Is Opera GX Safe in 2024? A Comparison With Chrome

October 2, 2024 By Janne Smith No Comments 7 minutes

According to Enterprise Apps Today, Opera has over 350 million global users. Despite the high stats, over 90% of people use Chrome than Opera. While the latter boasts impressive features, it falls behind Chrome, making most wonder is Opera GX safe? And that’s where we’ve our spotlight.

This guide walks you through a comparison of Chrome vs Opera GX to find out is Opera GX safe 2024. Following that, we’ll wrap up with the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and a conclusion.

Note: Opera GX is safe to use, but connecting to FastestVPN simultaneously elevates privacy protection, ensuring enhanced cyber security.

Key Takeaways

• Opera GX offers superior privacy features than Chrome, including a built-in free VPN, ad-blocker, tracking protection, and cryptomining protection, which are not natively available in Chrome.
• While Chrome is known for its speed and performance, Opera GX allows users to limit RAM and CPU usage, catering to gamers and those with lower memory capacity. Conversely, Chrome lacks these features but offers faster performance due to fewer built-in tools.
• Opera GX offers integrated features like workspaces, built-in communication apps, and a dark mode. These provide users with a customizable and streamlined browsing experience, reducing the need for third-party extensions, which Chrome relies on for additional functionality.

Factors Influencing Our Review

Every browser should essentially offer high levels of privacy, security, speed, performance, ease of use and customization. That said, we’ll be following these levels of criteria ahead to consider is Opera GX safe to use than Chrome.

1. Privacy and security

Verdict: Opera GX features robust tracking protection, a free built-in VPN, and an Ad-blocker. That said, Opera GX privacy and security standards are higher than Chrome.

Here are the differences that decide is Opera GX safe to use:

Built-in Free VPN

Opera GX features an in-built VPN which ensures a safer web browsing experience. Whereas, Chrome doesn’t offer a native VPN. Instead, you can use a VPN for Chrome via the extension.

In-built Ad-blocker

Opera offers a built-in adblocking feature to ensure a seamless browsing experience, especially when streaming free movies and TV shows. Or, when playing unblocked games. You can enable the ad-blocker via its Settings. Here’s how to do it:

• Go to the Easy Setup menu > Settings > toggle on the switch for Block ads.
• Or choose the shield icon, and it will block the ads.

On the other hand, Chrome doesn’t offer a dedicated ad-blocker. You instead have to get an extension from the Chrome Web Store and enable it when browsing the web.

Tracking Protection

Unlike Chrome, Opera GX limits cookies by default. Meaning, you get to leverage heightened security protection and limited third-party interruptions. However, Chrome mainly relies on cookies for personalized experiences and targeted advertising. Meanwhile, that’s also where you might wonder if your phone is listening to you.

Fake Browsing History

“Delete my browsing history when I die,” and that’s my recent convo with a friend. This is where Opera GX is the safest and the most reliable option available. It offers an Opera Fake My History feature that you can use for faking your browsing history. However, Chrome doesn’t offer the same feature.

Cryptomining Protection

Opera GX prioritizes security by preventing cryptocurrency mining scripts, a feature that Chrome lacks. This protection helps avoid unnecessary strain on your device and shields it from potential security risks.

2. Speed and Performance

Verdict: Chrome and Opera have a major difference for speed and performance. And, this is where Chrome wins the race. However, Opera lets you limit how much RAM you use when browsing.

RAM and CPU Usage

Since Opera GX is designed for gaming, it offers a variety of features for gamers to control their network bandwidth. And, you can activate the limitation via Opera GX’s settings. Here’s how you can do that:

• Click on the GX Control icon (gauge symbol) in the sidebar.
• In the GX Control panel, scroll down to find the RAM and CPU limiters. These are disabled by default but still display current memory and CPU usage.
• To enable the RAM Limiter, toggle the switch next to it.
• A slider will appear. Adjust the browser memory usage. You can set the limit in increments of 0.25GB.
• Opera GX will stay within the defined limits, but if you want to ensure this limitation, enable the Hard Limit toggle below the slider.

Whereas, you don’t have the RAM limitation feature on Chrome. However, the speed and performance remain uncompromised.

RAM Consumption

Chrome is best known for its speed and performance. However, the RAM consumption for Chromium was high until its update in March 2021. Chromium recently improved memory efficiency by limiting individual processes to 10% of total device memory. This makes Chrome and Chromium-based browsers faster, especially on devices with limited RAM.

Moreover, Chrome doesn’t offer as many features as Opera GX. And due to that, it offers a higher performance and it relies on extensions for many features.

3. Ease of Use

Verdict: Opera GX features a minimal and easy-to-use interface similar to Chrome. It features a vertical sidebar containing shortcuts and other quick access tools. The browser sticks to simpler visual elements for a clean interface.

User Interface

The current version of Opera bears a resemblance to Chrome, primarily due to their shared use of the Chromium engine. Both browsers feature a clean, minimalist design that facilitates easy web navigation and configuration.

A key distinction, however, is Opera’s vertical sidebar on the left side of the address bar, which provides access to:

• Built-in communication apps
• Shortcuts
• Other quick-access tools

As for Chrome’s interface, there’s little to elaborate on, as many browsers, including Opera, already adopt its simple, minimalist layout. A significant part of Chrome’s success stems from its ease of use, offering a clean interface without overwhelming users with too many visual elements.

Dedicated Mobile Apps

Chrome’s mobile app is quite similar to its desktop version, and the same applies to Opera’s mobile apps. Besides the regular Opera app for Android, there are two other versions: Opera Mini and Opera Touch.

Opera Mini is a simplified version designed to save data and enhance performance, while Opera Touch is optimized for user-friendly navigation.

Workspaces

Opera offers workspaces for users to easily categorize different workspace tabs without opening a new window. Users can customize their workspace by giving them a title. Think of it like Spreadsheets, where you categorize different sheets and categorize via their titles.

However, creating tabs in Chrome reduces the space for horizontal scrolling. You later have to open a drop-down menu to navigate all headings.

4. Features and Customization

Verdict: Opera offers various features to limit browser extensions, whereas, Chrome relies on extensions for its performance. Overall, Opera GX reigns for offering the built-in features, improving the Opera GX security due to limited third-party extensions.

Data Sync

Opera GX boats an impressive Device Syncing feature, meaning, you can sync the browsing history, bookmarks and other open times on another device within a blink. It also features a “My Flow” for an effortless encrypted data transfer within devices.

On the other hand, Google Chrome comparatively offers lesser advanced tools but it does feature the basics. For example, you can backup Google Chrome to save the following:

• Passwords
• Browsing data
• Bookmarks

Easier Personalization

Opera features a Speed Dial page on its launch page. There, it features various commonly accessed sites that you can access via clicking right away. And, you can customize this page by adding sites of your choice, as your speed dial.

The vertical sidebar is Opera’s standout feature. It includes integrated communication apps like WhatsApp. This allows you to chat with others directly without opening a separate app.

Dark Mode

Both browsers feature intelligent address bars that offer information and handle calculations as you type. Opera GX goes a step further by including a built-in dark mode. It makes switching easier to a more comfortable browsing experience.

Here’s What We Think

Is Opera GX safe to use? Yes, it is. Opera GX offers advanced in-built features which make it a safer option. Moreover, the free VPN, ad-blocker and robust traffic protection policies make it a better choice for secure browsing. Conclusively, Chrome and Opera GX, both prioritize data safety, but the latter takes a step further to offer a safe and tailored user experience.

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