Have you ever wondered how battery-efficient your web browser is? It's not something we tend to think about very often, but browsers are applications like any other. That's why AndandTech decided to take a look at which browser is best for the battery life of your notebook or netbook.

First off, AnandTech found that plain Internet surfing used 50% less battery life than Flash intensive web browsing. Considering the fact that Flash content is everywhere, trying to avoid it is probably not going to be an option for most users. That's why, for the purposes of testing, AnandTech used Flash-heavy, resource-intensive websites to better simulate actual browsing.

Their results were surprising. For most situations, Internet Explorer 8 was actually the most battery-efficient browser out there. On the Asus Eee PC, however, Chrome 2 was the most efficient browser by almost 15 minutes. Safari was dead last in battery life for every test done. If you're concerned about saving juice, you should probably keep Safari over on your Mac where it belongs.

On the Gateway and Intel computers, IE 8 won the day with Firefox+AdBlock running a few percentage points behind. If you're looking to get the most out of your Firefox in a notebook, AdBlock is definitely the add-on to run. The exception for this appears to be netbooks, for which Firefox 3.5.2 is actually faster (although it still lost to Opera, IE8, and Chrome 2 in this category).

It should be noted that, in the most drastic cases, the differences in battery life between the most and least efficient browser were all under an hour. Unless you REALLY need to save juice, your current surfing choice is more than likely fine.