Microsoft Edge Review

Microsoft Edge recently underwent a complete overhaul, and we have to say we like what we see. It has better functionality than before, while remaining just as fast. Privacy issues remain, though. Read our full Microsoft Edge review for the details.

By Aleksander HougenEditor
— Last Updated:
2020-08-10T16:12:45+00:00
(Editor)
Free
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Microsoft Edge is dead, long live Microsoft Edge. Although the old Edge long failed to make it on to anybody’s list of best browsers, Microsoft has completely revamped its web browser by basing it on Chromium, which has improved its performance, created a more pleasant user experience and opened the door to Chrome’s library of extensions.

Keep reading this Microsoft Edge review to learn more about the company’s latest foray into the browser market.

Microsoft’s history with web browsers is a turbulent one, to say the least. Although its original browser — Internet Explorer — was once dominant, it lost its crown to Google Chrome in the mid-2000s (read our Microsoft Edge vs Chrome piece). It isn’t without some irony, then, that Microsoft has decided to pin its hopes on the Chromium framework to revive interest in its struggling browser. 

You can download Microsoft Edge for Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10 and macOS. Furthermore, the browser is compatible with both Android 4.4 and later, as well as iOS 10.0 and later. For this review, we used an Acer laptop running Windows 10 and an iPhone running iOS 12.3 for testing.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths:

  • Can use Chrome extensions
  • Excellent mobile features
  • Good browser security

Weaknesses:

  • Poor browser privacy
  • Infrequent updates

Alternatives for Microsoft Edge

Features

95 % – Excellent

The biggest benefit that the new Edge browser gets from moving to the Chromium framework (read our Chromium review) is that it is now compatible with Chrome’s vast library of extensions. Although Microsoft also operates its own store for dedicated Edge add-ons, it’s dwarfed by the Chrome web store, which contains tens of thousands of extensions.

Edge-Extension-Warning

Although not all extensions will work with Edge, most will, with the exception being ones that directly modify the user interface. This means that invaluable web apps — such as password manager extensions, ad blockers and security extensions — are all available for the browser, greatly expanding its list of potential new features.

Edge-Allow-Extensions

Edge also comes with a sync feature that’s similar to that of Chrome. Currently, you can sync your favorites, settings, form content and passwords using your Microsoft account. Although it hasn’t been implemented yet, Microsoft also plans to add history, currently open tabs, extensions and collections to this list of syncable items.

Edge-Sync

Another similarity to Chrome is the context menu options. You can select and right-click any text — and more importantly, images — and choose “search the web for” to instantly do a text or reverse image search in your chosen search engine. By default this is Bing, but you can change it to Google, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo.

Edge-Search-Engines

Like most browsers, Edge has a reading mode — called “immersive reader” — that strips out everything except the text on a webpage to make it easier to read. 

There’s also a “read aloud” feature that takes highlighted text and, you guessed it, reads it out loud. This works quite well for English text, but not so much for any other language (reminding us a bit of speech-to-text software).

Edge-Immersive-Reader

Mobile Features

Microsoft didn’t just create a new Edge for desktop, but also for Android and iOS devices. Although there aren’t a whole lot of features on mobile that we haven’t already covered when we talked about the desktop version, there are a few notable exceptions that stand out.

First is the “NewsGuard” feature. This is a database that analyzes news outlets and rates them based on perceived trustworthiness. Whenever you visit a news site, a small icon will appear in the address bar.

Edge-Newsguard-Reliable

Publications that are known to be generally reliable — such as The New York Times or BBC News — will have a green shield that says “this website generally maintains basic standards of accuracy and accountability.” 

Meanwhile, other news sites, like InfoWars, will have a red shield that says “proceed with caution: this website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.”

Edge-Newsguard-Not-Reliable

Another great mobile feature is the “floating video” setting. This is something we’d very much like to see in other browsers like Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, and it allows you to move a video into a sort of “picture in picture” frame so that you can keep watching while moving to a different webpage or tab.

Edge-Floating-Video

Microsoft Edge comes with its own translation engine — Bing Translator — built-in on mobile. This is great if you frequently visit websites in languages you can’t read. However, when compared to Google Translate, the service falls a bit short. 

Bing Translator can currently handle 69 languages, whereas Google Translate includes as many as 103 and better accuracy, to boot. The feature is also available on desktop, but you need to add it manually from the Microsoft store.

Edge-Reading-List

Finally, Edge for mobile comes with a reading list, where you can add websites and articles for later reading. This is different from saving a bookmark in that you get offline access to the saved page, which is great for users with caps on their mobile data or if you’re going somewhere with no reception.

Ease of Use

95 % – Excellent

The new Edge browser features a slick and easy-to-use design that will no doubt be familiar to anyone who has used Chrome or other Chromium-derived web browsers.

Edge-Intro-Import

When you first install Edge, you’re taken through an introduction that helps you set up the browser. First, you can import bookmarks from Chrome or Internet Explorer, but if you wish to import from any other browsers, you’ll need to first export your bookmarks to an HTML file and import from there. Check out our guide on how to backup Firefox bookmarks for an example of how to do this.

Edge-Intro-Sync

Next, you’re prompted to set up the sync process, as well as choose a “tab style” that suits you. This “tab style” is basically what you’ll see when you open a new tab. You can choose between “focused,” “inspirational,” “informational” and “custom.”

Edge-Intro-Tab-Style

There’s not a huge amount of difference between these, as it basically boils down to whether or not you want a personalized news feed on your homepage, as well as enabling or disabling the “image of the day” as your Microsoft wallpaper. You can choose a country for the news feed, which will then show you the day’s headlines relevant to your location.

Edge-News-Feed

Besides the new tab page, there’s not a whole lot of customization available. You can switch between a light and dark theme, as well as download and install additional fonts, but both of these are features commonly included in most web browsers these days.

Edge-Customize-New-Tab

Ease of Use on Mobile

On mobile, the Microsoft Edge app sports a typical browser layout. Your basic controls — including navigation controls, the tab menu, a share button and the start menu — are located at the bottom of the screen and the address bar up top.

Edge-Mobile-App

The start menu contains your favorites, history, reading list and settings, as well as more advanced controls, including search, the read-aloud feature and desktop mode. You can rearrange this menu in whatever way you see fit, which is a nice touch that you don’t often see with mobile browsers.

Edge-Mobile-Customize-Menu

Performance

85 % – Very Good

Without a doubt performance was the greatest weakness of the old Edge, and it is the area where Edge stood to gain the most by switching over to the Chromium framework.

It has definitely paid off, as the new Edge achieves roughly the same speeds — both on desktop and mobile — as Chrome, even slightly outperforming the latter. Although other browsers like Vivaldi or Firefox are still faster, this is a perfectly acceptable result, especially compared to the old Edge, which was painfully slow.

High RAM use is typically one of the pitfalls of Chromium-based browsers, but in our tests Edge managed to do the same job as Chrome while using about 30 percent less memory.

If you’re curious about how we perform these tests or which web browser is the fastest, you can read our list of the fastest browsers for more information.

Security

85 % – Very Good

Although Edge now shares many similarities with Google Chrome, security is where Edge differs the most. Instead of using Google’s safe browsing to protect against malicious websites, Edge instead employs the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen system, which outperforms Google’s system in terms of protecting you against malware and phishing schemes.

When accessing a website over regular HTTP instead of HTTPS, Edge provides a clear warning in the form of a symbol and text saying “not secure.” This is good, as it makes it easy for users to see when they’re potentially at risk from man-in-the-middle attacks. For more information about what this all entails, check out our breakdown of HTTP vs. HTTPS.

Edge-HTTP-Warning

Like most browsers, the new Edge includes a basic password manager that stores your passwords. These are protected using your system credentials, which is good because it saves you from setting up a master password, but it also leaves you vulnerable if you haven’t set up a password for your whole device.

Edge-Passwords

For more in-depth password handling, including strong password generation, we recommend checking out our list of the best password managers. If you’d rather skip right to our winner, you can read our Dashlane review.

The new version of Edge is still quite young, so it’s hard to tell exactly how often it will be updated. That said, the beta version receives an update every six weeks, which is less frequent than we’d like, as cybercriminals are always working to find new loopholes and bugs to exploit.

Although there’s no ad blocker by default, you can easily download one through the Chrome web store. uBlock Origin is our favorite, but you can check out our list of the best ad blockers for a full rundown. While it doesn’t block ads straight out of the gate, Edge does block pop-ups, which is good because they are one of the most common vectors for malware.

Edge-Popup-Blocker

If security is a big concern for you when you’re choosing your default browser, make sure to read our most secure web browser ranking.

Privacy

60 % – Fair

Privacy is by far the greatest weakness of the new Edge. Although it’s not as bad as Chrome in this regard, it still leaves a whole lot to be desired.

Microsoft’s privacy policy is a mess, as it’s often unclear what specific products are being talked about. There is no mention of selling personal data to advertisers, which leaves us with the impression that this is a practice that Microsoft engages in.

That said, you can disable a lot of the information gathering in Edge itself. However, if you’re using Windows, Microsoft is probably collecting most of this data on you anyway.

Edge-Protection-Modes

If you turn off services like SmartScreen, personalization and navigation prediction, it’s possible to make Edge at least somewhat private, though at the cost of security and ease of use. That said, If you’re particularly concerned with privacy, make sure to give our anonymous browsing guide a read.

Edge-Services

In terms of tracking prevention, Edge offers three modes: “basic,” “balanced” and “strict.” You can also see a list of trackers that have been blocked, as well as set up individual exceptions to the blocking rule you choose to go with.

Edge-Tracking-Exceptions

You can also make Edge wipe certain data each time you close the browser, such as your browsing history, cookies or passwords.

Edge-Wipe-Data

Permissions are equally easy to manage, as Edge provides a list of all permissions and how they’re accessed by websites.

The Verdict

That concludes our review of the new Edge. The browser is certainly a huge step up from the old Edge by virtue of the Chrome web store. It also has improved performance and ease of use, factors that may earn it new traction with users. 

However, privacy is still not great, so users concerned about this may want to check out better alternatives, such as Vivaldi, Brave or Tenta. Plus, if you don’t want to use it, you can disable Microsoft Edge, or read our guide on how to uninstall Microsoft Edge completely.

Since the new Edge is based on Chromium — and thus very similar to both it and Google Chrome — you can check out our Firefox vs. Chrome and Chromium vs. Chrome articles to gain some valuable context. If you want a more direct comparison for Edge, be sure to read our Microsoft Edge vs. Chrome article.

What did you think of our review? Do you agree that the new version of Edge is a huge improvement on its predecessor, or are you less interested in Chrome extensions and more concerned with your privacy? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.

Microsoft Edge FAQ

  • What Is Microsoft Edge?

    Microsoft Edge is a web browser developed by the same company that creates Windows. Until recently, the browser ran on its own proprietary engine. However, after years of struggling, Microsoft decided to rebuild it from the ground up using the much more popular Chromium framework.

  • Is Edge Better Than Chrome?

    That depends on what you care about. The two browsers are very similar now that Edge is based on Chromium, but the new Edge outperforms Chrome in both security and privacy, with little difference in other categories.

  • What Is the Best Browser to Use With Windows 10?

    Our favorite browser here at Cloudwards is Vivaldi, which boasts impressive customizability, excellent performance and nearly perfect security and privacy.

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31 thoughts on “Microsoft Edge”

  1. How bad can it be? I mean.. it is Microsoft, it should be at least good enough.. yet it is not safe, and the Bing search is terrible

    Reply
  2. not very good… always slow and closes out when i want to open a new tab every other time.

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  3. I haven’t found it difficult to use or a bad browser – if you use Windows then the amount of data Microsoft collects on you or at least has access to is large. I haven’t reduced the security settings down much and find the browser comparable (in routine use) to Firefox and Chrome. I like that it’s pretty well integrated with Windows and look forward to the Chromium based update as well.

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  4. Edge has got to be the worst browser I have ever encountered, and matched with Bing a real lesson in patience Oh look chrome goodbye edge

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  5. The all-new-from-the-ground-up version of Edge was released 2020/01/15 so **any reviews before then are meaningless now**. The new version is based on Chromium, the same open-source browser engine that powers Google Chrome. This new version of Edge is absolutely as good as Chrome, and is almost identical to it. If you like the experience of Chrome but for some reason (privacy? monopoly? Microsoft integration? etc) don’t want to use Google’s browser, then start using Microsoft Edge. Firefox is good too.

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  6. Cannot drag and drop a short cut from the url field like you can on every other browser – this is a deal breaker for me

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      1. Actually its also a deal breaker for me as i use that lot. So what is minor depends on what you want it to do… so stfu yourself please.

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        1. this thread is so funny to me. but yes, minor details are subjective, dont be a dick

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  7. Just a Chrome rip off but not as good. No new features. I don’t understand how Microsoft has gazillions of dollars but can’t think of any innovations without stealing from other developers. Maybe hire more millennials

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  8. My concern will be about security updates. How soon can Microsoft crank out updates to Edge chromium vs Google’s Chrome. Many clone’s tend to lag behind Chrome in updating. Even days can leave a user vulnerable. I find new Edge plenty capable of being a good browser. It has a very mature rendering engine that is very compliant. But is it enough to get users to switch?

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  9. runs much more efficiently in the background than most other browsers i have used. it may not be the most feature rich, but it is definitely a step forward in the right direction of improving edge.

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  10. I was making edits to a pdf I have with it and it wasn’t saving all the edits. It seemed to just skip over some and keep others. I thought it might be a error with the normal save function so I tried save as instead. Nope it was even worse and I lost almost all of my edits since it decided to close and open the new save fire. Then I tried to print it to a pdf and it didn’t keep a single edit.

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  11. So I see Edge Chromium as a browser Microsoft decided was going to save them development costs and that appears to be the main goal. Besides offering a browser tied to there ecosystem. Not a game changer just a alternative for the Microsoft centered user base. Microsoft clearly wanted to save development cost for a browser and Chromium is probably the only choice. What is concerning is most browsers now use Chromium as a engine. That could be a security problem down the road.

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  12. I think Microsoft Edge is a fantastic browser and ever since the Chromium update the speed has taken off. 4K Netflix is just a benefit I asol believe it is just as fast (if not faster) than Google Chrome but not as resource-hungry as Google Chrome so it is all around a fantastic browser.

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  13. The new Microsoft Edge update does not have the annotation feature. I can no longer draw or take notes on anything on any page in this app. This was the only thing that made it such a great app, and now its gone. Without it it has made my life harder, and pdf files open into windows, I can write on them, but I can only use normal draw, and in only one color, an awful blue. I cannot highlight or do anything else at all. Until the annotation ability is put back in, and until this is fixed I am no longer using Microsoft Edge at all, and am finding a new way to access and annotate and use my pdf files. Microsoft has made a big mistake. The only thing that has made the browser unique and amazing, is gone. I hope the apps rating drops bc of this, and I hope they fix this very fast.

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  14. Excellent browser. Better than Chrome in terms of UI and compatibility with each of the websites I use.

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  15. I tried Windows Edge Developer and Windows Edge; I found BOTH inferior for my personal needs than Internet Explorer. I’d have gladly stuck with I.E. and I hate Windows 10, it’s a step down and back for personal users like me.

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  16. I installed it and stared getting 10 times the amount of spam I had been getting.

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  17. Security and privacy. Security and privacy. Security and privacy. Is anybody listening???? Another data collection tool. No thank you.

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  18. Not an easy way to download file to the folder you want. It goes where ever it wants to.

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  19. If there is one think that annoys me it’s insistent marketing, I don’t want to be reminded by my laptop about how good Microsoft edge is once a day.

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  20. Bloody useless Nothing works I seem to have lost control and all my photo’s have disappeared. Windows 10 took some getting used to but this is ridiculous

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  21. Why has my comment not been moderated yet is it a bit to harsh, maybe not the rating that you wanted, tell me the four and five star ratings you received do they may be work for you.

    Reply
    1. We didn’t moderate your comment because it’s the weekend and the editorial team has their days off then. No conspiracy, just time off for hard-working people 🙂

      Reply
  22. The mailbox is stupid !!! I like outlook box better every thig is rite their to the left for you. I’ll be sticking with Explorer.

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  23. Microsoft Edge looks to have undisclosed vulnerabilities. Certain websites are able to store cookies and prevent from being deleted, no matter the settings in Edge.

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  24. It’s the worst, i cant find anything and i will always be send back to ‘bing’ i truly hate microsoft edge its the worst thing that they have invented. You cannot easy download anything and i dont like the way it works.

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  25. I find it bullshit with latest update that i can set new tab to open on my homepage fix the FUCK THING and you will have a 5 star review

    Reply
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