I am a new trader and don't use a whole lot of bells and whistles. I just want a basic bar chart with trading from the chart and a few indicators. I am looking at metatrader 5 on Amp and I am wondering if there is any reason to download the platform to my computer as opposed to using the webversion.

I'm not a computer expert so take this with a pinch of salt, but my understanding is that a program based version is likely to be better performing and better optimised for it's job and data handling, order routing, over a browser based platform. Also different browsers can be better at certain tasks than others so you should test with different ones: Chrome, Firefox, Edge etc.
And lastly, using the Tradivate platform as an example that I use , the browser version works in one window only, but the program version had extra plugin features available and has the ability to have separate additional chart/DOM windows.

If your trading platform has a program based option available that would always be my first choice.