Microsoft: Edge Browser Offers The Most Power Efficient Video Playback

Last month, Microsoft claimed that Edge is the most power efficient browser among the leading web browsers available in the market right now. They also claimed that Edge is a more energy efficient browser on Windows 10, with up to 36%-53% more battery life and Edge lasted nearly 3 hours more than Chrome in their tests. Today, Microsoft made another claim that Edge has the most power efficient video playback. Edge was engineered to take advantage of Windows 10 platform features that keep the CPU in low power states during video playback leading to great battery life.

It does this by offloading CPU intensive video processing operations to power efficient peripheral hardware found in modern PCs and mobile devices. This starts with the use of Microsoft DirectX video acceleration (DXVA) to offload decoding of compressed video.  For rendering, Microsoft Edge also works with Multiplane overlay display hardware and sophisticated graphics and UI compositing features to offload video rendering operations. This significantly reduces memory bandwidth required for video processing and compositing at the display.

Not only was Microsoft Edge the most power efficient, the premium video site Microsoft used in their test also sent higher resolution and bitrate video to Microsoft Edge compared to the other browsers.

Read more about their video tests here.