I’ve never been a fan of Microsoft’s Edge browser. As much as the company tried to push it saying it was better than Internet Explorer, it simply wasn’t. It was slow, clumsy and I didn’t feel as it was a worthwhile competitor to either Mozilla’s Firefox or Google’s Chrome browsers. That said, this recently leaked version of the Chromium-based Edge Browser is a completely different beast.
As pointed out by Neowin, A leak has been spotted and I didn’t pass up the chance to see what exactly Microsoft has been toying with. After downloading it and giving it a spin, I have to say I’m impressed with it so far. Pitting it against Chrome, it’s definitely faster. More importantly, a handful of sites that were broken in Edge, work just fine with this Chromium-based version of Edge.
As it’s built around Google’s Chromium, it also synced up my favorites and bookmarks from my Chrome browser, which saved me the trouble of doing so. Adding the LastPass extension, I don’t really have a reason to even using Chrome anymore. I’m really impressed with this so far.
That said, this is a leaked version and we don’t know how new (or old) this build is. There are also quite a few features missing that are available in Edge. Still, for what I got to play around with, it shows that this browser is going to be what the original Edge maybe should have been. For now, I’ve replaced Chrome with this for my daily driver. It will be interesting to what works, what doesn’t and if I’ll notice any real differences.
As for when we can expect the official release, that’s up to Microsoft. Though if anything is for sure, you can bet they’re reading the posts and thoughts of everyone who’s installed this leaked version. So if you are Microsoft, it’s a good start.
