The web browser is a very well defined and established piece of software with a very clear purpose, but despite that, companies keep trying to reinvent it. Alternatives like Vivaldi, Arc, or Opera GX offer pretty unique experiences that allow browsers to cater to different people and go beyond what the ever-popular Google Chrome offers.

Opera is clearly not tired of this, as in addition to its main browser, Opera GX, and Opera One, the company has just introduced Opera Air, yet another take on this common tool that brings some interesting twists. Opera Air is all about helping you relax and focus, which is a very interesting spin to put on a browser.

According to Opera, 58% of people feel stressed while browsing the web, and 83% want a browser that helps them feel better. But can any browser — and more specifically, Opera Air — really do that? I wanted to try it and find out.

A soothing visual experience

Small details make a difference

Setting up Opera Air for the first time, the vibe the browser is going for is immediately apparent. The setup process offers a handful of wallpapers to choose from which all evoke very relaxing vibes. All the options are natural, calm scenery, and some of the wallpapers are available as videos that also have very subtle motion, so it's clear that the browser wants to provide a calm and soothing environment to some extent.

Once you're in the browser itself, this idea becomes even more apparent. The whole UI emanates a sort of relaxing aura with icons and overall design elements that feel... soft. There's definitely something of a calming vibe to the whole experience, and I kind of like it. The wallpaper you choose also extends to the browser chrome (the portions of a browser window that aren't the webpage), but in a very soft way that doesn't feel obstructive or reduce readability. It all comes together quite nicely.

The only downside to me is that the browser doesn't seem to support dark mode, though I have to say I think the usual implementation of a dark mode may not feel as relaxing. I hope Opera does add a darker UI at some point, but maybe going for more of a gray aesthetic rather than nearly black would work better for what this browser is trying to achieve.

Boosts

Focus and relax while working

The first big highlight of Opera Air is the Boosts feature, and it's kind of awesome. Boosts are background music tracks designed to help you achieve or maintain certain states of mind, and they're actually really interesting. Each boost consists of three audio elements: a binaural beat, ambient sound, and music, which all combine to evoke a specific feeling and get you in the right mindset for what you're trying to do.

Now, of course, I'm not psychology expert so I can't say if all these titles like "Energized Focus" or "Peak concentration" are backed by any science, but Opera seems to take this pretty seriously. Each boost tells you the kind of binaural beat that's included in terms of its frequency, as well as the type of ambient noise and music. You can also set different lengths for the tracks to play, so you can have specific focus sessions or change things up every now and then. What's more, you can customize the volume for each of these three elements so you get just the right experience, though I personally found the default settings to be just right. You can even create custom boost tracks by coombining binaural beats

And I mean that. While I can't definitively say that this music would help me in the long term, playing this music in the background did help me feel less tired and I felt like I was able to focus a bit better than without it. And just listenign to the sounds for a bit, I feel like I could easily understand how what I was hearing aimed to achieve the goals Opera describes.

Breaks

Resting to keep your focus

Taking breaks while working is something I'm not very good at. I'm always under immense amounts of stress and my goal is constantly to finish one task and move on to the next. And I suspect I'm not alone in that, because it seems like Opera Air also wants to specifically tackle this with the Breaks feature. In addition to being able to set reminders to take a break every hour or so, Opera Air actually provides exercises to help you relax and enhance your focus in that short period of free time.

There are four types of guided breaks in Opera Air. One is breathing exercises, which is meant to help you reduce stress and lower your blood pressure. Another option is neck exercises to relieve tension and help fight pain from being in the same uncomfortable position for long periods. I tried these neck exercises and I definitely felt some tension being relieved, definitely because I don't do this enough while working. That tells me maybe I should start using Opera Air more often.

I think the most limiting factor here, however, is going to be what it always is — the user. Even if I do end up using Opera Air for longer, I don't really know that I will be finding the time to take these breaks. Again, the constant feeling of stress is hard to shake off, and that's what this browser wants to fix, but this kind of incentive doesn't work for everyone.

It's still an Opera browser

A lot of what you'd expect

Aside from these interesting additions, Opera Air is still what you'd expect from Opera. The features above are shown in a sidebar alongside other features Opera usually includes here like music players, messaging services, and Opera Flow, which lets you send content to and from other devices with Opera. You can customize this menu with access to all kinds of things, which is nice. Another thing that's here and not really wanted (in my opinion) is Aria, the company's AI assistant that I frankly can't be bothered to even try.

But Opera Air does nail a lot of the basics. Handling tabs is easy and you can pin tabs and they work as intended (some browsers can get it wrong, such as Safari). There are workspaces so you can group different sets of tabs into their respective section, and these workspaces are independent across multiple windows, which makes the experience feel pretty natural to me.

The problems

It's not perfect

Opera Air is available in early access right now, which may be why some things I would have liked to see are missing here. Even beyond the dark mode bit I already mentioned, I think a major problem I had when switching to this browser is that it couldn't import data from my main browser, Vivaldi. It seems to work with major browsers like Chrome and Safari, but for me, this was a bit of a time waste. You can manually export bookmarks and import them using an HTML file, but still.

Then there's the egregious part: our editor-in-chief Rich Woods tried installing this on his main PC — the latest flagship Surface device from Microsoft, not some niche product — and the installer simply did not run. The browser is, it seems, not compatible with Windows on Arm, and one year ago, that may have been okay. But Windows on Arm isn't a niche product anymore. Microsoft is all-in on Snapdragon, and numerous companies have plenty of devices with Snapdragon chips.

It's especially weird considering Opera's main browser already runs on Arm. Though, to be fair, it seems like Opera GX doesn't, so it seems like Opera isn't fully embracing the ecosystem yet.

Am I ready to switch to Opera Air?

In short, not yet. The inability to easily import my browser data makes it hard to switch, and more importantly, there's just so much that I love about Vivaldi that I rely on for my daily work. Things like the built-in Mail client and RSS feed reader are life-savers for me, and having to find replacements for that would be a hassle.

But notice that none of that is criticism of Opera Air itself. This is a browser that nails the basics, and the extra features it offers feel genuinely interesting and potentially helpful. I would love to see this kind of feature built into more browsers, or made available as a browser extension. And if Opera Air fixes some of the gripes I have with this current version, I may end up giving it another go, and maybe I'll stick around at that point. If you're using Chrome or something more basic like Microsoft Edge or even Firefox, I think Opera Air is absolutely worth checking out.