Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test. Older readers will remember Microsoft as the villains of the Browser Wars that ultimately led to the fall of Netscape and the rise of Firefox, and later on Chrome. But Microsoft is on the side of the angels now and its Edge browser has been rebuilt with Chromium at its heart. It’s Windows’ default browser and there are also versions for iOS, Android, and Mac. The latest Edge is considerably faster than its predecessor and includes some useful features including Read Aloud, the ability to cast media such as inline videos to Chromecast devices, integrated AI tools including Bing Chat and Image Creator, and a good selection of add-ons such as password managers, ad-blockers, and so on. You can also download web pages as apps which then run as stand-alone applications without having to launch the whole browser.
That’s useful for the likes of Google Docs or Twitter. There are lots of customization options and we particularly liked the Privacy and Services page, which makes potentially confusing settings crystal clear. Elsewhere, the Site Permissions page gives you fine-grained control over what specific sites can do, including everything from pop-ups and ad blocking to MIDI device access and media autoplay. Edge looks like Chrome and works like Chrome, but we like it more than Chrome: it’s noticeably faster on our Mac and the customization options are superb. Read our full Microsoft Edge review. Firefox has long been the Swiss Army Knife of the internet and one of our favorite browsers. It can alert you if your email address is included in a known data breach, it blocks those annoying allow-notifications popups, it blocks “fingerprinting” browser tracking and it brings its picture in picture video mode to the Mac version.
As before it’s endlessly customizable both in terms of its appearance and in the range of extensions and plugins you can use. Last year’s overhaul dramatically improved its performance, which was starting to lag behind the likes of Chrome, and it’s smooth and solid even on fairly modest hardware. Firefox, one of the best browsers for a long time, is certainly a great choice for any internet user. It comes with a diverse range of features, beats Chrome in terms of privacy, is easy to use, and is also lightning-quick. Plus, it doesn't ask for too much space either, so you don't have to think twice before installing it. What's more, Firefox also has multiple customization options - whether you want to stick to the default theme or experiment with a thousand other themes, the choice is yours. Read our full Mozilla Firefox review. Opera sets out its stall the moment you first run it: its splash screen enables you to turn on its built-in ad blocker, use its built-in VPN, turn on its Crypto Wallet for cryptocurrency, enable in-browser messaging from the sidebar, and move between light or dark modes.
It’s a great introduction to a really good browser, although if you’re a gamer you should check out Opera GX instead: that’s designed specifically for gamers and features Twitch integration and Razer Chroma support. Opera is yet another Chromium-based browser, so performance is speedy and you can use add-ons from the Chrome library. It also has some interesting ideas of its own such as My Flow: if you’re constantly emailing or messaging interesting links to yourself, Flow enables you to do that more elegantly by making it easy to share content from Opera on your phone to Opera on your computer. But that's just the start. Opera's more advanced features include Aria, a powerful OpenAI-powered assistant which makes it easy to explain or summarize complex content, generate ideas and recommendations, translate text, or create new content of your own: emails, blog posts, letters, even poems or songs. Although some people still see Opera as an also-ran in the browser world, it's improved in leaps and bounds in recent years, and the latest innovations ensure it's a browser to watch both now and in the future.
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