Updated: May 2, 2025
Until now, for no deliberate reason, I never quite got around to testing Brave. I have tried and reviewed various other Chromium-based browsers, but somehow, not it. Well, today, I would like to rectify the situation, and take Brave for a spin. What makes the endeavor easier is the fact it is the default browser in Zorin OS, a Linux distribution, which I tested recently.
Now, be aware the Zorin team has configured Brave its own way, with some of the features disabled by default. Thus, your experience with Brave could be different from what I'm about to show, but the essential bits and pieces should be the same. Also, be aware I'm gonna do this review from the perspective of a staunch Firefox user, so my focus is on whether Brave could be a solid secondary browser for me. All right, let's see what gives.
Settings
I never use any program without going through the settings first. Every single setting. This is doubly true for browsers. I want to check the defaults, and make sure they are sensible, and that they do not offend my sense of how the Web ought to be consumed.
From what I've observed, most of the differences among Chromium-based browsers comes down to what features are visibly exposed through the Settings and can be tweaked, plus some extras that are supposed to make the browser unique. In this regard, Chrome has the "simplest" Settings page. Microsoft Edge, on the other hand, comes with tons of stuff, some okay, some really annoying. That's life, it would seem, or something.
I think Brave is more akin to Edge than Chrome when it comes to features and options. In some ways, it reminds me of Opera and Vivaldi, both of which come with heaps of tools. For a lot of these, I'm undecided whether they are amazing or perhaps unnecessary. An example would be the Wayback machine prompt on 404 pages. This could be a really cool thing, if you are really keen on reading the "long gone" stuff. On the other hand, this could potentially expose the user to outdated information, or perhaps even cause confusion.
Shields
On a more positive side, Brave aims to help the end user fight the Web nonsense. This comes in the form of Shields, which can help you block ads, trackers, and all sorts of modern-era popups and annoyances. For example, Brave can disable Facebook, X and Linkedin embedded posts and logins.
Privacy and security
Another important aspect, and here, I think, it comes with an overkill. Brave can auto-redirect AMP pages to ordinary pages, for instance. In many ways, I agree. Specifically, Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) can serve "optimized" content to the user. I find this to be absolute and total nonsense, and the framework shouldn't be used. Period. At the same time, the auto-redirect is a double-edged sword, as the user may not know there's a redirection in place, they may get results contrary to their expectations, and weirdly, this can mask the use of nonsense technology and thus help perpetuate its use. My general policy is to simply AVOID reading sites that use AMP, as a matter of principle. If the browser auto-redirects, I may not know this is the case, and I cannot exercise my curmudgeonly rights.
The inclusion of Tor sounds weird, to me. If someone uses Tor in Brave, but the rest of their system isn't configured for utmost privacy, the concept misses the point. There are other ways to potentially hide the IP address, like the use of proxies and VPNs. But then, you also want to disable WebRTC, as it can leak the right information (and then, some services won't work, of course, hi hi). Using Tor also has many other implications, and it's not something that should be used without complete understanding of the entire network.
Web3
By and large, Web2 is an annoying thing - Web3 triply so. The "modern" Internet is a giant pile of trash, and the inclusion of anything prefixed with Web3 automatically makes me leery, even if specific bits and pieces, here or there, could be beneficial. To my surprise, this section in the Settings actually refers to crypto wallets and such. I've no idea how this works.
AI assistant
This is definitely another thing I don't want or need, anywhere, ever. Zorin's build of Brave comes with Leo disabled, and I don't have much else to report here. For me, this simply falls under the category of unnecessary.
Extensions
Here's the really good part. Brave supports tons of different extensions, including Manifest V2 stuff. So you can still use the amazing extensions like UBlock Origin (UBO), which no longer really works in Chrome, or does work but is no longer supported. If you're keen on filtering out trash while you browse, you definitely want UBO. I use it in Firefox, including on Android. In fact, it's the only browser I want to use on a phone, for this particular reason.
Taking on the Brave Wide Web
All right. I decided to do some basic testing, and see how well Brave behaves. The first thing that annoyed me was the narrow address bar, similar to what Firefox does. My first order of the day in Mozilla's browser is remove the padding. Here, you can't do that, but you can use wide address bar, which does the same thing, essentially. Awesome. Also, you can show full URLs, with https:// and whatnot, and none of that modern nonsense.
As it turns out, Shields and any possible adblocking extensions work in tandem, but Shields kicks in first. On my own site, for example, it automatically blocked the cookie popup banner. This ain't a bad thing, but I would also presume it doesn't just dismiss the applet, but also handles the potential consent, otherwise, it's merely hiding the details from the user.
I tried with Shields enabled and disabled, and indeed, UBO showed a different count of blocked items. Looks like a neat feature. In my case, and I know I'm an exception, my analytics tag is set to save only session cookies, and it captures no other data. But Brave cannot know that in advance, and with most sites, the situation is the opposite.
With Shields disabled, UBO kicks in. Double protection.
I then tried DistroWatch, and here, similarly, I got a different count of blocked items, based on whether I had Shields enabled or not. Another small detail, when you fire up Brave the very first time, it will show a popup window to let you know Shields are working. This popup overflew the screen borders, but this might just be a visual glitch in this specific build of the browser. Not a biggie, methinks.
When it comes to tab management, you can set the new tab page to open to Dashboard, which is what many modern browsers do. This panel, so to speak, can show you your adblocking statistics, tabs, weather if you like, and it comes with its own background image. I've never been fond of this concept, and I like my new tabs to be blank.
There's integrated search, and by default, you can switch between Brave and DuckDuckGo engines. You can add any other engines you like. The non-Google approach is quite evident both in the Settings and on this Dashboard. I guess that's part of the appeal.
While I was editing the Dashboard, the browser crashed. This happened only once, and subsequent usage was free of errors. In general, Brave was reasonably responsive, and I didn't encounter any functionality errors with websites, both with Shields and UBO working in tandem. I can't tell you whether Brave is perceptively faster than competition. My own experience shows that the Web experience depends on so many factors that your choice of the browser won't make any major difference. Just go with what you like, and does the job for you.
Then, I came across Rewards. Ever since I saw Microsoft add rewards to its own search engine, and had similar notifications in Windows Settings, I'm allergic to any concept of rewards or anything like that. In general, whenever someone says discount or offer, my various bodily orifices clench defensively. Perhaps this is an amazing concept, but I don't care. I want my browser to be simple and do very simple things.
Conclusion
For me, my primary browser choice is Firefox, Android included. I simply prefer its interface, its feel, and it's not Chromium-based, which is vital for the diversity of the Web technologies. That said, Brave makes for a pretty reasonable secondary browser in my book. In the end, it does remind me more of Vivaldi than Edge. Now, that said, all, and I mean all, major browsers are bloated. They have waaaay too many options that aren't strictly related to simple, pure browsing. Browsers don't need to be Web-based operating systems. And every option is a potential vulnerability and exploit vector, so the leaner the code the better. Also, saves resources, makes the program smaller. Win win win.
Brave brings a lot of interesting things to the table. I like the extensions, I like Shields, I like that you can trim and tweak the Internet pages to be slightly less annoying. Plus, for those who care, there's AI and wallet. The looks are rather generic, but that's kind of expected. For me, the Dashboard is totally unnecessary. I can't tell you how privacy-friendly Brave is in its default form, because in Zorin's build, it was rather friendly, with most if not all of the non-strictly-browser features set to off. That's a pretty good baseline.
Anyway, Brave seems like an okay product, and I've rectified a many-year-long gap in my reporting. Will I choose it as my secondary option? Perhaps. At the moment, there isn't a pressing need, but it's comforting to know that should things really go south in the Web space, this browser might offer some extra defense from global stupidity. At the very least, worth testing. As far as browsers go, I think you'll find it interesting.
Cheers.