w3m vs Qutebrowser
When comparing w3m vs Qutebrowser, the Slant community recommends Qutebrowser for most people. In the question“What are the best web browsers for UNIX-like systems?” Qutebrowser is ranked 13th while w3m is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Qutebrowser is:
With suggestions/auto-complete to reduce the learning curve.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Support for several elements not found in terminal browsers
Although w3m is primarily a text-based web browser which runs inside the terminal, it supports and renders several elements which other terminal-based browsers cannot like images, tables, tabs or frames.
Pro Available as emacs plugin
W3m can also be downloaded as an emacs plugins to be used as a fast web browser that runs inside emacs.
Pro Vim-style keyboard shortcuts and commands for rapid navigation
With suggestions/auto-complete to reduce the learning curve.
Pro Fast and light on resource usage
Pro Highly customizable
And quite easy to configure. You can even write your own config.
Pro Great for Privacy
Makes no unexpected network requests by default, unlike most other browsers (Chrome, Chromium, Brave, Firefox, etc).
Pro Userscripts
Call custom scripts on web pages or links (hinting mode).
You can use this for downloading of videos (youtube-dl, adfree), saving web pages as pdf or adding news sources to your RSS reader (newsboat).
Cons
Con Steep learning curve
Being a terminal web browser w3m has a certain learning curve because you need to learn the keystrokes and different commands.
Con Software rendering only with Nouveau Drivers
Con Steep learning curve
If you're not a vim user, it will take some time to get used to the shortcuts.
Con Slow
As it is mainly written in Python, it's startup is slower than the competition.