Recently,
we heard from a BenchmarkXPRT Development Community member who was testing
Chromebooks in their lab. On a few of the Chromebooks, they saw sporadic CrXPRT
2 battery life test failures where CrXPRT 2 would successfully complete a
battery life test and produce a result for the initial run, but then fail at
the end of later runs.
After
a considerable amount of troubleshooting, they determined that the issue seemed
to be related to the way some systems automatically shut down before the
battery is completely exhausted, and the way some systems will automatically
boot up once the tester plugs in the power adapter for charging. This member found
that when they added a few system configuration steps before battery life tests
and made slight changes to their post-test routine, the systems that had
previously experienced consistent failures would successfully complete battery
life tests and produce results.
The
added steps are quick and straightforward, and we decided to add them to the
Configuring the test device and Running the tests sections of the CrXPRT 2 user manual.
We hope this updated guidance will help to prevent future frustration for
CrXPRT 2 testers.
If you have any questions or comments about the CrXPRT 2 battery life test, please feel free to contact us!
The holiday season is
fast approaching, and with widespread product shortages and supply chain
interruptions in the tech industry, it’s wise to start your holiday shopping
now. If you’re considering phones, tablets, Chromebooks, or laptops as gifts,
but are unsure where to get reliable information about the devices, the XPRTs can
help!
One of the core
functions of the XPRTs is to cut through the marketing noise by providing
objective, reliable measures of a device’s performance. For example, instead of
trying to guess whether a new Chromebook is fast enough to handle the demands
of remote learning, you can use its CrXPRT and WebXPRT performance scores to see how it stacks up against the
competition on everyday tasks.
A good place to start looking
for device scores is our XPRT results browser, which lets you access our database of more than 2,800 test
results from over 110 sources, including major tech review publications around
the world, OEMs, and independent testers. You can find a wealth of current and
historical performance data across all the XPRT benchmarks and hundreds of
devices. Learn how to use the results browser here.
If you’re considering
a popular device, chances are good that a recent tech review includes an XPRT
score for that device. You can find these reviews by going to your favorite
tech review site and searching for “XPRT,” or entering the name of the device
and the appropriate XPRT (e.g., “Apple iPad” and “WebXPRT”) in a search engine.
Here are a few recent tech reviews that use one or more of the XPRTs to
evaluate popular devices:
The XPRTs can help
consumers make better-informed and more confident tech purchases this holiday
season, and we hope you’ll find the data you need on our site or in an
XPRT-related tech review. If you have any questions about the XPRTs, XPRT
scores, or the results database please feel free to ask!
People choose a default web browser based on several factors.
Speed is sometimes the deciding factor, but privacy settings, memory load,
ecosystem integration, and web app capabilities can also come into play.
Regardless of the motivations behind a person’s go-to browser choice, the
dominance of software-as-a-service (SaaS) computing means that new updates are
always right around the corner. In previous blog posts, we’ve talked about how 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 Microsoft Edge on Windows and Google Chrome on Chrome
OS.
Windows 11 began rolling out earlier this month, and tech press outlets
such as AnandTech and PCWorld have used WebXPRT
3 to evaluate the impact of the new OS—or
specific settings in the OS—on browser performance. Our own in-house tests, which
we discuss below, show a negligible impact on browser performance when updating
our test system from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It’s important to note that depending
on a system’s hardware setup, the impact might be more significant in certain
scenarios. For more information about such scenarios, we encourage you to read the
PCWorld article discussing the impact of the Windows 11 default virtualization-based
security (VBS) settings on
browser performance in some instances.
In our comparison tests, we used a Dell
XPS 13 7930 with an Intel
Core i3-10110U processor and 4 GB of RAM. For the Windows 10 tests, we used a
clean Windows 10 Home image updated to version 20H2 (19042.1165). For the
Windows 11 tests, we updated the system to Windows 11 Home version 21H2 (22000.282).
On each OS version, we ran WebXPRT 3 three times on the latest versions of five
browsers: Brave, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. For
each browser, the score we post below is the median of the three test runs.
In our last
round of tests on Windows 10, Firefox was the clear winner. Three of the
Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, and Opera) produced very close scores,
and the performance of Brave lagged by about 7 percent. In this round of
Windows 10 testing, performance on every browser improved slightly, with Google
Chrome taking a slight lead over Firefox.
In our Windows 11 testing, we were interested to find that without exception, browser scores were slightly lower than in Windows 10 testing. However, none of the decreases were statistically significant. Most users performing daily tasks are unlikely to notice that degree of difference.
Have you observed any significant differences in WebXPRT 3 scores
after upgrading to Windows 11? If so, let us know!
Last month, we discussed a potential fix for the error that was preventing CrXPRT 2 testers from successfully completing battery life tests on systems running Chrome v89.x and later. Since then, we’ve been testing an updated, unpublished version of the app package across several Chromebook models to ensure that the new build is stable and produces consistent results. We’re happy to report that our testing was successful, and we’ve published the new CrXPRT build (v1.2.0.0) in the Chrome Web Store and it is live as of 12:45 PM EDT today.
Note
that it might take some time for the update to appear on your Chromebook and,
once it does, you might have to manually approve the update notice.
Neither
the tests nor the method of calculating the overall score and battery-life
score in this new build have changed, so results are comparable with previous
CrXPRT 2 results.
We appreciate everyone’s patience while we found a solution to the error. If you have any questions or comments about the CrXPRT 2 battery life test, please feel free to contact us!
A few weeks ago, we discussed an error that we’d recently started encountering during the CrXPRT 2 battery life test on systems running Chrome OS v89.x and later.
The error prevents the test from completing and producing a battery life
estimate. CrXPRT stops running its normal workload cycle and produces a “Test
Error” page. The timing of the error can vary from run to run. Sometimes,
CrXPRT stops running after only a few workload iterations, while other times,
the battery life test almost reaches completion before producing the error.
We have seen the error on across multiple brands of Chromebooks running
Chrome OS v89.x and later. To our knowledge, Chromebooks running Chrome OS v88.x
and earlier versions complete the battery life test without issues. We are unaware
of any problems with the CrXPRT 2 performance test.
We’re continuing to investigate this problem. Unfortunately, we have not yet identified the root cause. Without a solution, we are recommending that for now, testers not use the CrXPRT 2 battery life test. We will post this recommendation on CrXPRT.com.
We apologize for the inconvenience that this error is causing CrXPRT 2 testers. As soon as we identify a possible solution, we will share that information here in the blog. If you have any insight into recent Chrome OS changes or flag settings that could be causing this problem, please let us know!
In recent lab tests, we’ve encountered an error during the CrXPRT 2 battery life test that prevents the test from completing and producing a battery life estimate. As the screenshot below shows, when the error occurs, CrXPRT stops running its normal workload cycle and produces a “Test Error” page. We have seen this behavior on systems running Chrome OS v89.x and v90.x, across multiple vendor platforms. In our testing, Chromebooks running Chrome OS v88.x and earlier versions continue to complete the battery life test without any issues.
The error occurs consistently on every Chromebook running v89.x or
v90.x that we’ve tested so far. However, the timing of the error varies from
run to run on the same system. Sometimes, CrXPRT stops running after only a few
workload iterations, while at other times, the battery life test runs almost to
completion before producing the error.
We’re actively investigating this problem, but have not yet
identified the root cause. We apologize for the inconvenience that this error
may be causing CrXPRT 2 testers. As soon as we identify the root cause of the
problem and have ideas about possible solutions, we will share that information
here in the blog. If you have any insight into recent Chrome OS changes or flag
settings that could be causing this problem, please let us know!
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