Well, we’ve had a week or two to try out ie9, ff4 and Chrome10. Cnet.com (Seth Rosenblatt) has run some benchmarks on the three (Opera and Safari not included because they haven’t been updated recently) and the results have been published.
Using Google’s benchmark, Chrome 10 came out a big winner, but they tailored their browser to that benchmark. Boot time didn’t fare as well. Using JSGamesbench, ff4 won and Kraken showed for ie9.
FF4 should do much better when full hardware acceleration is enabled by Mozilla.
Firefox 4 was chosen the overall winner, but I expect good things of Opera. After all, tab stacking is unique to it, and it frequently surprises with other features like Unite.
Not sure what Safari will bring to bear, though.
Not choosing “best” or worst, here. Everyone should find something to appreciate in each browser. Competition is just making better browsers for us all.