The word smartphone today is equivalent to entertainment. With smartphone displays getting better by the day and high-end smartphones offering high-definition (HD) displays, watching videos has never felt better.
Smartphones, tablets, and phablets have gained immense popularity in the last few years because of the mobility they offer with their slim, lightweight and easy-to-carry physical feature. Videos on the go are a great way of entertainment and knowledge. One can watch movies, performances, and concerts for entertainment and also educate oneself through knowledge imparting videos; be those on business or latest technology or history or geography.
High-end phones not only come with better displays but have plenty of storage space for storing heavy files like movies or video files. With such facilities provided by mobile smart devices, storing video files for on-the-go entertainment has become easy.
Playing stored videos on Android devices is great fun, especially when there are so many good video players available to provide a great viewing pleasure. With so much HD content available it is easier to put the bigger and better screens to ultimate use and turn your smart device into a portable theater.
To top it all, android offers an open architecture and a vast ‘app’ store where one can find some great video players or video apps.
These video players and video apps come in both free and paid flavors. The paid versions, of course, offer a wide variety of features but that does not discount the quality of the free video players available in the app store market.
Below, we offer a comparison of video player placed in order of their popularity and features.
14 of the best android video players for 2018
#14. Play All Media player
Price – Free in-app purchases
Developed by fitness techie, this app allows you to create and store a number of playlists. It plays video and audio files.
- It has got play and pause features that help to resume video/ audio playing after a call ends.
- The user interface is quite clean and easy to use
- The audio files play in background when you switch to use other apps
Cons-
Can’t play video/ audio files when the phone is connected to the computer through the USB port. It does not have any folder view for easy sorting and all your files appear in a list only.
There is a lot of scope for improvement. It can be used if you are looking for very basic features of just playing the video/ audio files but not if you want more features.
#13. Wondershare
Price – Free in-app purchase
Wondershare is a powerful media player. It is not only a video player but a discovery app as well. Users can copy paste video links in the media player and save them for later viewing.
The best part is that these videos can be easily bookmarked and can be viewed later at any time of convenience.
- The player has a built-in browser as well which can be used to search for videos and other media files.
- The videos can also be streamed to the TV screen to enjoy the videos in large size.
- The real purpose of any mobile media player is to play the content stored on the device and Wondershare does a fabulous job there as well playing the stored content seamlessly.
- It supports most of the file formats and also subtitles.
Cons-
On the downside, getting to the stored content is not that easy, it requires a few clicks. But at the same time, it does come with play history shortcut menu that allows you to get to the videos that you have played recently. Library maintenance and folder viewing could be improved to make it a bit more user-friendly.
Overall, this media player is quite a strong app and is great in performance and quality.
#12. Dice Player
Price – Free in-app purchases
Dice android video player is a free download and has a remarkable out-of-the-box performance.
It is a light weight android video player and supports minimal features as compared to some of the other video players available in the market.
This video player is truly attractive and offers great performance.
- It supports most of the popular codecs available and hence one can play numerous video file types.
- Despite its lightweight it has features like media streaming, hardware acceleration support and subtitle support.
- The speed controls on the media player allow speeding up the videos up to two times.
- It also comes with audio pitch correction support.
Cons-
On the downside, it has been observed that it has failed to perform well or live up to expectations on OnePlus devices.
#11. RockPlayer2
Price – Free in-app purchases
RockPlayer2, available for iOS and Android, plays almost all types of media/ music files supporting a wide variety of codecs. The control bars has some cool features and elaborate customization options.
- The RockShare feature helps you to share files to Android and iOS phones where the app is installed.
- The FreeSeek feature lets easy and smooth sliding control while playing the video.
- The gesture control feature again makes control easy while the video is on; control play bar, hide files, etc.
- Video/ music files streaming support is present
- Subtitles support is available
The app is also available in a version to support x86 processors
Cons-
With more features and UI design upgrades introduced in the current version, some users are comfortable with the older RockPlayer.
The app still faces some compatibility issues with certain devices, which slow down the performance. Again, the app is not available in all countries yet.
#10. KMPlayer
Price – Free in-app purchases
KMPlayer is another popular android media player supporting a wide variety of video file formats.
- Amongst many of its features, it has library viewer and also has support for cloud storage.
- Like many others media players in its category it has support for playing varied file formats covering all the important ones.
- It also has subtitle support, support for playback, speed controls to speed up or slow down video playback.
- The library view offers many sorting options for videos thus making it easier to store and sort stored media files. Users can store their media content on the Google Drive and use this player to view the stored videos.
- The media player supports swipe gestures, one can easily control the speed and navigation controls with simple finger gestures.
- You can even view the movies on your PC via your mobile device.
Cons-
Being a free version it is not ad free. Some issues still exist which makes the application slow over time.
#9. BS Player
Price – Free version / Upgraded version for $6.75
BS android video player comes in two options – free and paid version. It is quite an advanced video player with hardware and software decoding that plays most popular video formats.
The attractive skins available with this player can further enhance the interface.
- The player comes with swipe gesture support and uncluttered viewer.
- It has built-in subtitle formats and also supports subtitle files. It also has the advanced feature of finding the subtitle files online.
- One of its most attractive features is the pop-up viewer, where the viewer window pops out of the viewer for watching and lays on top of other apps.
- It also supports multiple audio streams.
- It can play uncompressed files directly from RAR files.
- The video player has excellent support for playlists and playback modes.
- It is also supported by hardware accelerated video playback, which significantly reduces its battery consumption and increases its speed.
Cons-
The current version of the player is an ad-supported one, the professional surface is a work in progress and it would be an ad-free video player. The UI of the player can still be improved.
#8. Feather
Price - Free version / Upgraded version for $1.00
Feather is a simple and easy to use media player that plays music and videos.
- It has minimal features and avoids many complicated and elaborate features that are not used by many. It is light and convenient and performs the basic function.
- Because of it’s clean and user-friendly interface, many people find it easy to operate. Anyone who has basic file browsing knowledge will be able to use it. You just have to simply browse and click to play.
- Life becomes easy with the portrait mode control which disappears when you turn the phone into landscape view.
- Another amazing feature is it is compatibility with almost all codecs; that means it works on old devices that do not get regular software updates.
Cons-
The application lacks quite a number of vital features that the new-age apps offer. There are still a whole lot of issues and bugs to be fixed.
With many media player apps in the market that offer multiple features that are hardly required by basic users, Feather comes as a relief with its smooth, uncomplicated and straightforward app.
#7. Gplayer
Price – Free in-app purchases
Developed by gpcsoft.net, Gplayer comes with floating popups that can be resized by the user and dragged anywhere on the mobile screen. The full-screen option can also be enabled.
- The software has the feature to support multiple windows (up to six) that can play video/ music simultaneously. That means you can have maximum six small windows, of any size and any position that can be placed on the screen, playing your videos. This feature comes very handy if you have to compare videos or need to watch multiple videos all together.
- Subtitles are also displayed on the player.
- It plays most of the video and audio file formats.
- It can directly stream the online videos.
- Users can share videos through the same wireless connection in groups and with other users.
- Users can customize and personalize the themes available.
- The user interface is user-friendly and has features clearly visible.
- The player has no ads at all, hence you get a disturbance-free uninterrupted
Cons-
Although the player offers some nice features, it still has few bugs that need to be fixed for a better performance.
#6. Kodi Video Player
Price – Free in-app purchases
Formerly Kodi was known as XBMC, and its Android version is available as Kodi Media Center. It is quite a robust video player and is quite distinct from other simple video players available on Android.
- Kodi is an open-source app that efficiently access and plays media files stored on the device and also offers equally good performance at playing media from network storage.
- Kodi allows installing third-party plugins that enhance the ability of the media player to find and play content freely available on content provider sites.
- The player has plenty of playback features supplemented with a sorting feature.
- One of the best things about Kodi is that it has a great development community which actively supports and improves the app as and when required.
- It comes with a standard Confluence skin which showcases speed and is also user-friendly. The skin has been retouched and enhanced to work better with bigger phones and tablets.
Cons
It can be a bit intimidating as it requires a certain amount of setting up time.
#5. Archos Video Player
Price – Free version/ Upgraded version for $4.50
Archos is better known for making Android hardware, but it is a formidable competitor to video player app makers.
- It supports numerous file formats.
- Supported by hardware-accelerated playback, the Archos video player comes with many advanced features. It supports subtitles and subtitle files and also comes with network playback support.
- It has the advanced feature of automatically fetching the video file details, like movie art and summary.
- It has an equally impressive library interface for easy access and sorting media files. The easy library view helps to organize the videos and visual depiction better. Now browsing your video files will be easier and pleasant.
- The player is capable of playing videos from the computer as well as from USB storage.
Cons-
The app is not totally bug-free and has minor issues to be fixed.
#4. MVideoPlayer
Price – Free version/ Pro version for $3.49
Developed by Daniel Nilsson, it is one of the best android video players available in app store. You will find a lot of setting options in the app that you can customize for better performance of the device.
The good features of the app are:
- A simple and friendly user interface, responsive design to adapt to different devices and various resolutions
- Supports subtitles. There is also a built-in subtitle search feature
- Supports playlists; create your own playlist and save it.
- Gives you the option to save and restore the library when you change to the pro version from the free one.
- Gives you an option to bookmark the video when you stop and play it from the same point next time
- Smooth functioning app
Cons-
The app only plays the codecs that your phone/ device is originally compatible with. The app could have had more features compared to the other apps of the same range.
Subtitle search feature is new and still needs improvements to fix bugs.
#3. VLC Player
Price – Free
VLC is one of the best video players for Androidand has been around for some time. It is a mature player and allows almost any file format.
- A great thing about the VLC player is that it does not need the support of external plugins to play different file formats, it supports almost all file formats.
- VLC player also supports network streaming and comes loaded with sophisticated playback features.
- It has support for subtitles and is an open-source cross-platform media player.
- It supports hardware decoding on most of the devices.
Cons-
Currently, the VLC is available in its beta version, which means, that it could still have some bugs and not optimal performance.
The new beta release comes with two interfaces, a dark one, and a white one. The player comes with an equalizer, support for wide-screen, playlist management, etc.
#2. Mobo Player
Price – Free version / Upgraded version for $4.99
Mobo player is perhaps one of the good android video players. It enjoys almost the same amount of popularity as VLC player or maybe even more.
- It supports a wide variety of file formats. It supports many formats that your device generally won’t support. With its superior software decoding feature, it can play unusual file formats too.
- It supports multiple audio tracks, subtitles, and subtitle files along with multiple onscreen subtitles.
- It streams videos and has an advanced library management feature to organize the videos stored on the device.
- It also comes with a floating window feature that allows the video window to float atop other windows while you engage in texting or working on your mobile device.
- It supports almost all android devices. The dual decoding engine renders a better playback performance and video quality.
- It supports many swipe gestures to control the video player. You can pause the video, controls its speed and volume all through finger gestures.
- You can even adjust the background color of the media player and use your own favorite color or picture for the media player background.
Cons-
The user interface for paid and free versions vary a lot from one another. It is not totally bug-free.
#1. MX Player
Price – Free version / Upgraded version for $5.99
MX Player is a free android video player and is one of the most popular video apps on the android app stores. It has a paid version also, which displays more features than its free version.
The power-packed app is also an easy-to-use product for both experts and novices. It comes with a simple and elegant viewer.
- In the absence of too many heavy features and control bars, it is easy for you to float through the app and maneuver the player easily.
- The player supports a wide variety of swipe gestures. You can use the pinch and swipe feature to zoom in and zoom out of videos.
- It supports a wide variety of file formats with excellent hardware and software decoding Its multicore decoding feature purportedly boosts the performance by 70% when compared to single-core devices.
- It supports subtitle gestures as well; one can scroll forward or backward to move to the next or previous text. You can zoom in and out while changing the text size by scrolling up and down.
- The MX player comes with a unique kids lock feature, which refrains your kids from hopping from one app to another or making calls while the player is on.
Cons-
Compatibility issues with some devices exist. It is difficult to ascertain whether you need a plugin to fix the issue or it’s a bug.
Conclusion
Now that you know the top 14 video players, it is the right time to pick and choose. This completes the list of the best Android video players you can find today. They are all different in terms of the quality, features, popularity, simplicity, etc.If you are on a budget and want something that runs then Mobo or MX upgraded versions are pretty good. For something that is completely free, Dice Player works.
So evaluate the above-mentioned pros and cons before finalizing on one.
You can download them from the links given above.
And if you think we missed out on something, do let us know.
