There's an app for that. And an app for that. And an app for that. And pretty soon your iPad is packed with apps that do just one thing really well. Take e-readers. Kindle is good, if you buy their format exclusively, but it’s not so hot for anything else. Stanza handles most e-books, but CBR- and CBZ-formatted e-books are a bit blurry, and PDFs lack decent controls. GoodReader is brilliant for PDFs and several other formats, but EPUB files don’t make the cut. And you could say the same for other media.
If only there were one VLC-style, Swiss Army knife app for all digital media. Well, Zen Viewer HD aims to be that app.
With a simple, eye-pleasing design, Zen Viewer HD from The Skins Factory succeeds impressively in format capabilities. Microsoft Office, Apple iWork, PDFs, CBR/CBZ, EPUB, it’s all here and it all just works. There's no blurriness and no odd rendering; everything fits on the pages perfectly. It just works. Brighten the screen, increase the font size, access the table of contents -- even customize the interface with themes. Six themes are included in the app, and you can purchase more from the Theme Manager for 99 cents each.
Want to add files from the cloud? Zen Viewer hits the highlights: Dropbox, Box, MobileMe, and Google Docs. You can also transfer content to the app over Wi-Fi, by using iTunes, or even download directly from URLs.
And Zen Viewer HD doesn't stop with document files, handling digital media in a wide variety of formats. From within the app, you can watch videos (MOV, MP4, V4V, and M-JPG), view photos (JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG, TIF, CR2, NEF, ICO, CUR, and XBM) on their own or as a slideshow, and play music (M4A, MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC, and CAF). Still not enough? Zen Viewer lets you record audio, if you like. If that seems like a lot of formats to cram into one app, don’t worry. The capable search function makes it easy to find whatever you’re looking for, with preset filters and the ability to search by file extension. You can even compress documents right inside the app, if you want to email them, or just save space on your iPad.
Our complaints are very few. Zen Viewer had a bug with the MP3 we added, where the volume control wasn’t available for our tracks until we restarted the app. There's a few too many onscreen prompts. And EPUB files, instead of broken up into pages, are presented as one long single page that we had to scroll (and scroll, and scroll) our way through. That wouldn't be such a problem if Zen Viewer could remember your place or attach a bookmark to a specific location, rather than just the chapter itself. Bookmarks worked fine in PDF and CBR files, but with one long EPUB page, we're going to need some improvements here. But that's pretty much it.
The bottom line. The developers provide great support and have a few updates planned, including AirPlay support, annotations, and an “open in” command. But even at the current version, Zen Viewer HD takes a complex job and handles it remarkably well.
of 7
iPad running iOS 3.2 or later
Reads nearly anything, plays nearly everything, and even lets you record audio.
Constant tips and reminders make the navigation seem more complicated.
The Skins Factory
April 06, 2011 at 8:52am
Just wanted to add: We released a newer version (1.1.6.1) a couple of days before this review went live, that not only introduced AirPlay functionality to Zen Viewer, but also complete 'Open In' capabilities. So not only can you import via 'Open In' from external apps into our app, you can also export files out of Zen Viewer.
kenhughes707
April 06, 2011 at 6:40am
Looks awesome! I'm currently using GoodReader + Dropbox, but for only $3 I'll definitely be giving this one a shot.
The Skins Factory
April 05, 2011 at 3:01pm
About the tips and reminders - You can actually just kill them all at once in Settings. We just keep them on by default to help people navigate the app. Thanks!
