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WebXPRT in PT reports

We don’t just make WebXPRT—we use it, too. If you normally come straight to BenchmarkXPRT.com or WebXPRT.com, you may not even realize that Principled Technologies (PT) does a lot more than just managing and administering the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. We’re also the tech world’s leading provider of hands-on testing and related fact-based marketing services. As part of that work, we’re frequent WebXPRT users.

We use the benchmark when we test devices such as Chromebooks, desktops, mobile workstations, and consumer laptops for our clients. (You can see a lot of that work and many of our clients on our public marketing portfolio page.) We run the benchmark for the same reasons that others do—it’s a reliable and easy-to-use tool for measuring how well devices handle web browsing and other web work.

We also sometimes use WebXPRT simply because our clients request it. They request it for the same reason the rest of us like and use it: it’s a great tool. Regardless of job titles and descriptions, most laptop and tablet users surf the web and access web-based applications every day. Because WebXPRT is a browser benchmark, higher scores on it could indicate that a device may provide a superior online experience.

Here are just a few of the recent PT reports that used WebXPRT:

  • In a project for Dell, we compared the performance of a Dell Latitude 7340 Ultralight to that of a 13-inch Apple MacBook Air (2022).
  • In this study for HP, we compared the performance of an HP ZBook Firefly G10, an HP ZBook Power G10, and an HP ZBook Fury G10.
  • Finally, in a set of comparisons for Lenovo, we evaluated the system performance and end-user experience of eight Lenovo ThinkBook, ThinkCentre, and ThinkPad systems along with their Apple counterparts.

All these projects, and many more, show how a variety of companies rely on PT—and on WebXPRT—to help buyers make informed decisions. P.S. If we publish scores from a client-commissioned study in the WebXPRT 4 results viewer, we will list the source as “PT”, because we did the testing.

By Mark L. Van Name and Justin Greene

WebXPRT 4 is good to go with the latest Apple software release

Last month, we reported the good news that our WebXPRT 4 tests successfully ran to completion on the beta releases of iOS 17.2, iPadOS 17.2, and macOS Sonoma 14.2 with Safari 17.2. When we tested with those beta builds, WebXPRT 4 did not encounter the issue of test runs getting stuck on iOS 17.1 while attempting to complete the receipt scanning task in the Encrypt Notes and OCR Scan subtest. Unfortunately, during the past several weeks, this fix was only available to Apple users running beta software through the Apple Developer Program.

We’re happy to report that Apple has now finalized and published the general releases of iOS 17.2, iPadOS 17.2, and Safari 17.2. WebXPRT 4 tests running on those platforms should now complete without any problems.

We do appreciate everyone’s patience as we worked to find a solution to this problem, and we look forward to seeing your WebXPRT 4 scores from all the latest Apple devices! If you have any questions or concerns about WebXPRT 4, or you encounter any additional issues when running the test on any platform, please let us know.

Justin

XPRT possibilities with ChromeOS Flex

Recently, Tom’s Guide published an interesting article about how they used ChromeOS Flex to turn a ten-year-old Apple MacBook Pro into a functioning Chromebook by replacing the laptop’s macOS operating system with ChromeOS. ChromeOS Flex is a free Google tool that allows users to create a bootable USB drive that they can then use to install ChromeOS on a wide variety of hardware platforms that traditionally run other operating systems such as macOS or Windows. Because ChromeOS is a cloud-first, relatively low-overhead operating system, the ChromeOS Flex option could breathe new life into an old laptop that you have lying around.

Never having encountered a MacBook Pro with ChromeOS, we were interested to learn about Tom’s experience running XPRT benchmarks in this new environment. WebXPRT 4, WebXPRT 3, and the CrXPRT 2 performance test apparently ran without any issues, but we have not yet seen a CrXPRT 2 battery life result from a ChromeOS Flex environment. We plan to experiment with this soon.

We were happy to publish the results on our site, and will consider any ChromeOS Flex results we receive for publication. If you submit results from ChromeOS Flex testing, we ask that you use the “Additional information” field in the results submission form to clarify that you ran the tests in a ChromeOS Flex environment. This will prevent any possible confusion when we see a submission that lists a traditional macOS or Windows hardware platform along with a ChromeOS version number.

Do you have experience running CrXPRT or WebXPRT with ChromeOS Flex? We’d love to hear about it!

Justin

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