I don't think Chrome is especially lightweight. It tends to be optimized for speed by using as much resources as available.
It might be better than IE in that regard, but it doesn't have any huge advantage over firefox.
Ive found uzbl to be pretty good and lightweight. http://uzbl.org/
Dillo 3, and h3v.
Non-graphical: links, w3m. Other 'light' webkit shells: uzbl, Midori, Arora
Could it be because it has to run on cheap hardware? Is there any more lightweight browser?