Be it a hardware device or a new software tool, I love trying out new tech and going hands-on with it. It's one of my favorite parts of my job, and the greatest part is that I always manage to find tools to integrate into my day-to-day workflow. I'm a full-time college student, so a huge chunk of my day is taken up by… well, being a student.

Lately, I've been going all-in on testing AI browsers (which seem to be the big thing in AI right now) and have pretty much tried every browser built with AI at its core there currently is, like Perplexity's Comet, ChatGPT's Atlas, Opera's Neon, and more. Though they've really been helpful for work, and I've completely switched over to them, I, for some reason, thought they wouldn't make a difference to my college workflow. Well, I was wrong, and I can't imagine going back to a regular browser for my studies.

I can call on AI without opening a new tab

Saves me time and browser clutter

It's 2025. Even if I claimed I don't use AI when I'm studying, we all know that would be a lie. While AI certainly helps me out with my studies, I don't depend entirely on it in any way. I use it merely as it's meant to be used: as a tool. At the end of the day, I know using AI as an easy way out won't help me in exams or in real-life scenarios when I actually need to use the concepts I'm learning. That said, AI has helped me cut down the chaos of endless Google searches and juggling multiple tabs.

It's also been a massive help when I want to understand a concept we studied in class that I didn't quite grasp. Instead of watching lengthy YouTube videos or asking a friend to explain it, there are AI tools like NotebookLM and modes within chatbots like ChatGPT's Study Mode that explain complex topics in a way that matches my pace and level of understanding.

In a regular browser, I always need to open a separate tab to access an AI chatbot. Even if all I want to do is clarify what a term means, it still breaks my flow and pulls me out of what I’m working on. With AI browsers, I can simply click an icon on the sidebar, type my question, and get an instant answer without ever leaving the page I'm on. In addition to not breaking my workflow, it also helps me keep my browser clear of clutter — which is always a win.

AI browsers are the best for watching YouTube videos

YouTube videos, made easy

Ever since I tried out an AI browser for the first time, I can't imagine watching YouTube videos without it. AI browsers are all capable of accessing the transcript of a YouTube video and then helping you quickly interact with it.

Beyond just asking questions about the content of the YouTube video to get an idea of what the video is about, you can also quickly describe a moment in the video and the AI automatically jumps to the exact timestamp you’re talking about. I've found this incredibly helpful when I'm studying. When you're using YouTube to study, you'll often come across thousands of videos for just one topic.

Some tend to run over an hour long, and say you aren't sure if a subtopic you're really confused about is covered in the video you clicked on. Traditionally, you wouldn't be able to quickly figure this out, and the only real way to do that would be to manually scrub through the entire thing until you (hopefully) find the part you need.

With an AI browser though, what I've been doing is simply asking the assistant whether the video covers the exact subtopic I’m looking for. If it does, it instantly shows me the timestamp, and if it doesn’t, I can move on without wasting even a minute.

This also comes in handy when you vaguely remember a video you watched. Instead of typing everything you remember about the video into the search bar, you can just describe it to the assistant, and it pulls it up right away.

Agentic AI comes handy for certain tasks

Automating the boring bits

Frankly, if AI browsers came with only their AI chatbot built into the sidebar, they'd be very, very underwhelming. The real magic lies in the agentic AI features. If you aren't familiar with agentic AI, it's essentially when the AI goes beyond just answering questions or summarizing articles for you and actually takes initiative for you.

Agentic AI is capable of taking actions for you and handling redundant tasks you'd normally do yourself. Every AI browser, except Norton’s Neo, ships with agentic AI features. In addition to agentic AI automating a lot of monotonous tasks for work and personal life, it's also been surprisingly helpful for my college workflow in ways I didn't really expect. I've lately been pairing NotebookLM and my Google Calendar data to create an ideal to-do list and schedule for me.

Once NotebookLM generates a solid schedule, I simply ask the agentic AI to add everything directly to my calendar, and it handles the entire process without me needing to manually touch anything. Agentic AI is also great at filling forms, so I've used it to automate the process of completing lengthy course evaluations we need to submit every semester. You can’t really be fully honest in them anyway, and most of the time you end up selecting the same responses over and over, so having the AI handle it is a huge time saver.

AI browsers are incredibly helpful for my productivity

Honestly, I can't imagine going back to using a regular AI browser for my studies. While the features I'm talking about might sound relatively minor, they've had a massive impact on my productivity.