SPlayer Editor's Review

Watch videos. Play music. Do it all with this awesome media player.

Most of what consumers do with their computers today is wrapped around three kinds of activities: listening to music, watching videos and surfing the web. While your browser or choice satisfies the last activity, finding a program that satisfies the first two without a lot of extra junk can be difficult, especially if you don't want to sync music to a portable player.

The bigger music players are nice, but if all you want to do is play files, create play lists...what do you use? If the bloat is bringing you down, then you need to check out SPlayer. It’s a multimedia player for Windows that has exactly what you are and are NOT looking for.

SPlayer is a light-weight, easy to use audio and video player for Windows that supports today's technology without all of the bloat that comes with major competitors like iTunes and Windows Media Player. SPlayer supports HD video, with its ShaderEngine image enhancing system. You get HD playback, while reducing screen noise and rendering sharp images, even in SD media (though SPlayer cannot make true HD out of standard def media). Picture and sound quality are both improved via its LiveColor and SmartAmplify video and audio processing techniques.

The best thing about SPlayer is it does all that without swallowing up a lot of CPU time or memory. Its FastMotion process significantly reduces both of these, as the player is optimized for multi-core CPU's and GPU's. It's also power consumption savvy, allowing you to play media without eating up your laptop's battery.  Very cool.

Pros: Small, fast, quick

Cons: Install file downloads without an *.exe extension. You need to rename it to get the download to install.

Conclusion: There's not a lot to SPlayer, but that's the point. Its small, fast and light for a reason. It gets the job done without all of the bloat. If you're looking for a media player that can do it all, then SPlayer is for you.

version reviewed: 3.7