A comparison test across six generations of Windows was conducted by YouTube channel TrigrZolt , which unexpectedly revealed a clear winner: Windows 8.1.
Windows 11, on the other hand, performed worst in almost every test. While the experiment isn’t scientifically rigorous, it still offers an interesting glimpse into how Microsoft operating systems have evolved and changed over the past two decades.
For testing, we used Lenovo ThinkPad X220 laptops with a Core i5-2520M processor, 8GB of RAM , and a 256GB hard drive. They were equipped with the latest available versions of Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, 10, and 11. Choosing older hardware was an advantage for older versions of the operating system, as Windows 11 does not officially support this configuration.
The first step was to measure boot speed. Windows 8.1 booted the fastest, while Windows 11 was the slowest. All three recent versions have fast startup enabled, which is absent on older systems. Windows 11 began experiencing issues with the taskbar display, a bug that users have been experiencing since its release.
The next test was disk space. Windows XP took up only 18.9 GB, while Windows 11 took up 37.3 GB. Despite this, it still ranked third. Windows 7, unexpectedly, required the most space, with 44.6 GB.
In terms of idle RAM usage, Windows XP once again proved to be the most economical, with 0.8 GB. Windows 11’s usage was 3.3 GB, with background services, including telemetry, increasing to 3.7 GB in some places.
In an attempt to open the maximum number of browser tabs before reaching 5 GB of memory, Windows 8.1 again achieved impressive results, with 252 tabs. Windows 11 stalled at 49 and Windows XP at 50, with crashes due not to a lack of memory, but to an instability in the paging file.
The battery life test showed no significant difference: the difference was about two minutes. However, Windows 11 shut down sooner, while Windows XP performed better.
When exporting audio files in Audacity, Windows 11 ranked second to last, even behind Windows Vista. When editing video in OpenShot, it again ranked last. Windows XP and Vista were completely phased out at this stage: the application no longer worked on them.
When opening standard applications like File Explorer, Paint, Calculator, Adobe Reader, and VLC, Windows 11 consistently ranked last. Even with older versions of compatibility software, the latest operating system didn’t offer top performance.
In the website loading test, Windows 11 ranked third, but fell to last place when accessing Google Images and the Microsoft sign-in page. It ranked second in file copying and fourth in malware scanning, behind Windows 7.
In synthetic benchmarks, the situation was mixed. Windows XP dominated the single-core CPU-Z test, while Windows 7 dominated multithreaded performance. Windows 11 ranked fourth in both tests. In Geekbench, it surpassed Windows 10 in single-core performance but lagged behind in multithreaded performance. Among older systems, Windows Vista emerged as the leader.
CrystalDiskMark placed Windows XP in first place, while Windows 11 tied for third place with Windows 10. Cinebench R10 again put Windows 8.1 in the lead in the single-core test, while Windows 10 ranked last in the multi-threaded test, although Windows 11 narrowly edged it out.
The overall result was disappointing for Windows 11: the system failed a single test. It’s also important to consider that the hardware used is significantly outdated and doesn’t meet the requirements of the latest versions of the operating system.
The video’s author admits that the goal was more of a historical comparison than a practical guide to choosing a system. However, the victory of Windows 8.1, given the previous criticism of this version, seems particularly ironic. It turned out to be not only faster, but also visually much closer to modern interfaces.
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