- Price: Free
- Website: www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer
- Version we tested: 8
- Good points: Very good ease of use. Mobile version available. Supports themes/skins and third party add-ons.
- But: Lowest overall score. Lowest performance score. No download manager. Windows only.
With the Microsoft behemoth behind it, Internet Explorer is probably the baseline for web browsing. Its massive market share means web developers have to take compatibility with Internet Explorer into account when creating any website. It’s now made for Windows only.
Like Chrome, the latest version of Internet Explorer runs each tab as a separate process to boost stability and security, and also features a secure mode for “private browsing”.
Despite its dominance of the market, largely due to it being shipped with every copy of Windows, Internet Explorer is well and truly the wooden-spooner in the web browser performance race, finishing with little more than half the score of the other browsers on test.
See the test results for more details of Internet Explorer's performance and features.
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