Many people these days have switched over to music streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, or YouTube Music. Long gone are the days for many when their phone used to be filled to the brim with MP3 files, as streaming has become so much more convenient for many, myself included. Still, there are times when locally stored music has its own advantages over streamed media. For example, you can store files in FLAC format, a lossless codec which promises the highest sound quality possible. Files are larger, sure, but they sound better on higher quality headsets and speakers. That's without getting into the data usage of streaming media, even if you can save songs locally on your service of choice as well. If you prefer to use locally stored media, then you'll need a music player for that, which is where Poweramp comes in.

Poweramp is one of the oldest and most revered music players on the Google Play Store. With hundreds of features, it is one of the best music player available for anyone who is serious about their offline listening. The app hasn't received a lot of media attention lately, but recently even more features were added in Poweramp 3.0, many of which users might not know about. We decided to review the latest version of Poweramp to see how the app currently stands. And to celebrate 9 years since its release, we're giving away 90 codes - courtesy of the developer. Poweramp offers a 14-day trial, which is what we used for this review. We also recommend that you check out the app on free trial before you buy, so that you can figure out if this is the right music player for you. You can check out Poweramp's website here.


Poweramp on Android

Look and feel

Poweramp's customizability options alone set it far ahead of much of the competition. What other music apps allow you to install a custom theme from the Google Play Store? Not many. Poweramp comes with a dark theme and a light theme, with the option to install as many more as you like from external sources. On top of that, you can change around elements of the UI, such as remove the Chromecast button, add a track counter, change the rating system, control animations, and so much more. There are so many options available.

But options are nothing if the app itself isn't intuitive to use. It's very basic to use, with no ambiguity as to how it functions as a music player. Simply open the app, choose how you want to view your music and then select a song.

One feature that was added in version 3.0 of Poweramp is the ability to have a custom music visualizer in the background of the player UI. There are so many pre-configured options that you can select, and you can customize the visualizer from in settings as well. It's fully reactive to the frequencies that are playing in the song that you're currently listening to, so it's a pretty neat feature to have.

Poweramp features

Poweramp is filled to the brim with features. There are so many that it's honestly hard to keep track, and the settings menu can almost appear daunting at first. If you're on Android Q, for example, you can seek through a track straight from your notifications. Listen to any albums with interludes? You can have Poweramp skip songs in a playthrough of an album that is below a certain length.  There's also forced wakelocking so that Poweramp isn't killed in the background, automatic album art downloading, automatic resume when a headset is plugged back in/connected, and so much more. It is well laid out too as features are organized neatly into sections. There's also scrobbling support, Android Auto support, and even an option to skip songs by long pressing the volume keys (though this feature requires adb to enable). Poweramp also gets quite a decent amount of updates, so there are always new features getting added. Just take a look at the changelogs for the most recent versions to get an idea of how big the updates can be. Finally, there's a fantastic equalizer that comes as part of Poweramp that we'll be talking a lot more about in the next section.

Audio quality

Audio quality is what Poweramp was known for back in the day, along with its solid collection of features. Using its own audio decoders, Poweramp is able to have consistently high sound quality across all devices. Because it decodes the audio by itself and doesn't rely on the Android system to do any of the work, its equalizer is one of the best in the business. It doesn't need to use Android's audio equalizer API, instead applying the changes that the user chooses to the decoded stream. What's more, there are a lot of changes that the user can make. There are lots of different equalizer presets too, so that the user can tune it to their own listening style.


Final thoughts on Poweramp, and Giveaway

Poweramp is the best offline music player that I've ever used, and I've used a lot of them. Sure, I've switched over to the likes of Spotify, but that's out of convenience. If you prefer higher quality audio files, then Poweramp's commitment to high audio fidelity, great features, and fantastic usability are likely going to suit you just as well. If you think Poweramp is the music player for you, then you should also be sure to check back in this comment section and the comment section on the YouTube video embedded above, as we have 90 Poweramp keys to giveaway! Make sure to give the trial a go first, to ensure that it's the music player for you before you make a decision. Good luck!