Developers of the browser Brave are trying to shake up the world. The Chromium-based browser blocks ads, trackers, and third-party cookies by default, but it also excels in terms of speed.
brave
Price For freeLanguage Dutch
OS Windows 7, 8, 10 / Android / iOS / Mac OS / Linux
Website //brave.com 8 Score 80
- Pros
- Fast
- Safe
- Modern interface
- Negatives
- No extensions
Behind Brave is Brendan Eich, one of the founders of Mozilla (yes, the company behind the Firefox browser). The thinking behind Brave is that the online advertising world has gone out of business, often with ads that are disruptive or misleading and all kinds of shady methods are used to view your surfing behavior down to the smallest detail. The direct result of this is the rise of ad blockers, which cut off revenue altogether. Brave does not block ads, trackers, scripts and cookies from third parties, but also offers the possibility to donate money to sites as compensation. Although I don't think many people will use it.
Fast and safe
Brave is lightning fast. The browser itself is also aware of this, because with every loaded page you get to see how quickly it has loaded. Of course, that's because of all those blocked elements and the Chromium engine (which also runs Google's Chrome browser and Opera).
But Brave is of course also very safe by default, advertising networks are regularly hacked for the distribution of malware. You don't have to worry about that, because ads don't come through by default. But https is also forced, which means that your browsing data (for example with fill-in forms) cannot be picked up so easily.
Brave's interface looks quirky. Just like the home page.Modern
Brave's interface looks quirky. Just like the home page. At the top right you see an icon with a lion and the number of blocked trackers. If you click on this you will see what is being blocked.
Furthermore, the browser has almost everything on board that you expect from a browser. Personally, I'm a big fan of the function to turn off autoplay. You can import bookmarks and clear browsing data after exit. Brave is also available for Mac, Linux, Android and iOS, including synchronization. The only thing that is really missing is the option to install extensions. This can be done in a detour, but that is anything but user-friendly.
Conclusion
Brave feels like a breath of fresh air. The browser is fast, secure, modern and contains features that other browsers can learn from. The only thing that is really missing are extensions. I find the built-in ability to donate money to sites noble. But I don't think it will catch on.
