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After Octane, the JavaScript benchmark suite widely used to test Chromebook performance, was retired, we were left scratching our heads a bit trying to figure out what would be next. With Google really touting real-world benchmarking over synthetic, we thought we’d have to come up with some sort of battery of tests to run.
I wasn’t too excited by that.
Luckily, Google has recommended an alternative that, while still a synthetic benchmark, still give a much broader and real-world result.
In a post over on the Chromium Blog a few days back, Google quietly recommended a new benchmark.
The article itself was more about Chrome being faster than it was a couple years ago. Plenty of news outlets picked that up and we read about it along with many of you. I figured it was worth mentioning here eventually, so I read the source article from the Chromium Blog just to get to the underpinnings of the story.
While the performance enhancement info was there, the gist of the article was really more about real-world JavaScript performance and measuring it more accurately. In the article, it is explained (as we explained here) why Octane was finally retired and how the focus for further JavaScript Engine development was aimed at real life, not synthetic benchmarks.
As I continued reading, I found this:
Although no benchmark can be a representative proxy for all sites, the Speedometer benchmark is an approximation of many sites due to its inclusion of real web frameworks including React, Angular, Ember, and jQuery.
Yep. A Google-endorsed, real-world-like synthetic benchmark. Before reading this, I’d never even heard of that one. I’m assuming many of you have not as well. But, as of today, Speedometer will become our official Chromebook benchmark.
It’ll be an adjustment, sure, but we’ll make that adjustment. We don’t have many Chromebooks around right now, but I can give you a range to at least start going by.
If you head over to browserbench.org/Speedometer, you can run this test yourself on your current device and leave a comment on your score. The equipment I have in front of me currently is the Acer Chromebook 15 Core i5 with 4GB RAM, the Lenovo N23 Yoga Chromebook with the MediaTek 8173 and 4GB of RAM, and the Acer Chromebook 14 with 4GB of RAM. Here are their scores next to their average Octane scores.
ACER CHROMEBOOK 15 (Core i5)
Octane: 26,000
Speedometer: 101.6
LENOVO N23 YOGA CHROMEBOOK
Octane: 10,000
Speedometer: 36.4
ACER CHROMEBOOK 14
Octane: 8,400
Speedometer:25.32
We’ll continue adding more scores as we go, maybe even having a page dedicated to Speedometer scores when we compile enough of them. So run your Chromebook and through the model, specs, and scores in the comments. Can’t wait to see how some of these devices score!
