Over the last week, I jumped browsers over five times, each time thinking I would “stick with it this time.” This gave me insights on a whole lot of different browsers, from Firefox to SigmaOS. So, in this article, I will list the pros and cons of some of the browsers I tried.
Firefox
If you want a secure and open-source browser, this is the obvious choice. It’s decently fast, secure by default, and not based on Chromium. However, Mozilla seems to be moving away from its main product and going towards privacy-oriented advertising (for a while their homepage didn’t mention Firefox until you scrolled down a bit). Then again, Firefox is open source, so it would probably get a ton of community support if Mozilla decides to discontinue it. Firefox is basically the only non-Chromium option for an open-source browser that’s cross-platform, so I would recommend it over anything else for this usecase. However, if you just care about having a useful browser, maybe don’t just use Firefox.
Orion
This is like if Safari took some Arc features and worked with extensions from Chrome and Firefox. The first thing you’ll notice with Orion (after the video intro) is that it looks remarkably similar to Safari. It even has a similar compact tab mode where the tab and URL bar are pushed into one element. However, I used the vertical tab option because that’s what I was used to. Orion is made by the premium search engine company Kagi, so there is a paid option that helps support development. It also works with both Chrome and Firefox extensions even though it’s a WebKit browser. I would recommend this to anyone still using Safari in 2024.
SigmaOS
This is the one I’m on currently, and definitely going to be the one I stick with. It’s basically Arc2 if that makes sense. It takes the concept of Arc: vertical tabs and keyboard-driven navigation and expands on it with single-key shortcuts. In most browsers, you would press Cmd+W to close a tab, but in SigmaOS, you just press D for Done. It even has a kind of Arc New Tab with Lazy Search, which is a great name. You just press Space and it brings up a search box. I have had a few problems with SigmaOS, including failure to block ads with its built-in uBlock Origin and googling IP addresses instead of opening them. But except for those problems, it’s probably even better than Arc was.
Zen
The Zen browser is to Firefox what Arc was to Chrome. It’s basically an open-source clone of Arc based on Firefox. If you used Arc, it’s basically the same, but based on Firefox instead. Instead of Pins it has Essentials, which are tabs that can’t be closed and stay pinned at the top of the tab column. I only used this for less than a day though because of the bugs. Zen is still under heavy development, so I expect this to change in the coming months, but for now it’s practically unusable. But if it gets the major stuff (like windows that can’t be closed) fixed, I might give it another try.
Edge
Probably the best supported Chromium-based browser every Windows user hates. It does have bloat, but it can be pretty easily ignored. One thing I really liked about Edge was its UI. Edge is a very pretty browser with rounded UI elements and an overall clean design with nice color schemes. If anyone wants to get rid of Chrome but still have a familiar UI, just use Edge.
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