Zoom Player Review

Detailed Reviews

Good:

• Supports wide range of media formats;
• High quality audio and video playback,
• Customizable interface;

Things need Improvement:

• Available only on Windows platform; not available on Android and Mac;

Designed for Windows PCs and Windows Tablets, Zoom Player is one of the most advanced media players you will find. It offers support for wide range of media audio and video formats. It has a sleek interface with lots of buttons and control. The interface is highly customizable with plenty of themes and tweaks.

Zoom Player is a sophisticated or rather futuristic looking media player. It is feature-rich and can easily convert your regular PC into a home theatre system without any fancy gadgets or hardware. While that is one of its strong points, it could get a little overwhelming to the laypeople and casual users. Thankfully, there are plenty of tutorials, guides, and FAQs on the website to help you learn how to use this media program. If you are still stuck, there is a forum where most of your issues will get resolved and all your questions will get answered.

Media and Platform Compatibility

Zoom Player stands out from the crowd owing to its support for wide variety of media and formats. You could plug in a digital media device, such as a USB drive to your computer or insert a physical disc drive and you will get the same level of high-quality media experience. It is compatible with just about all types of audio, video and image formats. It also plays back from the Blu-ray and rewritable DVD disks.

This media program is available only on Windows. That’s perhaps one of the rare drawbacks of Zoom Player. Being such an incredible media player, you would wish it extended the compatibility to Mac and Android too. Unfortunately, the developers haven’t given so much as a hint whether they intend to make it available on other platforms in the near or distant future.   

Performance and Interface

In spite of being feature-loaded, Zoom Player does not eat up a lot of resources on your PC. Even on a computer with moderate configuration, you could run Zoom Player in the background and multitask without any decline in the speed or performance.

Zoom Player is easy on power too. This comes especially handy while watching a movie on a laptop. It has a functional power management system that conserves the battery allowing you to watch the videos for longer duration without having to plug your laptop into the power source.

But, as aforementioned, navigation isn’t the strongest aspect of this software. There are plenty of buttons and controls on the screen and navigation could become difficult some times, especially if you are new to it. It is also not always easy to access the menus.

Zoom Player offers full-screen navigation, but the interface isn’t as intuitive as the developers may have liked. The interface includes Playlist, File Browser, Colour Control, Bookmarks, Audio Equalizer, Media Library, Play History and a lot more. Overall the screen looks cluttered and unless you have acquainted yourself well with it, you may find it a bit frustrating.

Playback

Yes, there are some drawbacks but there is much more to Zoom Player than what initially meets the eyes. Once you have familiarized yourself with the media player you will realize that it offers exceptional quality media playback. Zoom Player renders high quality HD videos on your screen that look truly crystal clear. Then there is the incredible Dolby & DTS support for lossless audio experience; a perfect companion to the top-grade video quality.  

The video experience wouldn’t be as great if you were interrupted by frequent buffering and lag. Zoom Player offers smoothing feature that lets you watch videos seamlessly without any disturbances. It also has the auto-resume functionality that plays the video from the point where you left off the last time. Zoom Player also offers easy and smooth SD to HD upscale feature and allows you to keep both the versions intact.

Summary

Zoom Player could easily your media player of choice, especially if you have used it for a while and are acquainted with navigation, control and menus. The support for wide range of media formats and exceptional quality audio and video playback give you memorable media experience.