Best New Browsers in 2022: Finding Your Perfect Browser

I like to keep my digital life organised with minimalist, beautiful & seamless tools. Since I spend 90% of my working hours on my laptop, I tend to be picky about the tools I use, and go out of my way to find new & better alternatives.

This year, I’ve seen some interesting new browsers coming out, and thought I’d put together a list of the best I’ve seen (IMO), which one I use, their respective feature lists, and what I think is best for different types of people.

I’ll be reviewing The Browser Company’s Arc, Sigma OS, Sidekick, Brave, (the new kids on the block) and Safari, Chrome & Firefox (some of the more classic options). This is by no means an exhaustive review of all existing browsers, there are more (Vivaldi, Opera, Edge etc.) which I haven’t covered, but these are the ones that have caught my attention.

Feature Comparison

That table is a quick feature comparison at a glance — it’s not exhaustive of all features, but they’re the core features which I think are important. In short, my take is:

• Overall best / Digital Nomad: Arc
• Best Security: Brave
• Best (MacOS) Minimalist Setup: Safari

Arc

Best For: Overall / Digital Nomad

Arc, by The Browser Company, has been getting quite hyped, and now I can see why. I recently got my hands on it, and for me it has become the winner.

• Really sleek UI/UX, snappy & lightweight feel. It’s chromium under the hood, but so far doesn’t seem to be too resource heavy.
• Auto closes tabs after they’re idle, into an ‘archive’ — essentially helps you close tabs you’ve forgotten to close (a problem I have all the time, so this is the perfect feature for me)
• Several spaces, pinned tabs in individual spaces, as well as pinned ‘favourite’ tabs across all spaces
• Super clean look & feel, with minimal excessive buttons. Very intuitive navigation.
• Unfortunately only on MacOS right now.

Brave

Best For: Security & Privacy

Brave is a browser clearly designed to be highly protective about data & tracking, and in this day & age, that’s important. If you’re one who cares a lot about data privacy, it’s a great choice.

• Pretty standard & familiar browser experience (similar to most regular browsers)
• Highly secure, & functional option.
• In my opinion, Aesthetics are not super clean, but not particularly ugly either. Basically like chrome, but way more secure.
• Supports chrome extensions, and comes with a built-in crypto wallet, which is pretty cool.

Safari

Best For: Minimalist MacOS Setup

In my opinion, Safari is a great default option. It’s not super feature rich, but also isn’t intended to be for browser power users — it gets things done, has a clean interface, and does what you need it to do.

• Keeps it simple, without being too feature-poor — sometimes less is more.
• For productivity it’s pretty streamlined, and you don’t spend time playing with tabs & windows.
• Doesn’t support crypto or chrome extensions (which can be a barrier to use it full-time when you work in web3, or use lots of chrome extensions)

Sidekick

Sidekick is a great option for people who tend to work with the same few apps constantly. I say this because it’s got a vertical dock with apps of your choice, but personally it feels like chrome, except with a side bar now.

• Freemium model, so you can only have up to 5 apps for free
• Familiar interface with the additional sidebar with the apps of your choice (i.e. gmail, twitter, etc.) — can be great if you always use the same 5 apps to do all your work.
• Supports all the chrome extensions you’d expect.

Sigma OS

Sigma OS is a really beautiful browser, which is in many ways quite similar to Arc. It has totally alternative keyboard shortcuts that seem odd at first, but quickly become second nature and feel really great. It used to be my main browser, but unfortunately loses out because of the buggy feel at times.

• Amazing interface design, & intuitive keyboard controls to navigate easily
• Supports some chrome extensions (those onboarded onto the product by the team). It does support metamask & mainstream crypto extensions
• Unfortunately still feels buggy (at the time of writing), in many interactions where the browser glitches, movements are jerky/sudden, and things don’t work as expected, or pages don’t size properly in split screen.
• Maybe it’ll iron out the kinks in future.

Chrome

Chrome is great because everything works on chrome, and most things are designed for chrome first because it’s got such a large user base. Personally not a fan because of data privacy concerns, and a UI/UX that I don’t find particularly pleasant. It’s a classic though.

Firefox

In my opinion, I think Firefox is very much like chrome, with a traditional, largely conventional browser experience, but with much better data privacy practices. Unfortunately, though, it’s slower & less resource-efficient than Chrome. Again, a classic option though.

Wrapping Up

I know I care a lot about the browsers I use, because that’s the tool I use everyday, all day, so that’s why I wrote this. Hope you found it useful too! If so, do share, it’s much appreciated :)

If it wasn’t clear already, this review is just my opinion, having hopped around several browsers constantly over the years, always searching for better options.