(upbeat instrumental music)
- Hey guys, what's up?
I'm Christian Taylor
and the browser battles are getting heated.
So, I've been a Chrome user for a long time,
several years, well really as long as I can remember.
Now, I've always heard, "Why don't you try Firefox?
"Switch to Firefox."
There's this loyal user base for Firefox
that's very passionate about it.
Kinda how I see the Linux user base.
There's those people that just say,
"Ah, you just don't get it, it's so much better."
But, I can never get behind it for one reason,
the graphics sucked!
Yeah, I know, you're probably cringing because
why would I pick a browser based on graphics.
To be fair, I do value performance,
but I also value graphics, at least to the slightest bit.
And let's face it, Firefox didn't just look like a potato,
it looked like an over baked potato.
(trumpet whomping)
It was pretty bad, but with the introduction of
Firefox Quantum in the new flat UI, I was like,
"Okay, okay, Firefox is actually attempting
"to please the masses now."
"You know I think I could try this."
So, I switched to Firefox for one week.
I removed the icon for Chrome, I replaced it with Firefox,
and I faithfully used it on both mobile and desktop
for seven days.
Here's my experience.
Now, my first impressions are, I really like the UI.
It's clean and simple.
It has that minimal look that I like,
and I gotta say, Firefox is, well, faster.
That's just a fact.
It's more memory and battery efficient than Chrome is,
and I legitimately noticed that pages were snappier to load.
I also want to say, it's a huge benefit that you're not
surrendering as much data to the Google overlord.
Because we all know,
Google has there ulterior motives with Chrome.
They're not just gonna make a browser,
being the web search giant they are,
out of the kindness of their heart.
They absolutely have the ulterior motive of collecting data.
Now, Mozilla takes a very off-hands approach.
They are a non-profit organization.
And I'm not saying they're completely trustworthy,
or you should just trust that they're never using your data
for anything, but generally they do have a better
reputation at respecting your privacy and data,
and not having as much as a hands-on approach.
So the concept of Firefox Quantum is great.
It's speedy, it has a clean and simple UI,
it has better ethics on how it handles your data.
But then this is when I started to run into some problems.
First of all, my biggest complaint with any
other browser besides Chrome is plugin availability.
I use some core plugins like Yappy to sync text messages
from my phone to my computer.
And these plugins are not available
in the form of a desktop app.
The only way you can get that kind of functionality
is through the Google Chrome plugin.
With that not being available on Firefox,
that is a huge downside in my book for what I use it for.
Now also, some of the plugins
that are available do not function as well.
An example of this is, the LastPass plugin doesn't allow you
to copy a password by selecting a site from the plugin menu.
This is something you can do in Chrome and I actually use it
a lot when the auto fill function doesn't work.
In Firefox, I actually have to hit edit,
wait for the vault to open,
and click the eye to reveal the password,
and copy and paste it from there.
Now this works, but it is a huge pain over the convenience
that the Chrome version offers.
In addition, I noticed
that some sites have funky issues compared to Chrome.
I think this has to do with the plugins I had installed,
but I had all of the same plugins installed on Firefox
as I did on Chrome.
And you can see in my comparison, there are many times,
a lot of situations I ran into
where things just didn't work.
There were text fields that weren't showing up,
or the plugin I use called Grammarly,
to check my spelling and grammar, it just wouldn't work.
It would tell me there was an issue with the text,
but it wouldn't underline it in red consistently
like it did in Chrome.
That was really frustrating to me knowing
that there was an error in my text,
but it just wasn't showing up,
and there was no way I could fix it.
Firefox also has other quirks, such as,
4K Video and YouTube not being enabled by default.
Initially I thought this wasn't supported at all,
but I had to dig around in the experimental settings menu
to figure out that you can enable support for it.
It's apparently just buggy,
and I guess it's more of a trial/experiment,
which is why it's not enabled by default.
Now, when I did enable 4K Video,
I didn't have any problems playing it.
It was smooth, no glitches,
so that was all fine with me once I enabled it.
Now another thing I wanna mention is,
if you're heavily involved in the Google ecosystem,
you're gonna have some problems with Firefox.
What I mean is, stuff like Google Cast is not there
for obvious reasons,
that's Google's proprietary technology.
But if you use a Chrome Cast and or a Google Home,
I personally use both, that means you won't be able to
cast a tab to your TV, or cast audio to your Google Home
from your browser.
It's just not gonna work.
For obvious reasons Google restricts that to Chrome,
because they want you to use that browser.
So, for me that was a little bit annoying,
not having that functionality.
So what's the conclusion I came to?
Well, I have to say, despite the quirks,
I did enjoy using Firefox for seven days.
I would say, if you're looking for a browser
and you're not heavily invested in the Google ecosystem,
and plugins are not important to you.
Maybe you only use a couple that are available on there,
or you don't use plugins at all,
or you just need a plugin like an ad blocker.
Then I would say,
I have to recommend Firefox Quantum over Chrome.
It really is snappier, it has battery saving features,
and overall, I just feel better about it.
Sometimes I'm a little bit creeped out with how much data
I'm surrendering to Google,
and it just makes me feel like
it's a more hands-off approach to my data.
In addition, the new clean and simple UI,
and the slick animations are very awesome.
However, for me, I am not switching to Firefox.
The reason being is I am heavily reliant upon plugins,
and plugins that are either exclusive to Google Chrome
or they work better in Google Chrome.
Expanding on this,
I am also heavy into the Google ecosystem.
So, I really do enjoy features like casting to
my Google Home, and casting to a Chrome Cast,
and these are things that I'm not ready to let go of.
If Firefox improved functionality for those aspects,
I gotta say, I'd be switching.
But due to the quirks with poor functioning plugins,
lack of availability for plugins,
and no support for Google Cast,
for now I'll be sticking to Google Chrome.
So, which browser do you guys use?
Which one is right for you
in this especially heated battle between browsers?
Definitely be sure to drop a comment down below
and answer the poll up in the corner.
With that said, if you wanna be among the first to know
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Leave a like, if you like this video.
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But at least tell me why in the comments.
With that said, I'll catch you guys, next time.
(slow instrumental music)