Microsoft boasts of Edge's battery-boosting chops

Microsoft is continuing to push its next-generation Edge web browser, this time claiming that it can extend the battery life of a laptop by several hours over its leading rivals.

Designed to replace Internet Explorer and released with Windows 10, Edge is Microsoft's first major browser rewrite. Despite arriving as the default browser with its latest operating system, though, it has been struggling to gain market share - in part due to a lack of features compared to both the competition and its predecessor, something the company is slowly working to address. Now, Microsoft is taking the tack that switching to Edge from rival browsers will boost your laptop's battery life - potentially up to 70 per cent.

In a high-definition video streaming test published on the Windows blog, Microsoft claims to have found that a laptop running Edge lasted for a few minutes short of seven and a half hours, while the same laptop running Google's popular Chrome browser died after less than four and a half. Mozilla's Firefox was also used for comparison, dying five hours and nine minutes into the experiment, while the Opera browser - which recently gained a battery-saving option Microsoft says was enabled during the testing - came closest to Microsoft's result with six hours and 18 minutes.

While the main portion of the experiment concentrated on video streaming, Microsoft also measured power usage during 'typical browsing activities,' with Microsoft's Jason Weber claiming that 'our tests show Microsoft Edge is a more energy efficient browser on Windows 10, with up to 36%-53% more battery life to get what you need done.'

Microsoft's test video is reproduced below.