Opera

Browsing the Web does not need to be a dangerous activity in terms of privacy, it does not need to be slow, and it certainly should not require you to fight all kinds of ads to reach the content you were looking for.

Opera offers you, among many other features, a free VPN solution to protect your privacy, an ad blocker to get rid of annoying ads, and a Chrome-based architecture to guarantee high-speed browsing.

Though the number of Opera users seems to have remained stable (and in the lower ranks) for the last few years, the Norwegian company hasn’t stopped innovating to offer you (us, actually) a lightning-fast and secure browser to make the most of our browsing experience. Why such a comprehensive and free browser does not seem to take off for good is (in terms of functionality alone) beyond me – it is just as fast as Chrome (the most widely used browser in the market), it includes a free VPN solution, private browsing, two workspaces, a search-in-tabs function, a built-in snapshot tool, etc. All of these features can only be found in this browser, together with many others that I’ll leave for you to discover, and still it struggles to go over the 5% of the market share.

If not the most popular browser, Opera can be surely labelled as the most innovative one, even though it’s the oldest of the top five. Opera developers brought us the “dark & light mode”, now available in Chrome as well; the pop-out video feature, that can also be found now in Chrome and Firefox, and some other innovative utilities that are still exclusive to this browser – i.e., the Ad Blocker and the customizable speed dials. Opera’s pop-up blocking is by far superior to whatever similar solution you may find in its closest competitors. However, while blocking pop-up windows and ads does not seem to be a problem, blocking suspicious or malicious websites is actually one of its few cons (its lack of parental control features is just another one).

Opera remains the most customizable browser among the most widely used ones, it’s been a source of inspiration for more popular browsers, it has invented things we now take for granted (such as multi-tab browsing), it is as fast as any other Chrome-based browser, it consumes less resources (including RAM memory) than all of its competitors, and it is just as intuitive – if not more – than any of the four browsers with a higher market share. Still, this excellent browser hasn’t managed to convince software developers or users of its many advantages. I cannot but recommend that you download, install, and enjoy using this browser.