Following on from the excellent work carried out by my colleague, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, where he benchmarked browsers running on Windows 7 and Windows 10, I've taken a look at how well browsers run on OS X 10.11 'El Capitan.'
I use it all day and after a few hours, it takes nearly 1.5GB of RAM, and whole parts of pages show up as black blocks. I have to restart it to restore it back to normal, using up less than 250MB - which is a lot less, but still a lot, all things consideted. It’s been a complaint about Chrome for years: “it hogs so much RAM!” And now that Firefox Quantum is here, the fire rages on—some users see less RAM usage than Chrome, while others see similar amounts.And it seems to have a big hand in what browser people are using.
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So, which is the best browser for your Mac?
The system
Try Newegg to look for ram with the same specs, and check out the reviews to ensure other mac owners with your machine hasn't had any issues with it. I was able to get gskill ram for $25 cheaper for my late 2011 back in July, it's gotten cheaper since then.
Best Browser For 2gb Ram
- Mac mini (Late 2012)
- 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 CPU
- 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM
- Intel HD Graphics 4000
- 1TB SATA hard drive
- OS X 10.11.2
The browsers
- Safari 9.0.2
- Chrome 47
- Firefox 43
- Opera 34
The tests
- JetStream 1.1: A JavaScript benchmark that includes benchmarks from the SunSpider 1.0.2 and Octane 2 JavaScript benchmark suites. Larger scores are better.
- Kraken-1.1: An updated version of the SunSpider benchmark. Lower scores are better.
- Octane 2.0: A JavaScript test that includes tests that focus on interactive scripting. Higher scores are better.
- RoboHornet: This benchmark claims it 'encompasses all aspects of browser performance and everything that matters to web developers, like performance of layout and localStorage.' Higher scores are better.
- HTML5 Test: A web standards compliance test. The maximum score is 550, and a higher score is better.
These tests were run multiple times to ensure consistency.
The results
I've added a checkmark next to the benchmarks won by each browser:
See also: 7 steps to speed up Google Chrome
Safari
- JetStream 1.1: 152.10 ✔
- Kraken-1.1: 2,583.82
- Octane 2.0: 22,158
- RoboHornet: 148.22 ✔
- HTML 5 test: 400
Chrome
- JetStream 1.1: 142.50
- Kraken-1.1: 2,442.44 ✔
- Octane 2.0: 23,928
- RoboHornet: 126.12
- HTML 5 test: 521 ✔
Firefox
- JetStream 1.1: 135.66
- Kraken-1.1: 2,882.82
- Octane 2.0: 23,402
- RoboHornet: 118.23
- HTML 5 test: 468
Opera
- JetStream 1.1: 147,68
- Kraken-1.1: 2,931.11
- Octane 2.0: 24,662 ✔
- RoboHornet: 125.75
- HTML 5 test: 520
Best Browser For Ram Usage
The bottom line
If you want the fastest browser then the browser you should be using on your Mac is Safari. It won two of the benchmark speed tests, while Chrome only won the one. Pretty clear win for Safari.
If you want the browser displaying the best standards compliance, then go with Chrome since it was the winner in the HTML5 test.
Moving from the artificial world of benchmarks into the real world, I have to be honest and say I can't feel much of a speed difference no matter which browser I use. Even running something like Internet Explorer or Edge through on a virtual machine on the Mac doesn't feel all that bad to be honest.
No matter which browser you use, they're all pretty darn fast. But if you want to be running the fastest browser on your Mac, run Safari.
See also:
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