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Comment by brian-armstrong | Hacker News Reader

I use firefox for entirely idealistic reasons, but it's hard to ignore the fact that it is slower. There are times when it just feels so bloated, though thankfully a quick restart gets it running smoothly again. I know firefox team has had passes of perf improvements in the past, but it seems like it still isn't a high priority. When it comes to browsers, speed is the #1 feature.

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Honestly, recently I've consistently noticed Firefox running faster than Chrome for my usage scenario. It might be bias, but I find browsing on Firefox a more enjoyable experience and uses a lot less of my system resources.

I stuck with Firefox through the times where it was much slower than Chrome for idealistic reasons as well, but now I feel like speed is less of an issue because they are both pretty even.

It might be a placebo effect, but I find that I switch back and forth between Chrome and Firefox every 6-12 months after the one I'm using feels slow and the other feels faster. Maybe they're actually leapfrogging each other in performance, maybe not. I'm currently on my Chrome phase.

One thing that I think could be an interesting variable is how many tabs you've accreted. Browser A with 100 tabs open versus Browser B with 1 tab.

I don't go crazy with tabs and I like to clean up my tab bar by closing old tabs. It's rare that I have more than 20 at a time open.

That, and though Firefox may be slow, but last time I checked Chrome sucked my battery dry. With firefox my battery lasts way longer.

I switched from Firefox to Chrome just last week. I was using Firefox for years until it began crashing multiple times per day. Chrome is far faster at browsing. Tabs close quicker.

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