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Category: History of benchmarking

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 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

HDXPRT: See how your Windows PC handles real-world media tasks

Many of our blog readers first encountered the XPRTs when reading about a specific benchmark, such as WebXPRT, in a device review. Because these folks might be unfamiliar with our other benchmarks, we like to occasionally “reintroduce” individual XPRTs. This week, we invite you to get to know HDXPRT.

HDXPRT, which stands for High-Definition Experience & Performance Ratings Test, was the first benchmark published by the HDXPRT Development Community, which later became the BenchmarkXPRT Development Community. HDXPRT 4, the latest version, evaluates the performance of Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices while handling real-world media tasks such as photo editing, video conversion, and music editing. HDXPRT uses real commercial applications, such Photoshop and MediaEspresso, to complete its workloads. The benchmark then produces easy-to-understand results that are relevant to buyers shopping for new Windows systems.

The HDXPRT 4 setup process takes about 30 minutes on most systems. The length of the test can vary significantly depending on the speed of the system, but for most PCs that are less than a few years old, a full three-iteration test cycle takes under two hours.

HDXPRT is a useful tool for anyone who wants to evaluate the real-world, content-creation capabilities of a Windows PC. To see test scores from a variety of Windows devices, go to HDXPRT.com and click View Results.

Want to run HDXPRT?

Download HDXPRT from HDXPRT.com. The HDXPRT user manual provides information on minimum system requirements, as well as step-by-step instructions for configuring your system and kicking off a test.

Want to dig into the details?

The HDXPRT source code is available upon request. If you’d like to access the source code, please send your request to benchmarkxprtsupport@principledtechnologies.com. Build instructions are also available.

If you haven’t used HDXPRT before, give it a shot and let us know what you think!

Justin

A huge milestone for XPRT runs and downloads!

We’re excited to have recently passed an important milestone: one million XPRT runs and downloads! Most importantly, that huge number does not just reflect past successes. As the chart below illustrates, XPRT use has grown steadily over the years. In 2021, we record, on average, more XPRT runs in one month (23,395) than we recorded in the entire first year we started tracking these stats (17,051).

We reached one million runs and downloads in about seven and a half years. At the current rate, we’ll reach two million in roughly three and a half more years. With WebXPRT 4 on the way, there’s a good chance we can reach that mark even sooner!

As always, we’re grateful for all the testers that have helped us reach this milestone. If you have any questions or comments about using any of the XPRTs to test your gear, let us know!

Justin

Adapting to a changing tech landscape

The BenchmarkXPRT Development Community started almost 10 years ago with the development of the High Definition Experience & Performance Ratings Test, also known as HDXPRT. Back then, we distributed the benchmark to interested parties by mailing out physical DVDs. We’ve come a long way since then, as testers now freely and easily access six XPRT benchmarks from our site and major app stores.

Developers, hardware manufacturers, and tech journalists—the core group of XPRT testers—work within a constantly changing tech landscape. Because of our commitment to providing those testers with what they need, the XPRTs grew as we developed additional benchmarks to expand the reach of our tools from PCs to servers and all types of notebooks, Chromebooks, and mobile devices.

As today’s tech landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, our desire to play an active role in emerging markets continues to drive us to expand our testing capabilities into areas like machine learning (AIXPRT) and cloud-first applications (CloudXPRT). While these new technologies carry the potential to increase efficiency, improve quality, and boost the bottom line for companies around the world, it’s often difficult to decide where and how to invest in new hardware or services. The ever-present need for relevant and reliable data is the reason many organizations use the XPRTs to help make confident choices about their company’s future tech.

We just released a new video that helps to explain what the XPRTs provide and how they can play an important role in a company’s tech purchasing decisions. We hope you’ll check it out!

We’re excited about the continued growth of the XPRTs, and we’re eager to meet the challenges of adapting to the changing tech landscape. If you have any questions about the XPRTs or suggestions for future benchmarks, please let us know!

Justin

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