Using 2-3x as much battery as all other browsers on my Macbook is the dealbreaker for me.. I want to use the same browser on all systems when I move..

IME Firefox (esp with the right extensions, like autosuspend tabs) is very light on system resources. A bit more so than chrome. I run only Linux though.

All the "websites that should be a program" (Netflix, Hulu, Slack, Amazon Video) now run great in FF, without my computer overheating. (though some of them might be on the chopping block if they don't quit blocking me from seeing HD content)

I hear Apple does some special magic in MacOS so that on that platform Safari actually works (compared to the ~real~ non-Apple world, where Safari is slow as heck and why would anyone ever touch that with a 10ft pole.)

Honestly I do not think Apple does some special magic on Mac OS for Safari. I settled on Vivaldi (a chromium based browser with built-in ad blocking developed by former Opera devs). It gives battery life not much worse than Safari to be honest. Safari is very nice and snappy on a mac, but the extension support is extremely limited.

Orion has Safari-level battery usage and performance thanks to using WebKit, while providing much better extension compatibility and a built-in ad blocker: https://browser.kagi.com/

It also runs on iOS, even with extension support!

Would Brave maybe work better? But I personally feel a bit awkward about the crypto stuff in it even if it can be disabled. I don't think a browser should deal with these things. However, it might be personal preference... It does offer built-in ad blocking and more.

I also feel weird about all the crypto stuff in Brave. I chose Vivaldi (also a Chromium based browser with built-in adblocker). It's developers include a lot of former Opera devs.

if you care about battery life then safari is the way to go.

I've used Brave on Mac, and even with 100+ tabs open, the battery life is on par with Safari (which has a much more limited extension library). Orion is also interesting, and is based on WebKit like Safari. But honestly I can't tell the difference between Brave/Orion/Safari in terms of battery life.

You should get off mac for the same reasons to get off chrome.

Feels slow in old computers with 4GB and Chrome has a better built-in for freeing up memory from inactive tabs.

Not sure about that, works for me just fine on many (even old) computers. But even if it was true, I prefer keeping the number of open tabs below 100 if that means not running browser made by an advertising agency. Talk about conflict of interests...

But will likely be plagued with performance degrading ads.

And it's still fast in spite of that, which speaks to how far behind Mozilla is.

Part of the difference is that the modern web is built for Chrome. Even checking ones site or service with Firefox for functionality is a bridge too far, much less performance.

I think it has actually become better lately.

There was a time when people threw around "only works in Chrome" like they did with IE6, but for me it seems it has improved somewhat now.