previous versions of WebXPRT.

Workload changes

  • Photo Enhancement. We increased the efficiency of the workload’s Canvas object creation function, and replaced the existing photos with new, higher-resolution photos.
  • Organize Album Using AI. We replaced ConvNetJS with WebAssembly (WASM) based OpenCV.js for both the face detection and image classification tasks. We changed the images for the image classification tasks to images from the ImageNet dataset.
  • Stock Option Pricing. We updated the dygraph.js library.
  • Sales Graphs. We made no changes to this workload.
  • Encrypt Notes and OCR Scan. We replaced ASM.js with WASM for the Notes task and updated the WASM-based Tesseract version for the OCR task.
  • Online Homework. In addition to the existing scenario which uses four Web Workers, we have added a scenario with two Web Workers. The workload now covers a wider range of Web Worker performance, and we calculate the score by using the combined run time of both scenarios. We also updated the typo.js library.

We’re thankful for all of the feedback we received during the WebXPRT 4 development process, and we look forward to seeing your WebXPRT 4 results!

Justin

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