One of the most repulsive things about internet browsers is their consumption of RAM. You may be involved in a task and be surprised - without any preamble - that all your progress has been lost, or you may be shocked by the freezing of your browser and you have to enter the "Task Manager" to close it, and also everything you have achieved will be wasted! A few years ago, browsers didn't consume that much RAM, but today, due to the reliance on advanced and multi-process architecture, the situation is different.

Even if you don't do anything on the browser, you'll notice that it eats ram! This leaves us with two solutions: either increase the RAM capacity or the easiest solution is to use browsers that take into account our modest devices with 8GB of RAM and less. In this article, we will review two things: the first is the ranking of the most popular browsers in terms of the least RAM consumption and the highest, and the second: it is to suggest a few browsers that are suitable for weak devices.

Ranking of popular browsers in terms of RAM consumption Before we begin, we would like to note that the browser's RAM consumption depends on several factors, including the number of tabs open, installed extensions, displayed content, and other factors. If you are using a browser from the following list, and this is possible, and it consumes a lot of RAM, this is not to ask for it in the first place, but to the nature of your use often. So try closing unused tabs, removing unnecessary extensions, and using memory-saving and tab management extensions and features like "The Great Suspender."

1. Microsoft Edge As a browser developed by Microsoft itself, it expects to consume the least amount of RAM; believe it or not, it is. Although it is based on the Chromium kernel (the same as Google Chrome), it consumes less memory thanks to improved memory management technologies and better integration with operating systems, especially with Windows as mentioned above.

On the Mac, Microsoft Edge only consumes less than 800MB when you open 10 tabs at the same time, and when this number is doubled, the consumption does not exceed 1.2 GB RAM! And these are staggering numbers compared to almost any browser.

One of the most prominent features of Microsoft Edge that contributes to reducing memory consumption is the Sleeping Tabs. Although it is not exclusive to him, he uses it very efficiently. This feature allows the browser to automatically put inactive tabs to sleep if they are not used within an hour. You can set this up to range from 30 seconds to 12 hours depending on your preference. The shorter the duration, the less resources the browser consumes, making it more suitable for devices with limited performance.

2. Opera Despite its declining popularity, which exploded in 2015, for example, it is still the preferred choice of many users of modest devices. This is due to a range of reasons, most notably that it is a lightweight browser that does not burden the system.

One of Opera's most prominent strengths, apart from its design, which I like very much, is that it does not go on the resources of the device, as it consumes approximately 900 MB RAM when opening 10 tabs, which is a very good number, especially since it does not double by doubling the number of tabs, as it does not break the 1.5 GB barrier when opening 20 tabs. It's true, it may not be the best in terms of responsiveness (still fast don't worry), but the features mentioned, as well as having useful tools like an ad blocker and a VPN, make it worthy of being on this list.

3. Brave is one of the newest browsers on the scene (launched in 2019), it is based on the Chromium kernel, and is characterized by its great focus on privacy. The browser automatically blocks ads and user tracking tools, and it is characterized by its responsiveness and its simple and elegant interface that I also love, but most importantly now it consumes about 920 MB RAM only when opening 10 tabs, which is a very convenient number compared to other features it offers.

It is worth noting that the settings page in the Brave browser is very rich, and one of the features that I like and benefit from personally, is the built-in Wayback Machine feature, which allows viewing an archived copy of deleted web pages, so you can see the content regardless of why it disappeared.