When comparing Opera vs Slimjet, the Slant community recommends Opera for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop web browsers?” Opera is ranked 28th while Slimjet is ranked 60th. The most important reason people chose Opera is:
The built-In adblocker is faster than any extension. It's possible to add your own filter lists. However, the adblocker isn't enabled by default.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Built-In Adblocker
The built-In adblocker is faster than any extension. It's possible to add your own filter lists. However, the adblocker isn't enabled by default.
Pro VPN onboard
Free VPN onboard (but it's slow and it leaks your IP), includes Germany, Canada, USA, Netherlands, Singapore.
Pro Video pop-out feature
You can pop-out any video and it will stay on top while you are surfing on other tabs.
Pro Compatible with Chrome extensions
Since Opera is built on Blink, the same engine Chromium is built on, it was possible for Opera developers to allow Chrome extensions to run in their browser.
Pro Strong HTML5 feature support
Opera scores highly on HTML5 feature support.
Pro Opera Turbo
Opera has a functionality called Turbo which increases browsers speed and reduces data consumption considerably by compressing the data that's found in a web page.
Pro You can install extensions on the sidebar
Unlike other browsers, you can install add-ons such as tabs, bookmarks, history, sessions, notes, and extension manager in the sidebar. So you have the flexibility to use it for your purpose.
Pro Opera Sync
Opera Sync allows you to synchronize your bookmarks, passwords, and more from any computer, phone, or tablet.
Pro Customizable
Opera is full of user controlled settings. Everything can be imported and exported even RSS feeds. It can be skinned in a variety of different themes or it can be extended through the use of a large number of plugins available.
Pro Battery saving mode
Pro Opera can have extensions from Opera Addons & Chrome Store websites
Opera supports cross-browser extensions. Opera Addons site keeps quality up compared to Chrome Store. Full of useful extensions, Opera also supports extra APIs like Speed Dial API, Extension Sidebar API and Stash API meaning wider variety of extension possibilities than in Chrome.
Pro Speed Dial
Opera's Speed Dial (new tab page) has the ability to hold as many websites as you want, and you can customize it almost however you want. You can also organize the websites on the Speed Dial into folders.
Pro Partly open source
Source code available on GitHub.
Pro Blazingly fast
Scores top on Basemark.
Pro Portable
You can save the Opera's setup files on a USB hard drive and run its portable version anywhere.
Pro For Opera 2017 & 2018 gonna be time of new
Opera got Reborn UI as the first implementation from Opera Neon concept browser. Snap -feature is next. Opera constantly improves its basic functionality - unlike Chrome.
Pro Free vpn
Without any cost unlimited and working.
Pro Lightweight
It doesn't consume much RAM, unlike Chrome.
Pro Touch bar support
Pro Built-in currency converter
Just highlight price on a website and see this price in your currency.
Pro Fast video loading
Opera loads videos faster, making it useful for slow internet connections.
Pro Fast and stable
Lower memory footprint and CPU usage than Chromium.
Pro Built-in adblock
Supports adding lists in ublock, adblock, adblockplus, and peerblock/peerguardian text formats.
Pro Allows for no tracking
Has advanced settings to reduce web presence footprint.
Pro Built-in download manager
Multi-threaded streaming download manager with resume functionality. Interrupted downloads will resume when the program is launched again; number of threads and download location customizable on a per-download basis. Actually downloads Linux ISO's from most popular distributions faster than deluge, utorrent, transmission, etc.
Pro Still compatible with Google's ChromeSync functionality
Sign in to back up your extensions and settings, just like always.
Pro Notes plugin available
Pro Easily customize to stop spying verified by OpenSnitch
Just have to dig into all the Settings and disable them starting with SlimJet search.
Pro Customizable options to add additional buttons next to the address bar
Optional buttons such as go to home page, reopen closed tab, go to downloads, go to history and many more.
Pro Built-in Youtube/html5/flash downloader
Allows for downloading both video and extracted mp3 audio, a la Youtube2mp3.
Pro Cross-platform, with zipped portable application available for Windows
You can still bring it with you on a flash drive, even when you're not on Linux.
Pro Screen recording tools built in
Pro Separate from Google's servers and tracking
Pro Integrated shopping and share-to-social-media function
Button is linked to cookies, so doesn't work if signed out (for security/privacy), and also doesn't include any additional tracking like a browser extension would (Facebook, Amazon, etc.)
Pro Verbose resource management
Has a setting to unload tabs from RAM and CPU usage after a customizable threshold number of tabs are open built in.
Pro Idle tab unloading and other advanced features not found in Chrome/Chromium
A lot more configuration options for everything from built in "share to facebook" buttons to options meant to enable optimization on low powered/low RAM systems.
Cons
Con Owned by a Chinese consortium
Who certainly need to conform with Chinese government requirements to let them infiltrate everything you do online.
Con Trash VPN (Slow and Leaks IP address)
Terrible VPN service. Super slow. It's just a proxy service that leaks your IP address, not a VPN. Not recommended!
Con Cannot select tabs
Unlike in Chrome and Vivaldi, one cannot select multiple tabs to move to another/new window.
Con WebKit/Blink is not customisable or lightweight
Opera is built on WebKit/Blink, which means it shares cons of Chromium: high RAM usage (Not lightweight), lack of customizability.
Con Uneditable default search providers
It can not delete or replace already built-in search services such as Yahoo, Google, DuckDuckGo, and Wikipedia.
Con Proprietary
While Opera is currently available gratis (without monetary charge), it is currently not libre (meaning that it does not allow users to view the source code used to create, to modify that code, or to redistribute modifications) and is therefor neither free nor open-source software.
Con Unable to sync extensions
Imagine having 100 extensions and Opera link cannot sync them, which will be troublesome.
Con No address bar in fullscreen mode
Unlike in Vivaldi.
Con Buggy
Some buggy or confusing behavior with the bookmarks bar and moving tabs, and entire windows turning black after a while.
Con Same security-holes as Chrome
Opera uses the same browser engine as Chrome, meaning it has the same security-holes as Chrome. Chrome is a big target for hackers (being the most popular browser in the world), and a webpage that will hack Chrome will also hack Opera.
Con No reader view
There is a great reader view extension which is available.
Con Built ad-blocker works when it wants
Con Basically a Chrome clone
The latest versions of Opera are basically Chrome clones, so they really don't add anything new.
Con No menu bar
Con The advertisements are terrible
There are too many advertisements in this browser.
Con Extension icons not directly moveable
Con Cannot stop auto update
Con Needs user prompt to install from Chrome web store
Every time you install an extension, you need to say install first from Opera extension list to proceed.
Con Still based upon Chromium/Chrome
Can yield to bloat if clogged with too many plugins and apps from the webstore.
Con Has some CSS issues on some websites
Has problems loading Sourceforge.com