I've tried Orion a couple of times. I even used it as my default browser for ~3 months about two years ago. Most recently, I tried to use it again about 2 months ago, but it still had loads of bugs and, most of all, was painfully slow.

The truth is, Orion being based off of WebKit comes with the obvious limitation that....it's based off of WebKit! So much slower than chrome or firefox, and plagued with decisions that are just not to my taste. For example, just the way it behaves when I hit the back button (or, rather, when I swipe back) feels incredibly sluggish. Loading is often terrible, with constant repaints of the screen as well. A bunch of websites don't work properly either.

The only true reason why I wanted Orion to work was because I wanted a browser that would be good for my battery life and "optimized for the mac". But, since then, I've realized I don't really use the battery that much (or that I don't notice it being a problem), and that, whatever "optimized for the mac" means, it definitely isn't speed.

After Arc went around and poo-pooed on its users, I migrated to Zen (I did try Orion again, like I mentioned). Zen is also filled with bugs, but at least I don't want to throw my computer out the window because of it being slow.

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WesleyJohnson 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I know it's just a google away, but I use Arc and I'm not in the loop on them poo-pooing on their users. Can you elaborate?

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themagicteeth 2 hours ago | parent [-]

They shut down development on Arc and then started a new browser focused on AI features… then sold to Atlassian

	▲	esafak 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are worse outcomes for startups.

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nwienert 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

WebKit is not slower than Chrome/FF, this is just plain wrong, they tend to trade off over the years and over the last 5 years WebKit spent much of the time on top of a significant amount of the benchmarks people care about.

It's also by far the most resource efficient, especially on Mac, though Chrome invested heavily more recently to close the gap.

Overall in terms of "feel", Safari is hands down the best browser in terms of performance.

	▲	jorl17 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe it's a matter of the websites I use and my specific usage patterns. I've used many browsers throughout the years: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Arc, Zen, Orion. For many years I ran safari because it was so energy-efficient and the integration was absolutely great. I would LOVE to get back to safari!... For my usage patterns, though, Safari is noticeably slower and much more sluggish. I can't really put it any other way. Things that are pretty terrible for me in Safari: YouYube, Google Docs, GitHub diff viewer, just to name a few. Safari was also noticeably terrible on pages that do HTML animations via JS and not CSS (they shouldn't do it, but they do, and I can instantly tell on Safari). I will add that although I did have Safari as my main browser several years ago, it was never for its speed. It felt "OK" in terms of speed (a bit slower, but not too noticeable back then), but it felt AMAZING in terms of better life and OS integration.