Our best media player article has been fully updated for 2011.
Some media players are bloated monsters, packed with unnecessary features. You've seen the results: open an HD video and they'll keep you waiting while your hard drive thrashes, your RAM is gobbled up and your CPU utilisation reaches new highs.
You don't have to put up with this, though. Other media players launch in a flash, and then make minimal demands on your system resources, allowing smooth HD video playback even on the most underpowered of PC hardware.
There's a problem, of course - you have to figure out which players fall into each category. And that's not easy, because everyone claims their own products are fast, efficient and great performers, whether they are, or they're really not.
The answer was obvious, then. We had to benchmark the players ourselves. So we took 16 of the top contenders from around the web, measured the time it took them to load and begin playing (largely) HD videos in 6 common formats (MP4-based AVI, H264 MOV, MPEG-2, MP4, OGG and FLV), and monitored their average CPU utilisation and RAM requirements.
And it turned out there were major differences in launch time and resource use between some of the programs – so let's find out which is the best media player for 2011...
The contenders
We selected the following 16 popular media players for the tests.
Media Player Classic Home Cinema 1.5.0.2827
How we tested
The benchmark process started by selecting our test videos, and we opted for five versions of the Creative Commons-licensed animation, Big Buck Bunny.
These included an AVI movie with MP4 video and AC3 surround sound, a MOV file with H264 video and AAC surround sound, and an OGG Theora video with Vorbis stereo sound, all of which were full 1080p resolution.
For good measure we also grabbed a copy of the Flash video (FLV) and iPod 5G versions (320x180), before creating a PAL DVD-compliant version of the file to test MPEG-2 playback.
We chose a reasonably powerful test PC, equipped with Windows 7, 4GB of RAM and an Intel Core i7-2533 CPU. And a baseline hard drive image was taken, to ensure each program would start with the same filters, codecs and system configuration.
We then opened the test videos in each of our media players, noting the time it took for them to begin playback.
And as the players worked, we used Process Hacker to access the average CPU utilisation and RAM (private working set) and RAM they required. We didn't try to optimise the player's settings to improve results, so our figures relate to the default settings only: it's possible that some players may work faster or use less resources if you spend time working on their settings.
Your comments (28) Click to add a new comment
szwillheart
October 18th 2011
28. Following the most recent comments, I test FFmpegBox's SwiftPlayer(http://www.swiftplayer.ffmpegbox.com/downloads/SwiftPlayerSetup.exe) and Mirillis's Splash Pro(http://mirillis.com/en/downloads/downloads_splashpro.html) using my laptop(1.60 GHz CPU, 512 MB Memory, Windows XP). First, Big Buck Bunny(http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download/). SwiftPlayer can play it smoothly and the audio frames synchoronize with video frames, Splash Pro can't play the video at all, only voice can be heard. Then I test a preview of an animated film from Pixar Animation Studios, it's a a 1080P video clip(http://dl.pconline.com.cn/download/57029.html), SwiftPlayer can again play it smoothly and the audio frames synchoronize with video frames, Splash Pro can't play it normally because 100% CPU utilisation(voice broken, video somewhat jerkky). You can test it youself.
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nsyubo
October 16th 2011
27. What I want to say is that the fastest and least resource-demanding video player is none of those list in it. The champion is SwiftPlayer(http://www.swiftplayer.ffmpegbox.com), you should really try it. It is by far the fastest and least resource-demanding and can play nearly(maybe exactly) every file formats.
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onetrueben
April 15th 2011
26. Any chance of a similar article for Mac?
Cheers
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richmondthuku
April 3rd 2011
25. @guan :after your comment i actually checked out mirillis and its EFFIN AWESOME!!! seriously its really really good got all id wished vlc to have n' more, thanks dude guess i'm dumping my vlc too.. served me well tho
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loftie
April 1st 2011
24. I use MPC for videos, but for music, I use JetAudio. To me it's by far the best audio player, then again I have tweaked BBE to my tastes so that'll be why!
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masgolem
March 31st 2011
23. i try download vlc player, but my anti virus (ESET NOD32) denied the files...???? shall i change anti virus software???
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asharer
March 28th 2011
22. VLC is good, i mean the format supported, but actually sometimes i would like to use Windows Media Player, because it takes up very less computer resource, and runs fast.
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spectateswamp
March 23rd 2011
21. Within 10 minutes of leaving the golf course. All 180 video clips are up and playing on the clubhouse screen (random by foursome). None of your pretenders will match that. The grouping is accomplished by shooting a short video clip (2 secs or less) as the foursome approaches the tee; the software recognizes it as a group break. By having 2 camcorders that name their files in the format yyyymmddhhmmss.mpg Video clips are easily synced!!! Each short video is played followed by the last 3 seconds of each video (the swing) in slow motion.
The Videos had them glued to the screen during the awards supper.
Nope none of the pretenders can touch Swamp video on the Golf Course.
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thetruthhurts..
March 8th 2011
20. Xbmc + Mac Pro = the shizznit
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guan
March 7th 2011
19. I dumped VLC years ago in favour of Mirillis's Splash Pro
http://mirillis.com/en/products/splash.html
Even the free Lite version runs circles around VLC.
Plays 1080p mkv's and avi's effortlessly especially on a dual core machine with it's hardware acceleration support and you can set it to load subtitle files automatically.
Very surprised it's not in your list as it is very popular on av forums.
If there's anything it doesn't support I have ALLPlayer and KMP as backup.
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scripter1
December 7th 2010
18. ALLPlayer is the best but version 4.2 is out of date.
ALLPlayer 4.5 is lunching much faster & uses less cpu and ram.
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maciek
December 7th 2010
17. I use ALLPlayer. I'm very happy with it. It can download matching subtitles, missing best codecs
and looks good.
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hell
November 17th 2010
16. sorry guys windows media player doesn't plays every format it doesn't even provide fullscreen output god knows what guys at microsoft are improving and using vlc is like moving back to 20 years back they even not changing that unusable interface for me its splayer it runs each and every format and provide quality output it has hardware decoding guys just try this one you will not regret.
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golgo13
November 15th 2010
15. Sorry, guys, you sorta missed the boat on this one. I always find it odd that VLC is always toted as the ultimate player "because it plays everything", or that some relatively inconsequential metric (start up times?) is used to determine the winner.
When I play a video, I want the sharpest, clearest picture, with the most intuitive interface. And I want it to load subtitles automatically without giving me some cryptic message (you listening MPC?)
I tested two movies ("le Samourai" and "Scott Pilgrim") on three players: MPC, VLC, and KMP.
MPC: Fuzzy, no subs, FF slow, simple interface.
VLC: Fuzzy, subs, jerky playback, lousy interface.
KMP: Sharpest, subs, most intuitive interface.
Done. KMP is the winner. I've noticed this before on other computers, KMP with standard settings constantly has the sharpest, clearest color. Subs load automatically, and the arrow keys do what they should. Test it yourself. Load two players, play the movies and flick between them in full screen mode. KMP will constantly have the sharpest picture.
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kwokshsee
November 6th 2010
14. I used to find The KMPlayer the best of the pack (yeah, WMP, RealPlayer, Real Alternative, Quicktime are simply no comparsion). Its sound is especially rich and authentic, its interface intuitive, very friendly, and extremely convenient.
But now, I discover one that is even better: XMP (Xunlei Media Player)! It is as versatile and user-friendly as KMP, but at the same time much better than the latter when it comes to media that are critically resource-demanding, like HD videos, mtc, mkv files etc. It is especially true when your system resources are in the tight.
The major shortcoming --- and it is a "big" one --- is that it comes in a Chinese interface, becos it is developed in China. So, if you happen to know Chinese, XMP is highly recommended. You need to try it to believe!
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terran71
September 30th 2010
13. well i think ill go against the grain of this test. if the player starts slow it might be less strain for all i know. the slowest is total video player here and it performed well in the other comparisons so it might not be too bad, think ill give it a try. i downloaded winamp but as soon as i saw it was affiliated with aol said nope, dont want that **** on my machine and had to delete
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frediii
April 21st 2010
12. gom has better time stretching support, easy control, and least distorted sound when sped up. also the time jump is smoothest and easiest to use to quick skip ahead with ease at times. its great for files like mkv/avi, but for dvd vlc works better.
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rm5
April 21st 2010
11. Have you heard of these other two popular media players that I use quite often, one of them is called ITUNES, the other QUICKTIME??
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latino
April 18th 2010
10. I agree totally with lovlid. Who gives a **** about 2 seconds when you are going to watch a movie that will cost you two hours.
A few weeks ago I tried to watch a 1080p movie with VLC and MPC and I couldn't finish it because my laptop almost burned down!
Hey, but at least it started up quite fast! Yeah!
I'm happy I've found Splash Player now, it uses my GPU for decoding and uses 3-5% CPU time. No more heat, no more tearing, subtitles always work.....and.....to make you happy.....it started up a 8GB movie in 2 seconds!
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