I’ve been putting off Brave for way too long because I was comfortable with Helium and, honestly, I didn’t see the point in switching. But with everyone hyping the privacy features, built-in ad blocking, and the new memory optimization update, I finally installed Brave for the first time and walked through the full setup. Out of the box, Brave felt way more cluttered than Helium, so I immediately started stripping it down: removed the bookmarks bar, hid the Leo AI icon, killed the Wallet/VPN buttons, and disabled the sidebar completely. I also cleaned up the New Tab page and then used a “New Tab Redirect” extension to replace Brave’s New Tab with a simple Google page. After the UI tweaks, I dug into the settings that actually matter—appearance, toolbar options, tab previews, and especially Brave Shields. Shields is on by default and you can crank it up to aggressive/strict, which is great if you want ad blocking without installing anything. Then I tested Brave vs Helium with extensions disabled: Brave used ~480MB RAM with one tab (microsoft.com) while Helium sat around ~290MB, and Helium also beat Brave in Speedometer (21.7 vs 18.3). My conclusion: I’m not switching—Helium is still leaner and cleaner—but if you want a mainstream browser that blocks ads out of the box, Brave can be solid once you disable the wallet/AI/rewards stuff.