Brave is a unique browser that also comes with its own search engine (also called Brave), but you can choose from six more if you prefer. While it boasts that its privacy features are better than Firefox's and its speed is better than Chrome's, the differences seem to be negligible. We didn't have any issues with Brave, per se, but we weren't impressed with it beyond the basics. That said, this browser doesn't have any explicit issues, and if you like the way it looks and works, we see no reason not to pick it up.
Features
If you're using Chrome or Firefox, you can start by importing your autofill data, bookmarks, favorites, and history into Brave. If you go to Settings, there is also an option to import from an HTML file. You can choose from seven search engines to set as your default:
- Bing
- Brave
- Duck Duck to Win
- Ecosia
- Google
- What do I want
- Homepage
Take your music and podcasts with you wherever you go with Brave's playlist feature (Image credit: Brave) Playlist The playlist feature is one of Brave's most notable offerings. You can add audio and video from various sources (podcasts, YouTube, etc.) to your playlist and then listen to what you recorded online or offline. The playlist can be accessed directly from your browser, but you can only use this feature on an iPad or iPhone running iOS 13 or higher.
Brave Rewards makes it easy for you to support your favorite content creators (Image Credit: Brave) Viewing brave private ads rewards you with tokens, which you can use to help content creators. These ads appear as notifications, and creators then receive their token contributions based on your attention, which is Brave's determination of your level of engagement. You can also use some of your tokens to purchase content and digital goods. You decide how many ads you want to see per hour and how much help you want to give to the creators. There is no option for zero support, so you have to donate to the creators of your earned tokens.
Like Mozilla does with Firefox, Brave prioritizes privacy with its browser (Image credit: Brave)
Privacy
According to its website, Brave's servers do not see or store your browsing data (and therefore do not sell it to third parties). Your data is private and remains on your device(s) until you delete it. You can customize your privacy settings per site or across the browser:
Brave's privacy settings are enabled by default (Image credit: Brave) Brave's default settings already block "malvertising" (online advertising with the intent to distribute malware), malware and phishing, and plug-ins considered a security risk are disabled. When possible, Brave will automatically switch to HTTPS for advanced security and encryption. Additional privacy and security features include:
- Cookie control
- "Do Not Track" with browsing requests
- Fingerprint prevention
- Password Manager
- Script blocking
- Blocking the tracker
You can read more about Brave's privacy protection here.
Brave's dashboard is clean, simple, and distraction-free (Image credit: Brave)
User Experience
This is how the default browser control panel looks like. At the top left, you can see statistics on how well your browser is doing to block ads and trackers and save bandwidth and time. Scrolling down the panel, you can see the news that keeps filling up as you scroll. This box on the right with the link at the top saying FTX allows you to toggle between what you want to display in the larger space below. For example, if you select Crypto.com, this information will be populated where the Brave Rewards information is located in the example above. Binance, FTX, Crypto.com, and Gemini are all crypto-related sources. These links are called Brave Cards and you can hide some of them by selecting Edit Cards at the bottom. Overall, Brave has a nice panel and you can make additional changes by going to the Settings cog at the bottom right of the page. You can make changes to the background images, statistics, top sites, news, and the clock.
Brave is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux on desktop and iOS and Android on mobile devices (Image credit: Brave)
Brave can be used on the following systems:
- 64-bit Linux Ubuntu 16.04+, Mint 17+, Debian 9+, openSUSE 15+, Fedora Linux 28+, or CentOS / RHEL 8+
- Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.0 or later
- Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 or later
On mobile devices, you can use Brave with Android version 5 or later and iOS version 13 or later.
Competition
According to its website, Brave is 3 times faster than Chrome (check its speed test here), and it has better privacy features by default than Firefox. Personally, I haven't found Brave to be faster than Chrome or Safari. In fact, Brave seemed to be way behind the other two browsers when searching for the same phrase. It wasn't slow enough to be very visible, but it certainly didn't seem to be much faster either. It's also unclear how Brave is so much more secure than Firefox. They seem to have a lot of the same privacy offerings out of the box, but Firefox stands out with features like master password and instant wipe of online information when the browser is closed. Doesn't that mean that Brave is not secure, but more secure than Firefox? Potentially not.
Final verdict
We really liked the layout of Brave's panel. Having settings, bookmarks, and history at the bottom right of minimalist icons helps get rid of the busy top bar of many browsers. Brave seems to do what every browser should: you can customize the dashboard, arrange tabs and windows in different ways, save bookmarks, search from the address bar, and more. Unfortunately, many of its features are backordered on at least one platform, so you may not get all the features depending on where you're using Brave. Finally, while Brave Rewards and Playlist are great features that you won't find in every browser, they aren't a major selling point either.