Microsoft Edge is great for your battery life on Windows, it is also one of the fastest browsers to start up, it eats less RAM than the notorious Chrome and claims to be more secure than Firefox. Despite all that, I’m still using Chrome on my PC in lieu of Microsoft’s internet browsers. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I’m not “still” using Chrome so much as I switched to using Chrome after Edge replaced Internet Explorer.

For most people, why they don’t use Edge is simple, it is single platform. Microsoft’s Edge is limited to Windows 10, and does not work on the Mac, the iPhone or Android devices, This means you can’t experience a continuity of browsing history, or open tabs viewed on one device on a second more contextually appropriate device (Edge doesn’t offer this even between Windows phones and PCs). For others, it’s due to a lack of extensions. Grammarly- for one – is a very useful extension for writers, journalists and bloggers which I use daily. It is also one which exists on Chrome but not Edge. For many other people, I’m sure they have their own “dealbreaker” extension that simply doesn’t exist on Edge – preventing them from making the jump.

While these are irritating issues, I can easily get over them and adapt one way – or another. The most peculiar and bothersome issue is Edge’s reliability or lack thereof. To use the words of Edge – “This webpage is not responding”. When I use a browser, I use it for a multidude of purposes. I use it to watch videos, to stream music, to read articles, both long and short – sometimes I like to open multiple tabs for research purposes, and sometimes I put my PC in sleep mode while I do other things. The problem with Edge is that it doesn’t like to handle these scenarios as well as Chrome. Often it throws up an error “This webpage is not responding” leading to the entire web page freezing , and often times the whole browser failing to work requiring it to be shut down via the task manager and then relaunched – losing all work. Other times, it just randomly slows down and showcases Windows’ trademark spinning circle of death.

Edge is a decent browser like I said above. It is the only one so far to offer 4K Netflix streaming, is very light on battery and – when it works as it should – light on RAM and the processor as well. However, reliability issues make it very hard to trust, and consequently to work with.

To its credit, Edge keeps getting better and better, with Microsoft adding support for more and more extensions and features in addition to constant bug fixes in newer builds of Windows 10. Hopefully, it won’t be long now till Edge is as stable and useful as any modern browser ought to be. On the other hand, If Microsoft can’t even keep someone who is actively trying to use its Edge browser hooked, how can it hope to appeal to sceptics.