Maxthon has been a refreshing addition to the Web browser landscape since its launch in 2008. Where others have been paring down their features for a speedier, minimalist experience, Maxthon takes the opposite approach—adding as many browsing helpers as possible. The latest of these is a built-in ad blocker, which joins its media downloader, screen-capture tool, Reader mode, and several other distinctive features. However, Maxthon trails Internet titans Chrome and Firefox in some important interface and under-the-hood aspects.

The released version of Maxthon (which is what I tested) remains a twin-engine browser, including both Internet Explorer's Trident page-rendering engine and Webkit, which powers Safari and Chrome. Maxthon also offers on a new beta X5 version of its browser, which it calls an "information assistant" with an updated look, improved cloud storage, a password manager, and an email reader. The company produces yet another browser, called Nitro, which a simplified app built for speed alone.

Installation

Maxthon is available for Windows versions from XP through Windows 10 in both 32- and 64-bit editions, as well as for Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. It's as cross-platform as it gets. The small (just 1MB) installer mini-program puts a helper app on your PC that notifies you when new versions are available. It also lets you decide where to download the browser, where to put any shortcuts, which browser to set as the system default, whether or not to join a product improvement program. Before you first launch the browser, a message box tells you that Adblock Plus is now included. The first page shown after installation urges you to sign up for Maxthon Passport, the company's cloud syncing and storage service, which is required for use of some of Maxthon's cleverer features.

Interface

Maxthon differs from most browsers by having a toolbar rail across the left edge of its window with buttons for Favorites, Downloads, RSS feeds, and notes. You can add to this button sidebar using extensions, similar to Vivaldi's Web Panels. A placeholder smiley face button shows up the top-left corner of the browser window. Clicking this takes you to a login dialog for Maxthon Passport, which changes the smiley to your user photo and adds easy access to social networks.

As with Firefox, Maxthon keeps the search box separate from the address box—a privacy advantage, since the address–search box combination sends every URL you enter to the search provider. As with any browser these days, if you type something in the address box that's not a URL, you can still search or see matching favorites or history, if you enable this in settings.

Cloud Syncing and the Start Page

Maxthon has the ability to synchronize bookmarks, tabs, options, the address bar, new-tab links, and passwords among all the Maxthon instances on computers and mobile devices you're logged into. You can also sync notes, a feature the company calls SkyNote. Unlike Firefox's tab syncing, however, Maxthon's doesn't actually replicate the tab set on the second machine, but it does show what tabs are open on each device, and each machine's set has an Open All choice.

Tabs

Maxthon's tab implementation is actually a weak spot. You can't rip a tab out to create a new browser window, as you can with most other browsers. Tab pinning, which you get in the other big browsers, is also missing. Another minor inconvenience is that you can't close a tab unless it's active. The tab story is not all bad, however. The browser does offer a unique split-screen view that shows two the contents of two tabs side by side. I find this useful for webpage comparisons. A button dropdown lets you close or refresh all tabs at once, which is also handy.

Maxthon's New Tab page is every bit as useful as that of any other browser, save possibly Opera's, which offers live updated mini apps. In Maxthon, you can move the link tiles around on the grid to taste, and add any sites you want (Chrome only puts your most visited sites on the tiles.) Maxthon also lets you choose a background either from stock art or your own images. And you can sync the tiles with your other Maxthon installations or hide them for a blank white page.

Extras
Now for the fun stuff. As I mentioned, Maxthon comes stocked with more goodies than any browser you're likely to encounter. Traversing around the edges of the browser window reveals these. I already mentioned the Extensions bar, but some of the cooler features lurk in the toolbar button at top right and in the lower-right window border.

A highlight among Maxthon's perks is the Resource Sniffer, accessible from the toolbar. Go to any page that contains video, music, or photos, and the Resource Sniffer can download it all for you. But when you're on a page with video with Sniffer enabled, the movie plays in a separate Maxthon video window. On a page that offered MP3 downloads, Sniffer didn't show any audio files. I was, however, able to download videos from all the major video sharing sites.

Other nifty options in the toolbar include Magic Fill—a multi-account password manager; Snap, which grabs a screen capture of either the whole browser or an area you select with a crosshairs; and Feed Reader, which can display RSS and Atom feeds nicely. The toolbar also gives access to frequently needed Windows items like My Computer, Paint, Calc, and you can even add any program to run from the External Tools button!

Night mode, a favorite Maxthon trick of mine has been removed. Fortunately, this feature, which darkened bright interfaces, is included in the upcoming version now in beta. In the same vein is the still-available Mute button at the bottom in the status bar, which makes sure you won't be disturbed by noisy auto-playing sites.

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Like Edge, Maxthon offers a Reader Mode for text-heavy webpages. This eliminates distracting ads and images. When you arrive at a suitable page, a book icon appears in the address bar. Clicking it presents a clean white page of text. The browser now has built-in PDF viewing that worked quickly and correctly on a test document. Another cool visual tool is the Telestrator. Holding down the right mouse button, you can highlight an area on any Web page.

Extensions
Even this less-famous browser has a thriving extension selection—there are over 700 available from the Extension Center. A gear icon at the bottom of the left sidebar takes you to the Extension Manager, which lets you view installed extentions and turn them on and off. A link in the Manager takes you to the Extension Center, which offers the expected Top Rated and Category views. Extension installation is a one-click operation. Many of the options are for a Chinese audience (unsurprisingly, considering the browser's provenance), but there are plenty for Western users, too.

Performance

Since it uses components from Chrome and Internet Explorer, Maxthon mostly keeps up with the current run of Web browsers on performance tests. For testing, I use the Surface Pro 4 with a Core i5-6300U CPU and 8GB RAM, clearing all browser's caches, quitting all other apps, and removing all extensions. I keep the tablet PC plugged in and run each test five times, throwing out the highest and lowest results and averaging the rest.

JavaScript Benchmarks. On the Google Octane benchmark, Maxthon performs similarly to Chrome and Opera, since they're all built on the same rendering code. It falls a bit short of those two (and trails the pack in general) on JetStream, the update of the venerable SunSpider benchmark, though it keeps up with the competition on WebXPRT.

Graphics Hardware Acceleration. Microsoft has published a series of benchmarks to demonstrate how use of a PC's graphics processor can accelerate some webpage-rendering tasks on its Test Drive site. I use PenguinMark, since it produces a comparable score, and tests a wide variety of capabilities, including HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3, Canvas, WOFF (Web Open Font Format), and more. It also displays cute bundled penguins in the snow and plays my favorite Chipmunks Christmas song. Maxthon's performance on this test was below that of most of the field.

The Unity WebGL Benchmark shows how a browser can deliver game-level graphics using WebGL. It's a great-looking benchmark that runs through visually demanding Mandelbrot sets, cryptography, and gaming physics scenarios, both 2D and 3D. Unfortunately, Maxthon was unable to run this benchmark. An error message stated "The browser could not allocate enough memory…"

Memory Use. To test memory usage, I simultaneously load each browser with ten media-heavy sites and note how much memory was consumed by each, adding up the Windows Task Manager Memory entries for all of all the browsers' processes. Maxthon is among the leaders on this test, though it's behind our Editors' Choice, Mozilla Firefox.

Compatibility

Maxthon should have one of the best compatibility stories among Web browsers, since it includes both the page-rendering engine that underlies Internet Explorer and that of Chrome. But on the HTML5Test.com measure of HTML5 support, Maxthon performs inexplicably poorly. The test is out of a maximum of 555 points, each awarded for supporting features of the standard.

Aside from the WebGL benchmark noted above, in all my browsing with Maxthon, I haven't run into any pages that display a "browser not supported" message.

Security and Privacy

Maxthon beat Opera to the punch with a built-in ad blocker, which you can turn on from the Settings menu. The browser also includes a safe URL checker, but it let me download and run an executable program without any warning, so this last feature may need work. Maxthon uses separate processes for tabs, and uses Chrome-like sandboxing to isolate page code from affecting your system.

Like all the other browsers, Maxthon offers a Private Browsing mode, accessible from the main menu. Any history or downloaded files from surfing done in a private session won't be saved. Like all other browsers, Maxthon implements the Do Not Track standard, and it has this protection turned on by default. Another unique feature is the ability to lock the browser, so others can't use it until you log in again.

Maxthon was called out by a security analyst, Exatel, for sending browsing data to its headquarters in Beijing, though the company countered that it was only doing so for the same kind of telemetry data that Google, Microsoft, and even Opera perform. Exatel claimed that Maxthon was sending the data even if a user opted out. Maxthon responded by saying an old bug was causing this behavior under rare conditions and that the bug has been fixed. Worse privacy faux pas have been leveled at other browsers, though. Chrome, for example, was found to be listening and sending audio to its servers without user opt-in.

Browsing Through the Clouds

In a world of copycat browser features, Maxthon's originality is refreshing. Taking advantage of the cloud makes sense. Most browsers have done it to some extent through syncing, but none offers as many cloud storage, syncing, and sharing options as Maxthon Cloud Browser. Nor do its benefits stop there. The lesser-known browser has plenty of support for new standards. Maxthon falls short of the competition in tab features and hardware acceleration, however. For a fast browser with leading standards support and a beautiful, customizable design, check out our Editors' Choice, Firefox.