Vimeo

The Story

YouTube’s classier younger brother makes a long-awaited appearance on Android Market, but not without some complaints of bugs and lack of crucial functionality – so is it worth the space on your SD card?

The Experience

There’s no denying that Vimeo is a looker. Just like the desktop version, Vimeo looks and feel classier, more slick and modern than its competitors.

Membership is the central feature of the app, so you have to have an account before you can comment, like, etc, but information is seamlessly synced from your desktop account. If you’re already a member, your videos will be displayed on your start screen in an instantly recognisable thumbnail formation and you can browse all your favourites or saved clips.

Once you’ve chosen your clip, you’ll see a preview pane accompanied by various info, such as popularity, related clips and comments.

Video playback performs well – with load times are super-slick via Wifi and we found that uploading to the app was also a doddle, using either the cameraroll function for existing video or shooting straight to the app with our cam.

Initial feedback on the Android Market has been a little lukewarm, however, with the app facing complaints of timestamp errors and lack of HD – Vimeo puts this down to the number of different devices that Android can be installed on, which has lead to some compatibility problems. And indeed, we found that some video was perplexingly low-quality and there can be ratio issues in landscape mode.

The Bottom Line

A long-awaited addition and a great looker for your tablet, but needs to up its game and offer more playback options before it’s a market leader.