To block ads or not to block ads on your mobile device? That’s the philosophical dilemma facing consumers since Apple added support for ad blockers to its iPhone operating system a couple of weeks ago.

To help answer the question, we decided to put multiple ad blockers to the test. Over the course of four days, we used several ad-blocking apps on our iPhones and measured how much the programs cut down on web page data sizes and improved loading times, and also how much they increased the smartphone’s battery life.

We will get to the results in a minute, after a quick primer on the ethical debate surrounding ad blocking. While such technology has existed for years — it has long been available on PC browsers — ad blockers are new for iPhones and iPads. Using the blockers is easy: You download one of the programs from the App Store and then set your Safari web browser to enable the blocking. Ads are choked off inside the browser when you load mobile websites, but the blockers do not stop ads from appearing in apps.

The advantages of ad blocking seem obvious. Not only can consumers eliminate the clutter of promotions, but eradicating data-intensive ads could help deliver faster web page load times and longer battery lives for devices. Dean Murphy, who developed the ad-blocking app Crystal, said blocking programs might also encourage publishers to create better ads that are less taxing on mobile gadgets.