Apple, Google team up to make Speedometer 3.0 benchmark faster and fairer

A collaboration of developers announced on Monday that Speedometer 3.0, a new version of the online tool used to gauge the speed of web browsers. Developed by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, Speedometer 3.0 claims to be “a better way of measuring performance and a more representative set of tests that reflect the modern Web.”

Speedometer was originally created by Apple 10 years ago, and critics of the benchmark claimed that it was optimized for Apple’s WebKit/JavaScriptCore browser engine, so its results would favor Safari over third-party browsers. This collaboration creates “a new governance model” that supports the Blink/V8 (Google; Microsoft Edge also uses it) and Gecko/SpiderMonkey (Mozilla). The new benchmark involves many new tests that deliver “a more broad and representative cross section of the engine, providing new opportunities to optimize JS, Layout, CSS, Graphics, and DOM APIs in order to improve user experience on the Web.”

Additionally, Speedometer 3.0 has new tests, including rendering canvas and SVG charts, code editing, WYSIWYG editing, and reading news sites. Also, the test runner has been improved to better gauge response to user actions. The Speedometer 3.0 site has more details on its tests.

Speedometer 3.0 on the MacBook Air

Here’s a look at Speedometer 3.0 results on the new M3 MacBook Air. We ran the test on Safari 17.4 (19618.1.15.11.12), Google Chrome 122.0.6261.112, Microsoft Edge 122.0.2365.80, and Mozilla Firefox 123.0.1.

While Safari does have the fastest score, Chrome and Firefox and not far behind–they’re basically all the same speed, even if you don’t consider the standard deviation (stated as +/- by Speedometer). The lowest score by the Edge browser is 7 percent lower than Safari.