Productivity Tools Archives - Review Products https://reviewproducts.net/tag/productivity-tools/ Sensational Finds Await Your Gaze! Tue, 26 Mar 2024 07:50:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 https://reviewproducts.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/review-products-favicon.png Productivity Tools Archives - Review Products https://reviewproducts.net/tag/productivity-tools/ 32 32 Adobe Acrobat Standard (2024) Review https://reviewproducts.net/adobe-acrobat-standard-2024-review/ https://reviewproducts.net/adobe-acrobat-standard-2024-review/#respond Sat, 27 Apr 2024 16:00:39 +0000 https://reviewproducts.net/?p=734 Adobe Acrobat Standard (2024) Review Edit and customize PDFs in a flexible easy-to-use working environment. Adobe Acrobat Standard offers all the tools you’d need to edit and manipulate a PDF file (more advanced options are reserved for the Pro version). As it stands, it’s a well designed multi-platform app, with a wealth of easy-to-use features. ... Read more

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Adobe Acrobat Standard (2024) Review

Edit and customize PDFs in a flexible easy-to-use working environment.

Adobe Acrobat Standard offers all the tools you’d need to edit and manipulate a PDF file (more advanced options are reserved for the Pro version). As it stands, it’s a well designed multi-platform app, with a wealth of easy-to-use features. If you’re looking for a versatile tool – and don’t mind subscribing to it – it’s definitely worth checking out.

Pros

  • +Multi-platform
  • +Wealth of options
  • +Easy to use
  • +Flexible and customizable

Cons

  • -Not the cheapest of subscriptions
  • -Some high end tools reserved for the Pro version
  • -Not all formats are supported

Adobe Acrobat – the original PDF reader and editor – today comes in three distinct versions for a variety of different use-cases. But Acrobat Standard with the broadest appeal for document management.

In our Acrobat Reader review, we explored Adobe’s basic PDF viewer, while our Adobe Acrobat Pro review looked at the best-for-business option. Adobe Acrobat Standard sits in the middle of this line-up, as PDF creation and editing software capable of delivering most tools for most users, in both casual and professional settings.

We’ve long-rated Acrobat as the best PDF editor – but how does it compare to the competition in 2024? We put Adobe’s top tool to the test.

ADOBE ACROBAT STANDARD: PRICE & PLANS

Subscription-based software that’s pricier than some of the competition.

As with most Adobe products, you’ll need a subscription to get the most from Acrobat. But it’s not like the the Reader and Pro versions.

As mentioned in our Adobe Acrobat Reader review, Adobe’s basic PDF viewer is free, while Acrobat Pro offers you a free trial. To get to grips with Adobe Acrobat Standard, however, you have to subscribe. There is no free trial, no free anything. Thankfully, you can request a refund after 14 days, but that still requires effort on the subscriber’s part to remember to cancel in time when trying an app out.

Alternatively, you can opt to get Pro’s free trial to get a sense of the Standard offering. Aside from a handful of features such as bulk e-signature requests, and admin tools to manage teams, the toolset is virtually identical.

If you decide Adobe Acrobat Standard is for you, you have a choice from the usual Adobe subscription plans: annual paid monthly, monthly, and annual plans are available (and, as you’d expect, paying upfront for the year is the cheapest option).

The price is quite a lot more expensive than some of its competition, such as Easeus PDF Editor, FoxIt PDF Editor, or ILovePDF, but you get a good amount for your money if you’re a PDF power-user.

Pricing & plans: 3.5/5

ADOBE ACROBAT STANDARD: INTERFACE

Simple, and easy to find the tools you’re after, while offering you a soupçon of customization

If you’re familiar with Adobe Acrobat Reader, you’ll feel right at home in Adobe Acrobat Standard, and the same will be true should you ever jump to Adobe Acrobat Pro. But unlike Acrobat Reader, all the tools on display actually work – rather than a bid to entice you to upgrade. It might be the one of the best free PDF readers for now, but for any real document management, Acrobat Standard or Pro are all but essential.

Acrobat’s sidebar on the left gives you quick access to your files, those you’ve recently worked on or read, those that reside in your online Adobe Cloud Storage, any Agreements you’ve signed or requested a signature for, and files stored on your computer, some support for some of the best cloud storage services, such as Box, Dropbox, GoogleDrive, OneDrive and SharePoint.

Click on ‘Recent’ to see a handful of available tools, like ‘Edit PDF’, ‘Create PDF’, and ‘Combine Files’, but if you want to see all available options, click on the ‘Tools’ tab, to the right of the ‘Home’ tab, top left of the interface. If you’re already in the ‘Recent’ section, you also have an ‘See All Tools’ button to the right which does the same thing.

These tools are listed by category, depending on what you need to do, and their titles are self explanatory: ‘Edit & Create’, ‘Forms & Signature’, ‘Share & Review’, etc. To the right you’ll find a sidebar with another list or commonly used tools. That sidebar is totally customizable: reorder the list by dragging items up or down, remove tools you don’t need, and add some not currently displayed by selecting them from the main list. This helps you focus on the main tools you find yourself using all the time.

Interface: 4/5

ADOBE ACROBAT STANDARD: TOOLS

An example of good design – a wealth of tools are well-organized, versatile, and easy to use, coupled with a flexible interface designed to work the way you do

You may think that Adobe Acrobat Standard only lets you work on one particular function at a time, but this would be to misunderstand the underlying elegance of the software. Sure, each tool has its own icon, and you can customize the sidebar to the right as discussed above, but that doesn’t mean the functionalities are segregated.

Take the ‘Combine Files’ tool for instance. As its name implies, this is where you import multiple PDFs and merge them into one. But what if you’d like to remove some pages, or reorder others? Do you have to click on another icon for that? Well, no. Once you’re in the editing section, you are actually free to do pretty much whatever you like with your PDF. So you can reorder and delete pages from the ‘Combine Files’ section. You can also annotate, or even edit the existing text and images, without having to select another tool. All your editing options are available via the toolbar at the top.

Some tools will reveal another toolbar, like the ‘Edit Text & Images’ icon, but you can do everything you need to do without having to interact with the right sidebar… unless you want to of course.

Access a tool like ‘Combine’, and notice you can use others right from its interface, offering you great flexibility in the way you work (Image credit: Adobe)

It’s this kind of flexibility of working that we love in a well designed app: you’re offered multiple ways of performing the same action, and it’s up to you to decide which one fits your workflow best, without that being forced upon you by a developer.

So, Adobe Acrobat Standard is an incredibly well-designed and flexible software, which aims to help you manipulate, annotate, and edit PDFs. You’re able to do the simplest things, from transforming a PDF into a variety of other formats, such as Word, Excel, JPG, HTML and a few others, to creating a file from scratch, and everything in between, including filing in and signing PDFs. The list is pretty extensive and what’s best is how easy and intuitive the tools are to use.

Considering Adobe created the format, it’s little surprise they’d design a best-in-class application to manipulate it – even in the face of some of the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives. It’s obviously far better than Acrobat Reader which mostly felt to us like an advert for this software. This is Acrobat as you expect it to be, with a wide array of tools to help you work in the PDF format and achieve what you need to achieve – mostly.

There are a few limitations, most of which are covered by the ‘Pro’ version, such as converting files into the PDF format, redacting information, and comparing two versions of a PDF. Such functions are deemed by Adobe to be higher end, and should not be needed by the vast majority of its target audience, unless of course they do, which is where Acrobat Pro comes in.

SHOULD I BUY?

Adobe Acrobat Standard during our review process.

You can transform a PDF file into a wide number of other formats, from Microsoft, to HTML, to images and more besides (Image credit: Adobe)

BUY IT IF…

You need a well designed piece of software that allows you to work with a PDF file, from basic management, to filing in and signing documents, to creating some from scratch.

DON’T BUY IT IF…

You’d rather save money with the best free PDF editors, or your document modifications are more modest – Acrobat is full of features, and you may not need them all.

ADOBE ACROBAT STANDARD: ALTERNATIVES

We’ve tested a range of Acrobat substitutes – and our top-rated apps include:

pdfFiller, a surprisingly feature-rich web-based editing tool.

EaseUS PDF Editor, which offers a low-cost annual subscription compared to PDF24 Creator, which is our favorite, feature-filled PDF tool you can use completely free.

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Adobe Acrobat Reader (2024) Review https://reviewproducts.net/adobe-acrobat-reader-2024-review/ https://reviewproducts.net/adobe-acrobat-reader-2024-review/#respond Tue, 23 Apr 2024 16:00:23 +0000 https://reviewproducts.net/?p=744 Adobe Acrobat Reader (2024) Review Read and annotate PDFs for free. If you’re looking for a free PDF reader which allows you to read such files, fill in and sign forms, and even annotate documents, all while remaining within the Adobe ecosystem, then this app is for you… shame about all the prompts to constantly ... Read more

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Adobe Acrobat Reader (2024) Review

Read and annotate PDFs for free.

If you’re looking for a free PDF reader which allows you to read such files, fill in and sign forms, and even annotate documents, all while remaining within the Adobe ecosystem, then this app is for you… shame about all the prompts to constantly entice you to upgrade to Acrobat Pro.

Pros

  • +Free
  • +Multiplatform
  • +Easy to use

Cons

  • -Disruptive prompts to upgrade
  • -Advanced tools are a carrot for Acrobat Pro subscription

The PDF format was created by Adobe Systems, and introduced at the Windows and OS/2 Conference in January 1993. It became an open standard in 2008, which enabled other companies to make PDF-compatible software. However, Adobe Acrobat Reader remains the venerable original – but is it still one of the best free PDF readers we’ve tested? We’re going to take a look.

ADOBE ACROBAT READER: PRICE & PLANS

It’s totally free, but there’s a price to pay in the form numerous prompts urging you to try out Acrobat Pro

There are multiple versions of Acrobat: Reader, Standard, and Pro. Each offers an increasing number of features, each comes in its own dedicated application, and we’ll therefore review them separately.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC at Amazon for ₹234.82

Reader is the simplest of the bunch, offering the most basic functions, and is designed to be accessed by as many people as possible. As a result, it is offered completely free of charge. Shame about the constant prompts to get you to upgrade, though. It does distract from the otherwise pleasant workflow.

Pricing & plans: 3.5/5

ADOBE ACROBAT READER: INTERFACE

The software’s main window is clean and simple showing you a handful of tools, while reminding you to upgrade to Acrobat Pro

A large clear interface offering you tools which you can’t actually use unless you log on or pay

The interface looks clean and simple. To the left you’ve got a sidebar showing links to various functions, such as any recent documents you’ve worked with within the app, access to your Adobe Cloud Storage, any Agreement documents you’ve dealt with, and links to file storage, either on your hard drive, or via many of the best cloud storage providers, such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and SharePoint.

The bulk of the interface to the right will depend on which menu is selected in the sidebar, with ‘Recent’ offering you some tools such as adding comments to a PDF, request an e-signature, or fill and sign a document yourself. You can also open a PDF and simply read it.

The ‘Online Cloud Storage’, which takes up a fair chunk of the sidebar, is only effective when you’ve signed in with your Adobe ID. Top right and lower left are also permanent adverts for you to “try Acrobat Pro, free for 7 days”. You’ll also find a small ‘Create’ tab, top left. This is where you’ll find one of the best Word to PDF converters – but it also works with images. It’s a great tool, for sure… except this isn’t actually available for free: you would have to upgrade to either Standard or Pro to take advantage of such a feature.

But that’s not the only hidden prompt to upgrade you’ll find dotted around the interface. There are many enticing tools offering you to Convert a PDF into a Microsoft format, or Edit a PDF for instance, but none are actually available unless you pay for Standard or Pro.

All of this must be great from a marketing point of view, but is far from user friendly. In fact, the interface feels way too big for the small amount of features you actually have access to with Acrobat Reader.

Interface: 2/5

ADOBE ACROBAT READER: ONLINE ADVANTAGES

Once you’ve logged in, you can easily set up documents and send them for others to fill in and sign – all for free

A generous amount of online storage, and an easier way to request e-signatures. What’s not to like?

Adobe Acrobat Reader really wants you to sign in, so let’s sign in. This can be done any time you select a tool that cannot work without being online, or simply by clicking on the ‘sign in’ button, top right of the interface, just above the large blue ‘Try Acrobat Pro’ button.

The most obvious bonus is gaining access to your ‘Adobe Cloud Storage’. Adobe very generously offers you 2GB of free storage. It’s yours forever. No need to pay for anything in order to get it. So that’s great.

We have to say, though, this is some of the best eSignature software in a PDF reader. Once you’ve signed up and signed in, it’s really easy to add text and signature fields to a document which can then be sent to other people, all handled through Adobe’s Cloud Storage. The recipients do not need an account themselves. This can be most useful.

Online advantages: 4/5

ADOBE ACROBAT READER: FREE TOOLS

Reading a PDF, annotating it, drawing on it, inserting notes, it’s all very easy to achieve.

Let’s take a look at what you can actually do with Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can of course open and read a PDF. This is a very simple function, which offers you the ability to scroll through the document and even search for specific words.

On top of that, you can add comments, make annotations, draw on the page, add shapes, that sort of thing. It’s all incredibly easy to use. You’re even able to change the colour and thickness of what you’re applying to the page.

To the left you’ll find a sidebar, containing tools, most of which you can’t use without paying – again. The little blue asterisk is there, but only when you hover over the menu you’re interested in, so as to hide the fact you can’t actually have access to what’s on offer.

Acrobat Reader can detect fields that need to be filled in, making it easy for you to complete and sign a digital form

When it comes to filling in and signing a form yourself, Adobe Acrobat Reader will automatically highlight the sections that are designed for you to fill in, and if they haven’t been set for you by the sender, you can click on a button and Acrobat Reader will detect the fields automatically. We found this saves a lot of time – your mileage may vary, but we found that automatic detection to be almost flawless.

It’s a shame that many of the other best free PDF editors and readers offer more tools without charge. Apple Preview for instance allows you to combine PDFs, reorder pages, take pages out, place pages into new documents, and convert any file it can open into a PDF. These should be seen as basic functions, not premium ones. Sadly, Adobe thinks you must subscribe in order to gain access to those.

Free tools: 4/5

ADOBE ACROBAT READER: PAID TOOLS

Why offer tools you can’t actually use unless you upgrade to a different piece of Adobe software?

Adobe Acrobat Reader showcases 28 different tools, which sounds fantastic, but the vast majority of these can only really be accessed by upgrading the app to Standard or Pro. Very useful tools like ‘Scan & OCR’, ‘Convert to PDF’, ‘Redact a PDF’, ‘Combine Files’ and many more are there for you to look at, but not for you to use. This is exceedingly frustrating.

Thankfully, those ‘premium’ tools have a small blue asterisk next to their icon to help you discern them. Puzzlingly, ‘Request a Signature’ has such an icon, yet you can use it for free. This leaves 7 tools (8 if you count ‘Request a Signature’) free for you to use. It is frustrating to see this, especially since Adobe’s professional tools are so exceedingly good. Such tactics shouldn’t be needed.

The activity, linked to a document, will show you who has read it and signed it – an easy to follow digital paper trail

BUY IT IF…

You want a PDF reader that offers you a few basic functions that work well, while constantly reminding you its paid-for alternatives have more advanced tools available.

DON’T BUY IT IF…

You don’t want to be constantly reminded of other Adobe apps you can purchase that would allow you to use most of the tools Acrobat Reader displays, but restricts.

ADOBE ACROBAT READER: ALTERNATIVES

We’ve tested the best PDF readers for Windows, the best PDF readers for Android, and the best PDF readers for Mac. So, if you’re looking for an alternative to Reader, we know what to look out for.

First, check our Adobe Acrobat Standard review (or our Acrobat Pro review for business use). This full-featured PDF editor is a vastly superior proposition, packed with all the tools you’ll need for creating, editing, and collaborating on PDF documents.

In our experience, the closest competition – a free PDF reader with a good set of tools – we recommend checking out our Apple Preview review for macOS users and our PDF24 Creator review – it’s one of the best PDF editors on the market and doesn’t cost anything.

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Loomly Review https://reviewproducts.net/loomly-review/ https://reviewproducts.net/loomly-review/#respond Sun, 14 Apr 2024 16:00:36 +0000 https://reviewproducts.net/?p=654 Loomly Review A social media management service that aims to reduce stress. Loomly offers a really nice, simple service with clear tiers that are good value compared to some of its rivals. While some features, like custom branding, are reserved only for the top tiers, everything else is there. One of the big pluses is ... Read more

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Loomly Review

A social media management service that aims to reduce stress.

Loomly offers a really nice, simple service with clear tiers that are good value compared to some of its rivals. While some features, like custom branding, are reserved only for the top tiers, everything else is there. One of the big pluses is that all major social platforms are supported on all tiers.

Pros

  • +Lots of features
  • +Many features available on all plans
  • +Lovely UI
  • +Lots of online support documents

Cons

  • -Custom branding reserved only for top tier
  • -Some rivals cater more to power user

Loomly is one of the newer and snappier entries into TechRadar Pro’s list of the best social media management tools, and with good reason. Built for the social media era, Loomly tries to make life simple for its users – which could soon include you.

We’ve already thoroughly tested the likes of Hootsuite, HubSpot, and Circleboom, and while these might be more familiar names in the social media space, Loomly is definitely worth checking out.

Loomly themselves tout huge time savings of 30 hours per week for average users, who can make use of the built-in 300 or more content ideas, which can be especially helpful for smaller organizations with fewer people to bounce ideas off.

Sign up for Loomly

There’s a reason that the likes of Dior, Honda, BMW, The Salvation Army, Thomas Cook, and many more use Loomly’s services to manage their brand posts across every major social media channel, and some smaller ones too.

Given the world we live in has become dominated by social media platforms, making sure your business can stay ahead of the pack is vitally important. Just having a company blog no longer cuts it in 2024, sadly, as users discover services via social media and everyone is competing for attention.

In this review, we’re going to cover a lot of ground and make sure you can make an informed decision about whether Loomly is your pick for best social media manager in 2024. Let’s dive in.

We’ve also featured the best small business software of 2024

PLANS AND PRICING

First, the good stuff: pricing. If you’re a small business, or even a one-person operation, then cost is going to be very, very important and might weigh more on the decision than the respective features.

Loomly is priced very competitively and splits its service into four very easy to understand tiers: Basic, Standard, Advanced, and Premium. We’ll go through each.

Basic: as the name suggests, this is the lowest level tier that Loomly offers, with support for 10 accounts, two users, and access to interactions, analytics, a hashtag manager, post previews, and more, for $32 per month.

Standard: billed as the most popular option, a Standard subscription gives you everything in Basic plus 20 accounts, six users, advanced analytics, content exports, and Slack and Teams integration, for $60 per month.

Advanced: for larger clients, this tier supports up to 35 accounts and 14 users, plus the ability to set custom roles, create custom workflows, and enjoy scheduled reports, all for $131 per month.

Premium: finally, for the biggest companies, Loomly offers a tier that can handle everything, including up to 50 accounts, 30 users, and the ability to add custom branding, plus everything else in the other three plans, for $277 per month.

All of these subscription tiers include a discount when paying annually, which might be something your organisation wants to do anyway – a nice little addition.

Loomly also offers an Enterprise tier that comes upon request, and includes tailored support via an account manager and the ability to scale up beyond even the heights of Premium, while getting a nice little discount.

FEATURES

With pricing out of the way, let’s get into the actual features that Loomly has on offer. As standard, Loomly supports all of the major social networks – Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Google, Snap, and so on – and that applies to all of the tiers, not just the more expensive ones, which is a nice touch.

All users can also access the ability to schedule unlimited posts, publish directly, manage hashtags, use link shorteners, and store unlimited assets on the platform. Compared to some of its rivals, that’s a decent list.

Loomly also lets every user access an approval workflow (which is very handy given the downsides to posting things before they’re ready) and the ability to set user roles. All but Basic get Slack and Teams integrations, too.

In terms of actual content creation, Loomly offers users Basic through Premium access to post previews, Google Drive, Canva, a post inspiration tool, the ability to reply to interactions, and an analytics dashboard.

Finally, Loomly’s iOS and Android apps are available to all and really help with jotting down ideas on the go or making tweaks while you’re out and about. Some rivals reserve the apps for higher tiers, so this is also a nice thought.

If you thought this section went on for a little it’s because, well, Loomly is very generous with the “basic” features on its service, making this ideal for any organization that doesn’t want to spend too much while being able to do a lot.

We’ve also featured best Business plan software of 2024

Digging a little bit deeper, let’s take a look at some of the more advanced features that Loomly offers. While the company is generous, there are some features your business might want to take advantage of that require a higher plan.

Starting off with an obvious one, Loomly lets Standard tiers and upwards access its advanced analytics, which does go into a lot more detail, as well as the ability to export results. Advanced and Premium users can also schedule reports.

Exporting content, such as analytics, lists, calendars, and posts, is also not something the Basic tier can manage, meaning you’ll need to go for Standard or above if those workflows sound important.

Custom branding, something big organizations will surely want, is limited to only the most expensive Premium plan. Users can utilize a branded subdomain, custom favicon, and a custom logo as part of this feature set.

To close out this section, Loomly also offers access to over five million royalty-free images and videos, plus daily post inspiration to get the ideas flowing.

We’ve also featured the best business laptops in 2024

ANALYTICS AND REPORTING

Given that keeping track is one of, if not the main reason to use social media management platforms, this section might be the most important, depending on your organization, of course.

Loomly tracks a lot. Post-performance can be measured in real time across every single major social network, labels are available to help measure campaigns, and users can schedule analytics reports at regular intervals to help keep things under control.

The main aim is to help users get a better understanding of what’s working and, importantly, what’s not: not every post will be a smash hit, but over time you’ll be able to build up a knowledge of what works.

Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X (or Twitter) all get the detailed analytics treatment, with granular insights into how posts are performing, and the ability to create new posts to “mimic” those. Having everything in one place makes life so much easier, too.

Finally, Loomly offers loom.ly domains for its clients, helping you get additional data on who is opening your links, when, where, and why. It’s a neat little addition.

USER INTERFACE

For our money, Loomly has one of the best UIs out there when it comes to social media managers: everything is in the right place and easy to use, even advanced features and settings.

The company recently redesigned many of its core features to make everything that much smoother based on customer feedback and it’s made a huge difference.

A great example is the rebuilt Post Builder, which, as you can imagine, is one of the main places you’ll be hanging out in the app. Loomly worked on reducing the number of steps to create content, such as by introducing collapsable post ideas, the ability to close content, and new ways to label different pieces of work.

Loomly’s ultimate goal is actually to automate much of your workflow – part of the reason there is a focus on mimicking older posts – and that bleeds into how you spend time actually using the app. Unlike some rivals, Loomly almost wants you to spend less time on there, or at least doing boring tasks.

As the company says of its website: organize away the chaos. By making Loomly your creative and organization hub for all things social media, life becomes a bit simpler.

We’ve also featured best website builder for small business of 2024

SUPPORT

As you might expect, support is handled very well, from the most basic to specific customer-by-customer help. Loomly publishes a blog, YouTube tutorials, and much more to answer many of the most basic questions.

On top of these, Loomly also publishes webinars and hosts specific courses to help users make the most of its powerful software. That’s the thing, ultimately: Loomly wants users to get the absolute best bang for their buck.

We found the Help Center to be super useful for answering some early questions, and in fact it helped point us towards some things we didn’t immediately know about before, which in turn helped improve our workflows.

As mentioned above, big enterprise clients are assigned a specific account manager to help them out in whatever way is necessary.

THE COMPETITION

As we said above, TechRadar has spent many hours assessing the best social media management tools and found that SEMrush actually ranks the highest because it also includes an SEO management platform, plus the usual features, making it an ideal one-stop shop for everything your business needs online.

Hootsuite works the best for tracking analytics, although there is an over-arching focus on Twitter (or X), while Sprout Social ranks the highest for actually creating and posting content to the platforms.

Buffer offers great post tracking tools, on top of a great all-round platform, and Hubspot is amazing for automating workflows. Meanwhile, Circleboom has an OpenAI integration that can suggest posts, which is very high tech.

Basically, Loomly has a lot of competition! But don’t let that dissuade you: if anything, the abundance of quality social media managers means that your organization is the winner, being able to choose exactly the software that fits the specific need of the business.

We’ve also featured best content marketing tool of 2024

FINAL VERDICT

The bit you’ve all been waiting for. Loomly offers a great all-round package of social media manager tools in one place, designed with the current landscape in mind and offering generous benefits across all of its tiers.

While some of its rivals might be more powerful in absolute terms (more features, and so on), what Loomly offers is a really friendly UI that takes only a moment to understand, underpinned by a powerful suite of tools that aids with every step of the process, from post creating to scheduling and managing your colleagues.

Campaign tracking is up there with the best, too, with the focus being on Loomly’s calendar feature, which helps you and your coworkers be on the same page.

Working in social media can sometimes feel repetitive, and so automation is key to fighting that and at least remove some of the most tedious parts of setting up posts.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, there’s even a 15-day free trial on most plans.

So, to summarise, we recommend Loomly to a forward-looking business that wants the absolute best of social media management with all of the modern twists.

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Circleboom Review https://reviewproducts.net/circleboom-review/ https://reviewproducts.net/circleboom-review/#respond Sat, 13 Apr 2024 16:00:09 +0000 https://reviewproducts.net/?p=656 Circleboom Review Create AI social media posts across major platforms Circleboom is fantastic for anyone who wants the very best social media management tools without breaking the bank. With a simple UI and tons of features, Circleboom stands alongside Hootsuite and its rivals. While the cheaper tiers are sometimes light on features, the medium and ... Read more

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Circleboom Review

Create AI social media posts across major platforms

Circleboom is fantastic for anyone who wants the very best social media management tools without breaking the bank. With a simple UI and tons of features, Circleboom stands alongside Hootsuite and its rivals. While the cheaper tiers are sometimes light on features, the medium and high tiers are reasonably priced, and Circleboom often has a deal on the go.

Pros

  • +Simple to use and easy to get to grips with
  • +Powerful features
  • +Lots of pricing tiers
  • +ChatGPT integration

Cons

  • -Competitors offer more features for basic tiers
  • -24 hour support is limited to higher tiers

Circleboom is one of the most exciting entrants into the best social media management tools since its 2019 launch. Alongside the likes of Hootsuite and Buffer, Circleboom stands up as one of the more complete and comprehensive platforms, especially for managing Twitter (or X) accounts.

Almost every modern company engages with social media in some form, whether to hear from customers, solicit new business, or tell users about something new, and that makes managing those channels a high priority task.

Gone are the days when companies had a blog, updated whenever there was a new announcement, replaced by an ability to have more insight into users and readership than ever before, across an array of platforms that reach more people than ever in human history.

For Circleboom, the goal is to make intuitive and easy-to-use products, mostly focused on managing Twitter accounts and publishing across social media. The service isn’t focused on adding tons of random features, just offering the best.

Sign up for a Circleboom plan

Circleboom boasts that it offers the “most intuitive” social media management tool and, after using the service, it’s hard to disagree. While some competitors offer a much wider variety of different dials and knobs, Circleboom delivers on the basics (with some advanced features sprinkled in).

Combine that with some really reasonable pricing – as little as $210 per month for large enterprise customers, and much less for smaller businesses – and you get a very compelling offering.

Let’s dive into our Circleboom social media management review.

CIRCLEBOOM: PLANS AND PRICING

Circleboom splits its offering into two sections: Twitter Management, focused on Twitter (or now X) as the name implies, and Publish, which lets users design, plan, and automate their posts across a ton of platforms.

Starting with the X-focused offering, there is a very limited free offering that mostly serves to promote the other offerings. We’ll break down each plan and what it offers.

Limited Plan: mostly for tweet and like deletion, costing $9.99 per month

Pro: offering the basic set of features, like Follower Insights, Tracking, and other analytics, with support for accounts up to 25,000 followers, costing $16.99 per month

Plus: the most popular plan, which has all of the benefits of Pro plus dedicated 24/7 support, two accounts, and up to 100,000 followers, costing $23.99 per month

Premium: everything above plus support for 1 million followers and 150 account/keyword searches per month, costing $29.99 per month

(On top of these tiers, users can also pay an extra $1.99 per month for X unfollower notifications.)

The more advanced Publish option follows a fairly similar pattern to the Twitter-focused tool, except for higher prices due to the expanded nature of its features.

Pro: up to five social accounts, 300 scheduled posts, standard support, and ChatGPT integration for $24.99 per month

Premium: up to 10 accounts, unlimited posts, and ChatGPT for $34.99 per month

Business: up to 30 social accounts, unlimited posts, ChatGPT, and 24/7 support for $79.99 per month

Enterprise: up to 100 accounts, unlimited posts, and more for $209.99 per month.

For more details on the pricing and to find the best tier for your organisation, head to Circleboom. Right now, the company is offering money off many of its plans when you pay annually, so keep that in mind, especially if you’re thinking about Circleboom for a larger business.

CIRCLEBOOM: FEATURES

Circleboom covers a lot of ground for many of the key tools of social media management. Creating, scheduling, and managing posts is really easy and comes as part of all of the tiers except the most basic Limited Plan.

Analytics, follower tracking, advanced search, deleting tweets or posts, and a lot more comes as standard on most of the plans, too. Twitter Management is also handily available via an iOS app, for on the go tweeting, although the Publish suite requires a web browser.

On top of that, the Publish tool offers OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI smarts to create social media posts – which can then be vetted by humans before reaching the real world. Circleboom includes AI integrations in the cheapest level of Publish, too.

According to the company, support for TikTok is on the horizon, meaning you can easily measure your audience and post to the it-platform of the moment. There is already support for LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other platforms.

Because of the focus on a simple and understandable UI, Circleboom really excels on the basics and we had no trouble managing our accounts via the platform. Everything worked smoothly.

But what about when you needs get a bit more complicated?

If you’re a social media professional then deleting posts, checking analytics, and so on are things you can do in your sleep. You want more!

Luckily, Circleboom delivers when it comes to adding a ton of really technical features for managing the minutiae of the social media world. For this part, we’ll mostly focus on Publish, the more advanced of the two.

Let’s reel off some features: a Canva design tool, image and gif creation tools, advanced Instagram features (including Reels support, a hashtag generator, tagging, and AI content generation), a similar set of features for Facebook, X polls, LinkedIn document posts, advanced Pinterest posts, and “best time to post” features.

There’s a huge amount there and we recommend checking out Circleboom’s own list to see if your specific niche has been catered too. Suffice to say, whether you want to share insights on LinkedIn or corporate outtakes on TikTok, Circleboom has you covered.

One thing that’s worth repeating is the addition of OpenAI-powered smarts, which could make a big difference, especially if your social media department is small (or even a single person). Having a way to test ideas and concepts, and everything else we know AI can do, could prove to be an edge in 2024.

We’ve also listed Best content calendar software of 2024

CIRCLEBOOM: ANALYTICS AND REPORTING

The higher your tier goes the more choices of analytics tools there will be, but all of the plans come with the absolute basics of follower counts, suspected fake/spam followers, unfollower alerts, and similar insights for friends.

Users can also track follower growth, characteristics, language stats, gender stats, how each post is performing, and see the best time to tweet. Circleboom will also generate an interest cloud for your followers and create reports on rival accounts.

What you’re looking for will be different from company to company, but it’s highly like that Circleboom will have you covered on some level.

We’ve also listed Best online marketing service of 2024

CIRCLEBOOM: USER INTERFACE

This, really, is the big one for Circleboom: the website screams at every opportunity that their tool is an “intuitive and easy-to-use social media product”, created with a “keep it simple” mindset, a focus on intuitive design, and only adding features that are deemed essential.

Now, for the most hard-core user, that might not sound ideal, but for everyone else, especially those who want an easy way to just get on with social media without having to invest too much time, Circleboom is really, really good.

All of the various widgets and dials are well thought-out and, importantly, in obvious places around the user interface. I never found myself having to search for too long to find something specific, which is somewhat rare among its competitors.

CIRCLEBOOM: SUPPORT

Circleboom offers dedicated support but only for its more expensive plans, starting at the Premium plan for Publish and Plus for Twitter Management. What you get is high quality 24 hour phone and video support, helping solve most problems.

The company also publishes an extensive help section on its website, with a ton of different details from the very nooks and crannies of its app. Anything you’re unsure about will likely be covered there. You can, of course, also get in touch with Circleboom directly about any issues.

We’ve also listed Best SEO tool of 2024

CIRCLEBOOM: THE COMPETITION

While Hootsuite, for example, offers some of the most complex and detailed features for any of the apps, as do Buffer and Zoho Social, there is a beauty to the simplicity and ease with which you can use Circleboom.

We’ve taken an extensive look at the best social media management tools going right now, comparing them across a huge array of categories, so check that out if Circleboom didn’t quite scratch your itch.

CIRCLEBOOM: FINAL VERDICT

There’s a reason that NBC News, Netflix, BBC News, SoundCloud, the American Red Cross, L’Oreal, and a ton of other big-name companies use Circleboom: ease, efficiency, and integration across an array of apps.

The addition of AI-generated posting options via ChatGPT is really exciting and will give social media managers a new way to brainstorm ideas and concepts. All of the basics are there, too, from detailed analytics to support for all major services.

Big companies will definitely want to consider the more expensive, fully featured plans but we feel like there’s a level for everyone, and Circleboom is running some very exciting promo deals for many of its tiers, so don’t wait too long.

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ActivTrak Review https://reviewproducts.net/activtrak-review/ https://reviewproducts.net/activtrak-review/#respond Thu, 04 Apr 2024 16:00:35 +0000 https://reviewproducts.net/?p=682 ActivTrak Review The modern workplace analyzed. ActivTrak’s comprehensive workforce analytics and productivity software, allows businesses to gain valuable insights into their team’s performance, optimize resource allocation, and drive growth. With its flexible subscription plans and range of add-ons, ActivTrak offers a tailored solution for businesses of all sizes, empowering them to achieve their full potential. ... Read more

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ActivTrak Review

The modern workplace analyzed.

ActivTrak’s comprehensive workforce analytics and productivity software, allows businesses to gain valuable insights into their team’s performance, optimize resource allocation, and drive growth. With its flexible subscription plans and range of add-ons, ActivTrak offers a tailored solution for businesses of all sizes, empowering them to achieve their full potential.

Pros

  • +Choice of plans including free tier
  • +Scheduled calls for open support cases

Cons

  • -24/7 support only available through Signature Plan
  • -Additional options get expensive

ActivTrak is a company that provides workforce analytics and productivity software that can help teams understand how people work, whether in the office or remotely. It collects and analyzes data from user activity and provides insights that help businesses be more productive and compliant. It was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has more than 9,500 customers and over half a million users of its free version. ActivTrak has notable users that include Allstate, Orangetheory Fitness, and FAM Brands.

ACTIVTRAK: FEATURES

ActivTrak offers various features for payroll, HR, and other services for small and mid-sized businesses. Some of the features that ActivTrak provides include Dashboards which can view a summary of workforce productivity metrics to keep a pulse on issues that impact burnout, engagement and efficiency, Productivity Reports to spot patterns that fuel success and gain valuable insights to increase team productivity, and Location Insights to make data-driven decisions about hybrid work with insight into where employees work — even where they work best.

Taking it up a notch, there is also the Impact Analysis report, to understand how organizational change affects employees’ work habits and well-being, Application & Website Usage to understand which applications and websites employees use to identify adoption gaps, potential risk areas from unvetted tools, and budget correctly for the right tools, and Workload Management to uncover hidden potential and optimize work across people, process and technology. There is also Meeting Insights to obtain full visibility into the workday by integrating with your preferred platform of Outlook Calendar or Google Calendar. To plan ahead, further features are built into Benchmarks & Goals that can set and track workforce productivity benchmarks and goals using historical data and trends.

Going beyond traditional analysis is Personal Insights, designed to empower employees to improve productivity, focus, and work-life balance by providing deep insights into individual work habits. There is also Integrations that can easily combine ActivTrak productivity data with your other software applications to get the deeper insights you need to boost productivity and efficiency in the workplace. Finally, there are Alarms & Website Blocking that can use pre-built alarms- or create your own based on any combination of conditions- to get alerted to events such as file sharing, user deletion and more. You can also block access to unproductive or harmful websites to maximize productivity during “Company time.”

ACTIVTRAK: PRICING

ActivTrak is a workforce analytics and productivity software that offers various features for payroll, HR, and other services for small and mid-sized businesses. It has three subscription plans: Free, Essentials, and Professional.

Ideal for small teams or individual users, the Free plan is a cost-effective way to get started with ActivTrak. The plan however is limited to only 3 users and just 30 days of data history.

Priced at only $10 per user per month, the Essentials plan provides a comprehensive set of features for growing teams. It includes unlimited users, allowing you to scale your team without worrying about additional costs. With this, you’ll have access to 6 months of data history, enabling you to analyze trends and make data-driven decisions. Additionally, you’ll benefit from team productivity pulse, activity classification by groups, and more, empowering you to gain a deeper understanding of your team’s performance and identify opportunities for optimization.

At the top is the Professional plan that costs $17 per user per month and includes everything in Essentials plus 12 months of data history, insights dashboards, coaching, impact analysis, and more. The Professional plan also introduces insights dashboards, coaching, impact analysis, and other advanced features that help you maximize team performance, optimize resource allocation, and drive business growth.

You can also purchase add-ons for ActivConnect, Screen Details, and Data History.

ACTIVTRAK: SUPPORT

If you ever find yourself in need of assistance or support with ActivTrak, there are a multitude of options available to you. These encompass both direct support and self-help resources.

For direct support, you can engage in a live chat with a dedicated Support Advocate by simply logging into your ActivTrak platform and selecting the “Get Help” option. This method is the one to use for the fastest response times, ensuring your issues get addressed promptly.

Alternatively, you can reach out to the support team via email at support@activtrak.com. While some may prefer the convenience of support portals, we genuinely believe that email support offers a more personalized and efficient experience.

Once a support ticket is created, the ActivTrak team offers a remote session or phone call to help troubleshoot more complex issues. Customers can also request a meeting directly with the support engineer working their case.

Now, let’s explore the self-help resources at your disposal. The ActivTrak Support Center is a treasure trove of valuable resources, including webinars, videos, reports, templates, and comprehensive guides. It covers a wide range of topics, empowering you to find solutions and answers independently.

Whether you prefer direct support or self-help resources, ActivTrak has you covered. Their commitment to providing exceptional customer service is evident in the diverse options they offer.

ACTIVTRAK: FINAL VERDICT

ActivTrak is a workforce analytics and productivity software that offers various features for payroll, HR, and other services for small and mid-sized businesses. It collects and analyzes data from user activity and provides insights that help businesses be more productive and compliant.

ActivTrak offers various features including dashboards, productivity reports, and location insights to help businesses understand how people work and improve productivity. It also provides advanced features like impact analysis, application and website usage, workload management, meeting insights, benchmarks and goals, personal insights, integrations, alarms and website blocking. ActivTrak has three subscription plans: Free, Essentials, and Professional. For support, ActivTrak offers live chat, email support, as well as a comprehensive Support Center with resources such as webinars, videos, reports, templates, and guides.

Overall, ActivTrak offers a compelling suite of services sure to benefit many businesses looking for a competitive edge to increase their productivity.

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Adobe Acrobat Pro (2024) Review https://reviewproducts.net/adobe-acrobat-pro-2024-review/ https://reviewproducts.net/adobe-acrobat-pro-2024-review/#respond Fri, 29 Mar 2024 16:00:11 +0000 https://reviewproducts.net/?p=698 Adobe Acrobat Pro (2024) Review Edit PDFs like a Pro. Adobe Acrobat Pro has a few additional tools in its arsenal that Acrobat Standard lacks, and most of those would be a very useful addition to a professional workflow. It’s definitely worth trying out, but it’s also likely most customers won’t need anything more than ... Read more

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Adobe Acrobat Pro (2024) Review

Edit PDFs like a Pro.

Adobe Acrobat Pro has a few additional tools in its arsenal that Acrobat Standard lacks, and most of those would be a very useful addition to a professional workflow. It’s definitely worth trying out, but it’s also likely most customers won’t need anything more than the Standard version.

Pros

  • +Polished interface
  • +Good number of tools
  • +Advanced tools for business use
  • +Good redaction and security tools

Cons

  • -Best for professionals and businesses
  • -Some tools really belong in Acrobat Standard

Adobe Acrobat has evolved since its early days as a PDF all-in-one, growing into three separate multi-platform apps:

Acrobat Reader, Standard and Pro.

Each software adds an increasing number of features, so, if you just need to view a PDF document, Acrobat Reader is ideal. Acrobat Standard and Pro are best for PDF creation and editing, electronic signing, and a lot more document management options. In most cases, and in our experience, Acrobat Standard is the best PDF editor for most people, while Acrobat Pro adds a few more tools for the business or professional user.

We’ve already taken a look at Reader and Standard – you can check out our Adobe Acrobat Reader review and the Adobe Acrobat Standard review for more. It’s time to finish this PDF trilogy by exploring the capabilities of Adobe Acrobat Pro.

ADOBE ACROBAT PRO: PRICE & PLANS

Pro is the most expensive version of Acrobat, but it’s also included in Adobe’s All Apps Creative Cloud bundle.

It’s not going to be a surprise to learn that Pro is the most expensive Acrobat version – $19.99 / £19.97 a year paid monthly (monthly and annual upfront subscriptions are also available).

Unlike Acrobat Standard though, you can opt for a seven-day free trial, if you’d like to check its features out, but it does involve you initiating a subscription, so don’t forget to cancel it in time if you decide the app’s not for you.

There’s also an alternative way to grab a copy of Acrobat Pro: by getting an All Apps Creative Cloud subscription. It’s more expensive, but bundles the PDF editor with dozens of other apps like Photoshop and Premiere Pro, that all integrate seamlessly. This means that if you already have a subscription to handle your professional creative work (or you need one), you already have the most full featured version of Acrobat.

Pricing & plans: 4/5

ADOBE ACROBAT PRO: INTERFACE & EXPERIENCE

The interface is the same as for Reader and Standard:

clean, simple and efficient

Very elegant and well designed interface, offering you various ways of performing the same action, which gives you the flexibility of using the one that suits you best.

Just like Reader and Standard – and just as you’d hope, expect, dream – Acrobat Pro’s interface is clean, simple, well-designed. We found the tools are easy to locate and use, offering you various ways of working.

All told, this creates a highly flexible interface that works for you. Acrobat Pro doesn’t force you to alter your workflow, to do it the Adobe way or else. It’s a fantastic piece of design, particularly for Standard and Pro. We did find Reader’s interface felt more like an advert for Adobe’s superior PDF editors.

Interface: 4/5

ADOBE ACROBAT PRO: STANDARD TOOLS

All the features available in the Standard edition are present and correct in Pro’s comprehensive toolkit

As you’d expect, all the tools available in Standard can be accessed in Pro. This means you’re able to comment on a PDF, share it with others and track the progress of those files. You can change a PDF’s format, and export it as a Microsoft document (Word, Excel or PowerPoint), turn a PDF into images, convert it to HTML, edit it, change the embedded text and images, create PDFs from scratch, fill in and sign PDFs (it’s some of the best eSignature software we’ve ever tested), and there’s plenty more besides.

You also have the ability to combine multiple PDFs into a single file, reorder pages, and delete some. When it comes to security, adding a password to protect a PDF’s content and prevent others from editing it is a cinch. This is all done in a very intuitive way, and even though you might select a specific tool, you’re able to effortlessly access others without having to leave the confines of said tool.

It’s a very comprehensive, even impressive, feature-set – and that’s just the tools you get in Acrobat Standard.

Tools: 4.5/5

ADOBE ACROBAT PRO: PRO TOOLS

Use Acrobat’s Accessibility tool to check if your file meets the accessibility compliance standard.

Some very useful and obviously professional tools, coupled with others that should really be considered mainstream by now.

While the ‘as-Standard’ tools feel weighty, essential for a PDF power user, we couldn’t shake the sense that some tools labelled as “Pro”, don’t really feel that they belong in a “Pro” category.

Take the ability to turn a scanned paper document into a searchable PDF. Although it’s undoubtedly highly useful to be able to do that, some of the best free PDF editors, and even modern hardware, have been offering such a feature for a while now. Take your iPhone camera: you can take a photo with it and any text contained within it becomes selectable – and all without having to pay a subscription.

Another one which is more understandably a Pro feature, is the ability to create and validate PDFs to meet accessibility standards. This is a very important feature for any business, and once you check a document, you’re given a list of issues to fix to improve a document’s accessibility. Some can be resolved automatically, while others may require a little more work. But, we find it baffling why this is restricted to the Pro version? Wouldn’t this feature be of greater benefit if the Standard version had access to it as well?

Adobe Acrobat Pro during our review process

Redacting sensitive information is so easy to do with Acrobat’s ‘Redact’ tool

Be that as it may, as with other features included with Acrobat, it all works well and is easy to understand. There’s even a menu called ‘Explain’ which sends you to a webpage telling you why there’s a problem, and why it’s important to fix it.

Something that makes more sense in the Pro arena is the ability to compare two versions of a document. Acrobat will give you a summary of the disparity through a visual representation, and even gives you the ability to filter those results to make it clearer what has changed. We could see this as an invaluable tool in anyone’s workflow.

Redaction can also prove highly useful when there’s sensitive information on a PDF you’d rather not share with others. As you’d expect, the way it works is incredibly simple: just highlight all the problematic sections, and once you’re done, click on ‘Apply’.

In addition to blanking out certain passages and images, there’s another little highlight here. You also have the option of automatically removing a document’s metadata, embedded URLs, comments, and more. Adobe calls it ‘sanitising’ and if you’re into not passing on too much data, it’s a one-click wonder.

It’s clear that Adobe Acrobat Pro’s market is much more of a niche one than who they’re aiming for with ‘Standard’. It’s highly likely most people will be more than satisfied with Standard, even though Pro is the one included with the All Apps Creating Cloud subscription. However, if those additional tools are crucial to your workflow, you’ll find them extremely well implemented and easy to use in Acrobat Pro.

SHOULD I BUY?

Have different versions of the same file? ‘Compare Files’ will look at them both and tell you what’s different about them (Image credit: Adobe)

BUY IT IF…

You need advanced PDF editing tools, including redaction, and accessibility compliance, or you already subscribe to Adobe’s Creative Cloud package, which includes it by default.

DON’T BUY IT IF…

You want a simple way to view or make basic alterations to a PDF – in our experience, Pro is equipped with more features than most casual users will need.

ADOBE ACROBAT PRO: ALTERNATIVES

We’ve tested out man of the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives if Pro isn’t for you.

If Acrobat Pro is a bit more than you bargained for, we recommend checking out Adobe Acrobat Standard – it’s a great choice for most people’s PDF needs.

For some other top apps, see our pdfFiller review for a browser-based PDF editor that’s surprisingly full of features. For a free alternative, see our PDF24 Creator review – it’s our favorite free PDF tool and it’s packed full of essential document management tools.

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Acer Swift Go 14 Review: Striking the Right Balance https://reviewproducts.net/acer-swift-go-14-review/ https://reviewproducts.net/acer-swift-go-14-review/#respond Fri, 08 Mar 2024 16:00:11 +0000 https://reviewproducts.net/?p=557 Acer Swift Go 14 Review: Striking the Right Balance Acer introduced the Swift Go laptop series at CES 2023, powered by both Intel and AMD CPUs. The AMD Ryzen-powered laptop was launched in March of this year in India, and today we’ll be reviewing the base model of the Swift Go 14. It is aimed ... Read more

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Acer Swift Go 14 Review: Striking the Right Balance

Acer introduced the Swift Go laptop series at CES 2023, powered by both Intel and AMD CPUs. The AMD Ryzen-powered laptop was launched in March of this year in India, and today we’ll be reviewing the base model of the Swift Go 14. It is aimed at the urban youth who would want a stylish and premium looking laptop which is portable and powerful. Let’s find out if the Swift Go 14 checks all the boxes.

Acer Swift Go 14 price in India

The Acer Swift Go 14 is available in Prodigy Pink and Pure Silver colours. On the Acer India online store, the laptop starts at Rs. 59,999 and is the variant we’ll be testing. This comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. For about Rs. 5,000 more, you can get the same configuration but with 16GB of RAM.

Acer Swift Go 14 design and features

The Acer Swift Go 14 features a metal chassis which is what gives it a premium look and feel. It’s also quite compact and lightweight measuring just 15.9mm in thickness and 1.25kg in weight. The pink variant actually looks nice and grows on you after a while. You get a good variety of ports for a 14-inch laptop and these include two USB 3.2 (Gen1) Type-C ports for charging, HDMI, USB 3.2 (Gen1) Type-A port, USB 2.0 Type-A port, headphone jack, and a Kensington lock. There’s no SD card reader of any kind, which I don’t think is a total loss. The right side of the laptop also has two LEDs for the power and activity status.

The Acer Swift Go 14 features an all-metal chassis and is fairly light

The backlit keyboard on the Acer Swift Go 14 is nicely laid out, and the keys themselves are responsive and not noisy. There’s a fingerprint sensor in the power button which wobbles when pressed, unlike the rest of the keys, but it works fine when it comes to authentication. The trackpad does a good job of tracking and you get a decent amount of room to rest your palms.

The 14-inch display has a 16:9 aspect ratio, making it ideal for watching most video content. The Acer Swift Go 14 uses an IPS display panel with a full-HD (1920×1080) resolution and comes with a matte, anti-glare finish. The display has a rated maximum brightness of 300 nits which I found to be more than adequate. The 1080p webcam is quite inconspicuous and is located just above the display. The Acer Swift Go 14 ships with just a 65W USB Type-C charger in the box.

Acer Swift Go 14 specifications and software

The Acer Swift Go 14 features an AMD Ryzen 5 7530U CPU featuring six CPU cores. It’s part of AMD’s mobile CPU refresh which was announced during CES this year. However, this model is based on a refreshed Zen 3 architecture, unlike the 7040 series which uses the latest Zen 4 architecture. This is currently the only CPU configuration that Acer offers in India for the Swift Go 14 series. Storage is taken care of by a 512GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 SSD, and there’s 8GB of RAM. The laptop also features Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1, and a 3-cell 50WHr battery.

The Acer Swift Go 14 features a good number of ports for a 14-inch laptop

The Acer Swift Go 14 ships with Windows 11 Home, along with the usual preinstalled programs such as Microsoft Office Home and Student, McAfee antivirus, and bunch of softwares by Acer for system diagnostics and keeping drivers up to date.

Acer Swift Go 14 performance and battery life

General performance of the Acer Swift Go 14 is very good. It runs cool and the fans are not audible when performing simple tasks, but you can hear them faintly during gaming. I found the typing angle to be quite ergonomic as the base is propped up a bit when the lid is open. The keyboard backlighting is also soothing and the display gets sufficiently bright even for daytime outdoor use. Applications are quick to load and I never really felt any lack of power.

The stereo speakers get loud but don’t sound all that great. Games run decently well with the onboard Radeon graphics. I was able to get smooth framerates in Fortnite with medium graphics and running at the display’s native resolution. In synthetic gaming tests such as 3DMark, the Acer Swift Go 14 returned a score of 1,268 in the Time Spy test suite, and 13,570 in Night Raid. CPU and SSD performance was also very good. The laptop scored 566 and 3,664 points in Cinebench R20, and returned an average read speed of over 1.5GB/s for both sequential and random tests in SiSoft Sandra. Write speeds were lower coming in under 900MB/s.

Video rendering and encoding performance was also quite good. The Acer Swift Go 14 took 45 seconds to encode a 1.3GB AVI file to H.265 MKV, while the BMW test scene in Blender took 6 minutes, 18 seconds to render. These were lower (better) times compared to something like the Intel Core i5-1335U CPU which we recently tested in the Dell Inspiron 16 2-in-1.

The keyboard on the Acer Swift Go 14 is comfortable to type on

Battery life is another highlight of the Acer Swift Go 14. Considering its size, it ran for an impressive 3 hours, 26 minutes in the Battery Eater Pro benchmark. With my daily workflow, I was able to get roughly 7-8 hours of non-stop use before the battery went below 10 percent. By these estimates, it should be possible to get even up to 10 hours of use on one charge (or more), if you don’t use it non-stop. The laptop can be charged fairly quickly using the bundled charger. You get roughly a 70 percent charge in an hour.

Verdict

It’s really hard to find fault with the Acer Swift Go 14 as it does everything you’d expect from a thin and light laptop, and this is before you even consider the price. At Rs. 59,999 (less during sales), you get a well-designed compact laptop with good performance and long battery life. The speakers are possibly the only thing that’s a little underwhelming, and the wobbly power button feels a little out of place in an otherwise well put-together laptop (or it could just be our unit). The Swift Go 14 is definitely worth recommending if you’re looking for a compact Windows laptop under Rs. 60,000 that doesn’t compromise on battery life.

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Top 10 Home Office Supplies: Reviews, Ratings, Prices, and More https://reviewproducts.net/top-10-home-office-supplies/ https://reviewproducts.net/top-10-home-office-supplies/#respond Mon, 26 Jun 2023 13:05:13 +0000 https://reviewproducts.net/?p=247 Top 10 Home Office Supplies: Reviews, Ratings, Prices, and More Introduction Setting up a functional and efficient home office is essential for productivity and focus. The right office supplies can go a long way in creating a conducive work environment. To help you choose the best home office supplies, we’ve put together a list of ... Read more

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Top 10 Home Office Supplies: Reviews, Ratings, Prices, and More

Introduction

Setting up a functional and efficient home office is essential for productivity and focus. The right office supplies can go a long way in creating a conducive work environment. To help you choose the best home office supplies, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 products. This article provides detailed reviews, ratings, prices, and other essential information to guide you in selecting the essential supplies for your home office. We have considered factors such as quality, functionality, user feedback and value for money for each product to ensure a comprehensive assessment.

Ergonomic office chair

Review: An ergonomic office chair provides excellent support and promotes proper posture while ensuring comfort during long hours of work.

Rating: 9.5/10

Price: Starting at $199.00

Adjustable Standing Desk

Review: An adjustable standing desk allows you to switch between sitting and standing positions, promoting better blood circulation and reducing sedentary behavior.

Rating: 9.4/10

Price: Starting at $299.00

Dual Monitor Setup

Review: A dual monitor setup boosts productivity by providing more screen space for multitasking and efficient workflow management.

Rating: 9.3/10

Price: Starting at $199.99 per monitor

Wireless keyboard and mouse

Review: A wireless keyboard and mouse eliminate clutter and provide freedom of movement, increasing comfort and convenience while working.

Rating: 9.2/10

Price: Starting at $49.99

Desk organizer

Review: A desk organizer helps keep your workspace neat and organized, providing easy access to pens, notepads and other essentials.

Rating: 9.1/10

Price: Starting at $9.99

Task lighting

Review: Ample task lighting reduces eye strain and improves focus, ensuring optimal visibility for reading, writing and computer work.

Rating: 9.0/10

Price: Starting at $29.99

Noise-canceling headphones

Review: Noise-canceling headphones block out distractions, so you can focus on your work without interruption.

Rating: 8.9/10

Price: Starting at $99.99

Desktop File Organizer

Review: A desktop file organizer helps manage paperwork and important documents, keeping them neatly organized and easily accessible.

Rating: 8.8/10

Price: Starting at $19.99

Multifunction Printer

Review: A multifunction printer provides printing, scanning, and copying capabilities in one device, saving space and time.

Rating: 8.7/10

Price: Starting at $149.99

Whiteboard or Corkboard

Review: A whiteboard or corkboard provides a visual space for brainstorming, reminders, and displaying important notes or documents.

Rating: 8.6/10

Price: Starting at $19.99

Conclusion

Equipping your home office with the right supplies is important for productivity, comfort and organization. The top 10 home office supplies listed in this article have been carefully reviewed on the basis of quality, functionality, user ratings and value for money. From ergonomic chairs and standing desks to wireless keyboards and multifunction printers, these supplies meet a variety of needs and preferences. Consider your specific needs, read detailed reviews, compare prices, and choose the supplies that best fit your home office setup. With the right home office supplies, you can create an efficient and comfortable workspace that increases your productivity and work satisfaction.

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