I mentioned a while back that I have been curious to try the new Chromium-based Edge on my N3350-based 2-in-1 for a long time now and finally got around to doing it. Specifically, I wanted to try YouTube playback, because it's something that really set old Edge apart from the rest of the pack. Due to certain optimizations Microsoft made with "the stack" (hardware/OS/browser/idek what), it was able to play 4K60 VP9 with absolutely perfectly smooth animation and zero dropped frames, while other browsers like Chrome, Firefox, etc. both on Windows and on Linux were unable to even play 1080p60 properly.
Well, early results are in, and I am shocked and elated to report that indeed they have preserved the old Edge performance optimizations! I absolutely did not expect this in the slightest. I hope now that this code will be taken and ported back into the regular Chrome, and eventually Firefox and all other browsers.
In the interest of accuracy, I should mention that playback is not actually as perfect as it used to be. It's "good", but there is a clear stutter every now and then (10 seconds or so). However, on a scale from not playing whatsoever (which is what used to happen in other browsers at 4K) to playing perfectly, it's about 99% of the way there, so clearly they're on the right track. It's not the sort of thing where you're left unsure whether the optimizations are present and working or not 
-
Nearly as excitingly, it seems Mozilla has not just been sitting on their hands since last I checked. 1080p60 playback, though quite stuttery, does now "work", and even 4K60, although totally unwatchable due to essentially toggling between proper playback and a frozen frame with each alternate second, does at least accomplish this much now, which is 100% more than it could do before. I'm curious if forcing H.264 would be enough to make it usable. My memory is a bit foggy on this but I could swear that even that never worked right before, which was very strange considering the machine (I think) has a hardware decoder for H264 and handles Steam game streaming without any issues.
Edit: no, H.264 is no better for it.
-
It would also appear that general browsing around YouTube has been vastly improved in Firefox as well. It was borderline unusable and always painful before, now it's just a little slow, but totally expected and reasonable for the hardware. Not sure whether to credit Mozilla for a better browser, and/or Google for removing the artificial performance hindering code that was in place to hurt non-Chromium browsers, and/or Google for just generally improving efficiency overall.
Edit: I'm leaning strongly toward praising Mozilla since old Edge still performs as abysmally as ever for general navigation (as did Firefox not too long ago). I'll continue using old Edge tho for certain videos because its playback ability remains unrivaled for now.