Aside claims a 2x speed boost — but Helium’s developer and our own tests say otherwise

The folks at Aside have been working on the browser’s performance since the initial release. Their work has also been paying off, and I’ve noticed the performance improvements firsthand. However, the team now claims that the browser is twice as fast as it was previously.

We actually saw this coming a few days ago when they teased the update and shared some early numbers. Now, that same update has rolled out to everyone, and Aside is making sure nobody misses it. They posted about it on X and even fired off emails to users.

In the email, Aside said: “Performance is the feature. One of you told us that, and I admit, we were slow.” They then went on to explain that the team spent a week trying to make things quicker. Then came the tall claim about the browser scoring twice as high as the old version on the Speedometer 3.1 test, which would make it the fastest Chromium browser around.

For those who follow PiunikaWeb’s coverage on Aside, you’ll know that the team made similar claims a while ago when they said that the browser had gotten faster and lighter a month or so ago.

Of course, not everyone is taking these numbers at face value.

The developer behind the Helium browser, who goes by Wukko, ran the same test himself and got completely different results. In his run, Aside actually landed dead last, well behind Chrome, Brave, and his own Helium. That is a long way from the story Aside’s chart was telling.

Adding to the confusion, someone even pointed out that Aside’s chart itself looked off. “Even if you trust their numbers, you cant trust their graph,” they wrote. The bars are stretched in a way that makes the gaps between browsers look way bigger than the actual scores suggest. They shared the following screenshot for reference:

Meanwhile, someone else with a low-end Windows PC also ran their own test where Brave Origin came out on top. That said, Aside wasn’t in that one since it still hasn’t launched on Windows, something the team has been teasing for a while now.

I ran my own (unscientific) quick test too on my MacBook Air with the M2 chip. I fired up Speedometer 3.1 on Helium, Brave, and Aside.

Helium took the lead with a score of 29.4, followed by Brave at 24.5, and Aside came in last with a score of 23.5. And yes, I was on the shiny new update. 

So until someone other than Aside can back up these claims, I’d take that fastest browser title with a healthy pinch of salt.

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