When it comes to online file downloaders and managers out there for Mac, you have quite a few options to choose from, with a lot of them claiming to bring features that make it different and better than all the other ones. I usually don’t buy those claims with their hefty price tag, instead looking for plugins for my favorite web browser (Firefox!) that will get the job done for me for free. Prior to my experiences with Elmedia Player, which I’ll be extensively covering below, the only other download app I’ve really worked with on Mac OS X is Grappler from The Little App Factory, which worked, but not extraordinarily well.

However, a few days ago the developers over at Eltima Software got in touch with us about their download manager app, Elmedia Player. Although I was skeptical about this at first, I agreed to give the app a try and was quite impressed by what it had to offer. Elmedia Player goes for a sort of iTunes-ish look, offering speed, functionality, and aesthetics all in one app.

Ratings:

User Interface: 4.5/5

Functionality: 4.0/5

Aesthetics: 4.5/5

Reuse Value: 4.25/5

Overall Rating: 4.25/5

Additional Details:

Reviewed on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Reviewed Version 4.2.

User Interface:

Elmedia Player provides a user interface that is quite similar to iTunes, as one can see from the screenshot of the app above. The left navigation allows you to access an online internet portal, as well as the files that you have already downloaded. By toggling buttons on the bottom right of the screen, you can show or hide certain sidebar elements. Overall, the user interface is easy to familiarize with and deserves a solid 4.5/5 star rating.

Functionality:

Elmedia Player does a pretty good job with functionality too, and has way better download speeds than the aforementioned Grappler does (in Grappler, you actually had to be playing the video in order for it to download.) By accessing any web page with Elmedia Player’s built in web browser, you’ll get a list of all the media files that are on that page, along with a link to download each and one of them. This includes music files, movie files, flash files, images, the list goes on and on. The file will be saved to your computer and you can access it using the app.

I experienced a little bit of lag on my early 2010 Macbook Pro with 4GB of RAM, especially when loading web pages (and grabbing all those resources, I assume.) The circle rainbow spinner of death replaced my cursor for a few seconds, but in the end it all worked out just fine, with the app resuming its normal functionality. This is all bearable, as I haven’t yet done that RAM upgrade I’ve been meaning to do for a long time now, and I’m sure with a better processor and some more RAM, the lag problems would be fixed immediately.

The core issue that I’ve had with functionality is that you can only access video and SWF files from within the app. Other files, such as mp3, gif, etc, will all be sent do your Downloads folder, where you can view it using Finder. I would highly suggest that you add a music player and image viewer to Elmedia Player. Although the app primarily focuses on video files, it’s a big plus that you can actually download other resources, but it would also be handy to view them without switching to another app.

Overall, I was quite satisfied with Elmedia Player’s functionality, 4.0/5 stars.

Aesthetics:

Elmedia Player looks good overall, and aesthetics for this app really go hand in hand with the user interface. Nothing to complain about, solid 4.5/5 stars.

Reuse Value:

Throughout my experiences with testing and using Elmedia Player, I am, overall, extremely satisfied with the app. That being the case, I feel that Elmedia can become the one app that I use to download media files from the web, whether they be videos, sound, or anything else. A great app comes bundled with a great replay value: 4.25/5 stars.

Summing It Up:

Although I haven’t really used download manager files such as Elmedia Player in the past and my experiences with some other apps such as Grappler haven’t been all that great, Elmedia Player truly is a pretty awesome app, although it is missing some functionality to view non-video content. Overall 4.25/5 stars for this app.

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