I'm a long time Mac user and have avoided using Safari opting instead for Chrome. I recently purchased a new M1 MBA and just recently started comparing the experience of using Chrome vs Safari. I have to say there is a notable difference in performance between the two on the new M1 platform. Safari is far more responsive and I'll say "smoother" of an experience. Apple has done something to improve the performance and experience with Safari on these new chips.

I don't have any hard metrics but only anecdotal descriptions. Here is where I'm seeing differences:

• Scrolling large sites with event driven graphics

  • Chrome scrolling is lurching quite often, if not jerky

  • Safari is far smoother

• Scrolling response and momentum

  • Initial response in Chrome is a bit delayed and scrolling momentum speed and decay is not consistent

  • Safari response is almost immediate and momentum is appropriately proportionate to time

I'm not going to stop using Chrome, particularly for programming, but I won't be using it for my daily surfing tasks on my new M1 MBA any longer, at least until Chrome has equivalent performance.

Alright everyone, now that Chrome is optimized for the M1 chip can someone let me know how it compares to Safari? I've been using them both but can't seem to tell a noticeable difference. If there is, I'd love to continue using Chrome but if battery life is going to suffer vs. Safari I'll take the bullet with Safari.

Thanks!

Thanks for your feedback!

I've been using both browsers (Safari and Chrome) for 2 months now on my M1 Macbook Air and here's what I've observed:

- I've opened 25 tabs on Chrome (mixture of youtube, google sheets and facebook and some articles). It was buttery smooth and snappy. However, the battery drains a little bit fast. Memory usage seems right considering the tabs opened.

- I closed Chrome totally and opened the same tabs on Safari. It was freaking lagging when scrolling the sites and the memory usage is almost 20% more. Some photos are also not loaded properly unless your refresh tha page. The only plus is the battery consumption which is almost 50% less than Chrome.

Do you guys have the same experience or is it just me? Kind of disappointed with how Safari is performing for me. I thought it was supposed to be tons better especially when it comes to speed.

Note that all apps and Big Sur are up to date.

Is there an issue with safari? or is chrome faster now generally? the whole browsing experience is snappy on chrome.