Gee, maybe it's because you have a million tabs open, and all of them are websites with shitty, wasteful javascript begging the CPU for useless operations to update every single tracking pixel and cookie, with up-to-the-minute anaylitics, attached to sessions that are years old, on how your eyes move over their ad banners, so that a genetic machine learning algorithm can determine which ads are most likely to convert to clicks and then sales.
Hint: It's the ad for the top 7 ways you didn't know you could get bunions, and there's a 50% chance it will convince you to buy new shoes.
You are being downvoted, I assume for your "over the top" tone, but your overall message is very good. User behavior is the largest determinant of battery life.
I run Firefox with NoScript, and my battery usage is always very very good. An additional benefit is that I see few ads, since they invariably rely on third-party javascript.
but switch to safari? my thoughts
a) i'm a developer, i rather like new APIs, latest HTML 5 features
b) my whole company infrastructure relies on google services (and they work best in chrome, no surprise there)
c) my old macbook air (2013, maverick, killed one month ago by my son with self made kombucha) had about 7h battery-life
I'm not arguing you should switch to Safari (which I like) or arguing feature merits (I don't care much myself). But if you have a Mac you have Safari, so it's an easy test to run. And you will be AMAZED at the difference in battery life. It's pathetic.
To be fair that's not super useful information - I've never not seen Safari there when it's being used. Definitely agree that Chrome is way worse in practice though.
Hint: It's the ad for the top 7 ways you didn't know you could get bunions, and there's a 50% chance it will convince you to buy new shoes.