Chrome Gains Speed Edge Over Safari on M5 MacBook Pro

Chrome’s benchmark numbers are real, but the more interesting detail is where Google chose to run the tests: an M5 MacBook Pro, Apple’s own hardware, used to declare victory over Apple’s own browser.

Speedometer 3.1 and JetStream 3 are the two most cited browser benchmarks right now, and Chrome posted a 61 and a 469 respectively. The 10 percent JetStream gain since the start of 2026 is the sharper number, suggesting the improvement is recent and deliberate rather than accumulated over years of incremental updates.

The engineering behind it is specific. Google reworked JavaScript execution to skip redundant steps, inlined asynchronous operations, and added fast-path shortcuts for common tasks. WebAssembly handling and the Blink rendering engine also received separate optimization passes.

What the scores don’t settle

Benchmark performance on macOS has historically favored Safari, which benefits from deep integration with Apple’s hardware and OS-level memory management. Safari still leads on battery efficiency in most independent tests, and power consumption is the metric many Mac users actually care about day to day.

Google’s claim that benchmark wins translate into a “meaningfully faster” browsing experience is the part that deserves some skepticism. Speedometer measures a synthetic workload designed to simulate web app responsiveness. Real-world gains depend heavily on which sites a user actually visits and how JavaScript-heavy those pages are.

The timing is pointed. Apple is pushing Safari as a privacy-forward, battery-efficient default, while Google is countering with raw speed credentials on Apple’s newest silicon. Chrome holding a dual benchmark record on M5 hardware gives Google a concrete marketing line, even if the two browsers are optimizing for different things.