If you use VLС Media Player on your Windows or macOS machine, then it would seem only natural to install its Android version on your portable device. But is the Android app as good as the desktop software? Let's identify its strong and weak points.
Key features
Besides support for almost any file formats, VLC for Android boasts handling multiple audio and subtitles tracks, including external files. The player comes with all necessary codecs so you don’t need to download additional plugins. The app can play network streams and such multimedia file formats as DVD ISOs, MKV, AVI, MOV, MP4, AAC, FLAC, TS, M2TS, and many more. You can directly browse folders of your media library containing music files and movies. Moreover, you can control volume, brightness and seeking using gestures.
Downsides
Despite all the assets of VLC media player, there are still several drawbacks. Due to high resource consumption the player might occasionally freeze. Moreover, when you play a movie on your phone or tablet, the audio and video might be out of sync. Finally, you might experience video slowing down on devices that don’t support hardware decoding.
Alternatives
The most well-known app alternatives to VLC for Android are MX Player and BSPlayer. The unique features of MX Player for Android devices include pinch to zoom and subtitle movement functionalities. However, the player comes with tons of ads, while VLC has none. Just like VLC and MX Player, BSPlayer supports a huge list of file types. Moreover, it can play files from compressed formats. But the free version of the app is ad-supported.
In conclusion
Even with minor flaws VLC media player for Android is a close-to-ideal solution for portable devices. It supports gestures, has all codecs built in, and plays network streams. In addition, this free player comes with no ads.