A few months ago Brave the privacy focused browser was announced by brave software. Today I got the opportunity to test it out and make a review. The browser is currently available on all popular platforms including Android, iOS, Mac and Windows version. You can find it and try it out for yourself at brave.com.

A Brave Interface

Brave sports a minimal interface that shares the same UI patterns that you are used to in other popular web browsers. Some things that stand out is the browser hides the URL bar as you browse to a website. As soon as you reach the site the URL bar is replaced with the title of the current tab and the loading speed of the page. Another great feature is the way you can hover over each tab to get a preview of the sites before switching to that tab. This feature makes it really easy to quick peek into each tab, very useful if you got many tabs open.

Braver Privacy

What makes Brave stand out from other web browsers of today is its focus on privacy. By default, the browser tries to redirect to https on all websites to serve an encrypted version if it is available. Other features that come out of the box is the built-in ad blocker and 3rd party cookie blocker. All the privacy features in brave are optional but are switched on as default.

The feature that will probably appeal most to the crypto community the built-in ad blocker. The adblocker comes with a feature that lets content creators be paid directly in Bitcoin instead. However, this feature is still in development but will most surely shake the advertisement industry and help content creators to move away from advertising as a  business model.

Speed

Another improvement Brave brings to the table is increased speed. As Brave Software puts it "Up to a whopping 60% of page load time is caused by the underlying ad technology that loads into various places each time you hit a page on your favorite news site. And 20% of this is time spent on loading things that are trying to learn more about you." A staggering amount of time that in the end does not benefit yourself in any way.

In my speed test that I performed with the browserbench.org's speedometer (http://browserbench.org/Speedometer/) Brave's load score is a whopping  60.4 while Firefox only rakes up mere 22.3.

Brave Speedometer Score:

Firefox Speedometer Score:

Here is another test performed by Brave Software on mobile devices.

Micropayments

Brave Software has partnered with BitGo and Coinbase to provide purchasing tools for the in-development Brave Ledger, a micropayments system based on Bitcoin. The Brave Ledger will enable anonymous and automatic micropayments from users to publishers. Allowing publishers and content providers to make money even though Brave is blocking advertisements by default. A cool feature that might flip the online advertising business upside down.

The Brave Future

The Brave browser and its features seem to align with many philosophies shared within the cryptocurrency space. Brave Software was recently able to close a $4.5 million seed round investment from leading venture capital firms and angel investors. Participating in the round are Founders Fund’s FF Angel, Propel Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Foundation Capital, and Digital Currency Group. A sign that the browser will have a bright future.

My Brave Conclusion

Even though the Bitcoin micropayment features are still in development the website feels like a breath of fresh air. I can personally prove that websites are loading faster, especially the once that tracks you more, like google, youtube, and other general news sites. Although I would like to see more options for privacy, Brave feels fresh and boasts a UI that is up to par with other popular web browsers, and in some cases even outshines them.

I will be running Brave as my main browser for the time being, so I can truly make up my mind. But oh boy it feels fresh!