If Google Chrome is blazingly slow, just install extensions to better manage the number of open pages or disable hardware acceleration
The new Chrome version allows you to consume less battery power even with several tabs open at once. This is a step forward, but users can put other little tricks into practice to make Chrome more efficient.
As we've pointed out several times before, Chrome used to handle background tabs less efficiently than it does now and this caused high battery consumption on our various mobile devices. Google has recently put a hand to this defect, and seems to have found a fair compromise with the update of its browser. However, there are a few things that anyone can do to improve the efficiency of Google Chrome and at the same time not go to affect the performance and autonomy of the laptop.
Update browser
The very first thing to do is to check the version of Chrome in use. To do this, just type chrome://help/ in the search bar and you'll be directed to the appropriate browser page. In this way we'll see a statement that indicates the version used, and we can also update the browser. If we haven't blocked it previously, the update will happen automatically and we'll just have to restart the browser to get the latest version available. To understand that Chrome is up to date is very easy just look at the entry "Google Chrome is up to date", which appears under the description of the version used.
Check extensions
The more extensions and the more tabs we use, the more Chrome will consume on the battery of our device. Before making a drastic choice and closing all open tabs we check through the browser's built-in task manager which tabs consume the most CPU and RAM. Finding task manager is very simple, open the menu, select the item Other Tools and finally click on the heading Task Manager. To stop the tabs and extensions that consume the most just click on "terminate process".
Hardware Acceleration
In Chrome's settings we also find the hardware acceleration feature that allows you to improve the performance of the Google browser. For some experts, however, this feature actually does not help but rather decreases performance and increases consumption, while for others it is very useful. The only way to find out is to test it on your own computer. Doing so is simple, open the menu (the three vertical dots icon in the top right corner) and go to Settings. At this point we scroll down the page that opens and go to the last item: "Show Advanced Settings". Now we'll see the heading Use hardware acceleration when available, and let's activate it by clicking on the checkbox.
Reset
If the above techniques haven't helped in improving the performance and power consumption of the browser then we might consider performing a reset. The reset button can be found in Advanced Settings exactly under the hardware acceleration item. To perform the operation just click on "Reset Settings", and then on Reset to confirm the action.