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Category: WebXPRT

It’s time to shop for the holidays, and the XPRTs are here to help!

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on November 4, 2021

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!

Justin

Posted in AnandTech, Chrome OS, Chromebooks, Cross-platform benchmarks, CrXPRT, Google Chrome, Laptops, Mobile devices, PCs, Performance of computing devices, Phones, results, Tablets, WebXPRT | Tagged , , , , , , , , , |

Using WebXPRT 3 to compare the performance of popular browsers in Windows 10 and Windows 11

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on October 28, 2021

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!

Justin

Posted in AnandTech, benchmark, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Brave, Browser-based benchmarks, Cross-platform benchmarks, Dell, Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Performance benchmarking, results, SaaS, Virtualization, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 3, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Tagged , , , , , , , |

An early preview of the new WebXPRT 4 results viewer!

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on October 14, 2021

Last week, we shared some new details about the changes we’re likely to make in WebXPRT 4, and a rough target date for publishing a preview build. This week, we’re excited to share an early preview of the new results viewer tool that we plan to release in conjunction with WebXPRT 4. We hope the tool will help testers and analysts access the wealth of WebXPRT test results in our database in an efficient, productive, and enjoyable way. We’re still ironing out many of the details, so some aspects of what we’re showing today might change, but we’d like to give you an idea of what to expect.

The screenshot below shows the tool’s default display. In this example, the viewer displays over 650 sample results—from a wide range of device types—that we’re currently using as placeholder data. The viewer will include several sorting and filtering options, such as device type, hardware specs such as browser type and processor vendor, the source of the result, etc.

Each vertical bar in the graph represents the overall score of single test result, and the graph presents the scores in order from lowest to highest. To view an individual result in detail, the user simply hovers over and selects the bar representing the result. The bar turns dark blue, and the dark blue banner at the bottom of the viewer displays details about that result.

In the example above, the banner shows the overall score (250) and the score’s percentile rank (85th) among the scores in the current display. In the final version of the viewer, the banner will also display the device name of the test system, along with basic hardware disclosure information. Selecting the Run details button will let users see more about the run’s individual workload scores.

We’re still working on a way for users to pin or save specific runs. This would let users easily find the results that interest them, or possibly select multiple runs for a side-by-side comparison.

We’re excited about this new tool, and we look forward to sharing more details here in the blog as we get closer to taking it live. If you have any questions or comments about the results viewer, please feel free to contact us!

Justin

Posted in Benchmark metrics, Browser-based benchmarks, Performance benchmarking, results, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 3, webxprt 4 | Tagged , , , , , , |

A clearer picture of WebXPRT 4

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on October 7, 2021

The WebXPRT 4 development process is far enough along that we’d like to share more about changes we are likely to make and a rough target date for publishing a preview build. While some of the details below will probably change, this post should give readers a good sense of what to expect.

General changes

Some of the non-workload changes in WebXPRT 4 relate to our typical benchmark update process, and a few result directly from feedback we received from the WebXPRT tech press survey.

  • We will update the aesthetics of the WebXPRT UI to make WebXPRT 4 visually distinct from older versions. We do not anticipate significantly changing the flow of the UI.
  • We will update content in some of the workloads to reflect changes in everyday technology. For instance, we will upgrade most of the photos in the photo processing workloads to higher resolutions.
  • In response to a request from tech press survey respondents, we are considering adding a looping function to the automation scripts.
  • We are investigating the possibility of shortening the benchmark by reducing the default number of iterations from seven to five. We will only make this change if we can ensure that five iterations produce consistently low score variance.

Changes to existing workloads

  • Photo Enhancement. This workload applies three effects to two photos each (six photos total). It tests HTML5 Canvas, Canvas 2D, and JavaScript performance. The only change we are considering is adding higher-resolution photos.
  • Organize Album Using AI. This workload currently uses the ConvNetJS neural network library to complete two tasks: (1) organizing five images and (2) classifying the five images in an album. We are planning to replace ConvNetJS with WebAssembly (WASM) for both tasks and are considering upgrading the images to higher resolutions.
  • Stock Option Pricing. This workload calculates and displays graphic views of a stock portfolio using Canvas, SVG, and dygraph.js. The only change we are considering is combining it with the Sales Graphs workload (below).
  • Sales Graphs. This workload provides a web-based application displaying multiple views of sales data. Sales Graphs exercises HTML5 Canvas and SVG performance. The only change we are considering is combining it with the Stock Option Pricing workload (above).
  • Encrypt Notes and OCR Scan. This workload uses ASM.js to sync notes, extract text from a scanned receipt using optical character recognition (OCR), and add the scanned text to a spending report. We are planning to replace ASM.js with WASM for the Notes task and with WASM-based Tesseract for the OCR task.
  • Online Homework. This workload uses regex, arrays, strings, and Web Workers to review DNA and spell-check an essay. We are not planning to change this workload.

Possible new workloads

  • Natural Language Processing (NLP). We are considering the addition of an NLP workload using ONNX Runtime and/or TensorFlowJS. The workload would use Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) to answer questions about a given text. Similar use cases are becoming more prevalent in conversational bot systems, domain-specific document search tools, and various other educational applications.
  • Message Scrolling. We are considering developing a new workload that would use an Angular or React.js to scroll through hundreds of messages. We’ll share more about this possible workload as we firm up the details.

The release timeline

We hope to publish a WebXPRT 4 preview build in the second half of November, with a general release before the end of the year. If it looks as though that timeline will change significantly, we’ll provide an update here in the blog as soon as possible.

We’re very grateful for all the input we received during the WebXPRT 4 planning process. If you have any questions about the details we’ve shared above, please feel free to ask!

Justin

Posted in benchmark, Benchmark metrics, Benchmarking, Browser-based benchmarks, Collaborative benchmark development, Cross-platform benchmarks, Future of performance evaluation, HTML5, image classification, image processing, Performance benchmarking, Web-based testing, WebAssembly, WebXPRT, webxprt 4 | Tagged , , , , |

Investigating the possibility of WebXPRT user accounts

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on September 2, 2021

One of our goals during the ongoing WebXPRT 4 development process is to be as responsive as possible to user feedback, and we want to emphasize that it’s not too late to send us your ideas. Until we finalize the details for each workload and complete the code work for the preview build, we still have quite a bit of flexibility around adding new features.

Just this week, a community member raised the possibility of a WebXPRT 4 feature that would enable user-specific test ID numbers or accounts. One possible implementation of the idea would allow a user to sign up for a WebXPRT test account as an individual or on behalf of their organization. The test accounts would be both free and optional; you could continue to run the benchmark without an account, but running it with an account would let you save and view your test history. Another implementation option we are considering would let users generate a permanent user ID number for themselves or their organization. They could then use that number to tag and search for their automated test runs in our database, without having to log into an account.

Our biggest question at the moment is whether our user base would be interested in WebXPRT user accounts or test IDs. If this concept piques your interest, or you have suggestions for implementation, please let us know!

Justin

Posted in Automation, benchmark, Benchmarking, Browser-based benchmarks, Collaborative benchmark development, Performance benchmarking, Web-based testing, WebXPRT, webxprt 4 | Tagged , , , , |

Using WebXPRT 3 to compare the performance of popular browsers (Round 3)

Justin Greene
By Justin Greene
on August 19, 2021

In November, we published our WebXPRT 3 browser performance comparison, so we decided it was time to see if the performance rankings of popular browsers have changed in the last nine months.

For this round of tests, we used the same laptop as last time: a Dell XPS 13 7930 with an Intel Core i3-10110U processor and 4 GB of RAM running Windows 10 Home, updated to version 1909 (18363.1556). 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 3 three times each on 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, the four Chromium-based browsers (Brave, Chrome, Edge, and Opera) produced very close scores, though we saw about a four percent lower score from Brave. In this round of testing, performance improved for all four of the Chromium-based browsers. Chrome, Edge, and Opera still produced very close scores, but Brave’s performance still lagged, this time by about seven percent.

Firefox separated itself from the pack with a much higher score and has been the clear winner in all three rounds of testing. During our second round of testing in November, every browser except for Chrome saw slightly slower performance than the first round. In these latest tests, all the Chromium-based browsers produced significantly higher scores than the second round. When discussing browser performance, it’s important to remember that there are many possible reasons for these performance changes—including changes in browser overhead or changes in Windows—and most users may not notice the changes during everyday tasks.

Do these results mean that Mozilla Firefox will always provide you with a speedier web experience? As we noted in previous comparisons, 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 on several factors, such as 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 10 or Chrome on Chrome OS. All these variables are important to keep in mind when considering how browser performance comparison 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

Posted in benchmark, Benchmarking, Browser-based benchmarks, Performance benchmarking, Performance of computing devices, results, WebXPRT, WebXPRT 3, webxprt 4, Windows 10 |

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