Resource usage

Bloatware belongs in the noughties!

We tested the browsers using the pmap utility to determine the memory usage at initial launch, and ran the test again after some light browsing of Wikipedia, webmail, social media platforms, YouTube and a handful of other websites across different tabs.

Falkon eats up more than 350MB at launch, and at any given time will claim at least 270-290MB, even when you’re working with a single tab. Be prepared for the usage to increase exponentially as you open a handful of tabs, especially if you decide to entertain yourself with streaming content.

Brave reported needing just 9504KB at launch. Surprisingly, the usage remained constant no matter the number of tabs, or type of content that we accessed. From this we can conclude that either the browser is incredibly capable at memory usage, or more likely it doesn’t play nicely with pmap. The project claims that it needs less memory because it strips out all of the advertisement and trackers. During our test, Slimjet laid claim to over 670MB at launch. The usage increased to the mid-700MB range with only a few Wikipedia pages open in different tabs. Thankfully, with more than 10 open tabs, including YouTube, Amazon Prime Videos and Twitter, the maximum usage hovered around 800MB.

Opera was quite similar, needing over 800MB at launch and the usage quickly jumps to around 850MB with only two tabs, but come close to 900MB as you open more tabs, irrespective of the type of content. Even as you close tabs, the memory usage never comes down below 840MB. While Vivaldi only claimed 750MB at launch, the usage fluctuates between 650 and 750MB depending on how many tabs you’re working with at any given time.

VERDICT BRAVE FALKON OPERA 8/10 7/10 7/10

SLIMJET

VIVALDI 7/10 7/10

Refer to the ‘Also consider’ section if you’re interested in browsers for low-spec machines.