According to XDA-Developers, author Judy Sanhz, who has over a decade of tech writing experience, has switched from Chrome to the Comet browser from Perplexity for research tasks. She specifically highlights three built-in AI features that address common research headaches: cross-tab awareness for comparing information across open pages, a voice mode for hands-free queries, and the ability to upload and interrogate local files like PDFs. She used Comet to compare phone prices across retailers and to extract specs from manufacturer pages and documents. The immediate outcome was a significant reduction in tab clutter, manual re-reading, and the friction of switching between apps, making her research process feel “less messy and frustrating.”
The cross-tab trick
Here’s the thing: the cross-tab awareness feature sounds like a genuine game-changer for comparison shopping or fact-checking. Asking an AI assistant “which of my open tabs has the lowest price?” is a clever solution to a very real problem. But I’m immediately skeptical about the accuracy. Is it just scraping displayed text, or can it understand complex pricing with promotions, shipping costs, and conditional discounts? The article mentions you can direct it with @ commands (like @Amazon), which is smart for filtering noise, but it still feels like a feature you’d double-check. The real win seems to be the time saved in the initial sweep—narrowing 15 tabs down to 2 contenders instantly.
Voice and files
The voice mode and file upload features are where Comet starts to feel less like a browser and more like a research copilot. Voice for quick clarifications while reading makes sense; breaking your focus to type a query is a real workflow killer. And pulling a specific paragraph out of a dense PDF or spec sheet? That’s a massive time-saver. But again, there’s a trust issue. The author admits she still double-checks everything, and that’s the right approach. You’re basically using the AI for heavy lifting and summarization, not as a final authority. It’s a tool for acceleration, not replacement.
The bigger picture
So, is this the future of browsers? For research-heavy professionals, maybe. Comet is essentially baking the kind of AI assistant that lives in a sidebar extension directly into the browser’s core, with deep access to your tabs and local files. That integration is its main advantage. The risk, of course, is privacy. You’re giving Perplexity’s AI a view of every tab you have open and every file you upload. For many, the trade-off for productivity might be worth it. For others, it’s a non-starter. It also makes you wonder if mainstream browsers like Chrome or Edge will simply copy these features within a year, making a standalone AI browser less necessary.
Final verdict
Look, this isn’t a casual browsing replacement for most people. But for writers, students, analysts, or anyone who lives with 50+ tabs open, Comet seems to tackle the right pain points. It doesn’t do the thinking for you, but it dramatically cuts down on the manual, repetitive *finding* and *organizing*. That’s a solid value proposition. The test will be whether its AI can stay reliable and fast as it scales. If it can, features like this might just become standard. After all, who actually enjoys tab hell?
