Slimjet

The mainstream browser is deliberately spare and expects you to add whatever you need as extensions. Slimjet takes the same engine and builds the additions in, so a fresh installation already blocks advertising, accelerates downloads and fills in forms.

Slimjet site compatibility is therefore not in question. The engine underneath is the one every major browser now uses, pages render identically, and extensions from the usual catalogue install normally.

What differs is everything wrapped around that engine, and one structural consideration that applies to every browser built this way.

What comes built in

Slimjet enables advertising blocking from the start rather than expecting you to add it, which for anybody who would install a blocker anyway removes a step.

The download manager is the more interesting inclusion. It splits a file across several connections, which measurably helps on a connection where a single stream does not saturate the line, and it handles resuming properly rather than starting over.

Around those sit smaller conveniences. Form filling for repeated logins, page translation, annotated screenshots, plus a data saving mode.

A media downloader appears when video is detected on a page. What you may take from a given site is determined by that site’s terms and the material’s licensing rather than by the browser.

The telemetry is stripped out

This is the substantive Slimjet difference rather than a convenience, and it is the reason a good many people choose a fork at all.

Mainstream browsers report usage information, suggestion queries and various signals back to whoever makes them. Those paths have been removed here rather than hidden behind a settings toggle.

Slimjet does not cover everything though. Removing the browser maker’s reporting does nothing about the sites you visit, which track independently and far more aggressively. For filtering that across every application rather than one browser, Privoxy works as a local proxy.

The question every fork has to answer

Here is the consideration that matters more than any feature list, and it applies to this whole category.

The engine is maintained upstream by a large organisation shipping security fixes constantly. A fork has to take those fixes, apply them to its own modifications, and release. The gap between an upstream fix and a fork’s release is a window during which the fork carries a flaw the mainstream browser has already closed.

Small teams inevitably lag more than large ones. That is not an accusation, it is arithmetic, and it is the single most important thing to weigh when choosing a browser fork over the browser it forked from.

The category also has a history behind it. CoolNovo occupied exactly this space, adding conveniences to the same engine, and stopped being maintained entirely, leaving anybody still using it on a frozen base.

Everything included, for better and worse

The bundled Slimjet approach has a real advantage. Fewer extensions means fewer third parties running code inside your browser with access to what you do, and extension compromise is a real and recurring problem.

The corresponding cost is concentration. One maker now supplies the engine modifications, the blocker, the download manager and everything else, so your trust sits in one place rather than distributed across a browser and several extension authors.

Which arrangement you prefer is a genuine judgement rather than an obvious answer. For maximum configuration on the same engine with a large organisation behind it, Vivaldi is the alternative.

An independent engine, if that is what you want

One option sits outside this argument entirely, since it does not use the same engine at all.

Firefox maintains its own, which means its security fixes are its own rather than inherited, and it removes the fork question from the decision completely. The trade is a smaller share of the web tested against it, so a site occasionally behaves oddly.

Conclusion

Slimjet is a sensible version of a familiar idea, taking a spare browser and supplying the things most people add anyway, while stripping out the reporting that came with it.

Weigh the fork question honestly before switching. Every security fix reaches you after it reaches the mainstream browser, the interval depends on a small team’s release pace, and this category has produced abandoned projects before. If those terms suit you, the built-in blocker and download manager are a properly convenient package.