GOM Player for Windows

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GOM player is a safe, free multimedia player that offers a lot more than just playing movies and music. You can also play damaged files or those that are being downloaded. It comes with a YouTube tab that lets you search and play videos right from the app. Playback comes in many modes and configurations that let you view or listen to your media in different ways.

Versatility

GOM Player does so much more than your typical media software. The simple interface disguises numerous features, including codecs search, YouTube player, and subtitles. One thing it doesn’t do is manage your files well. This app is more of a browser than anything it aspires to be. Most of your activities will revolve around watching YouTube videos, which you have already been doing before downloading it.

A good feature is the GOM remote. You can control the PC software from your smartphone

There are some niche features when you’re watching videos on GOM. They serve the purpose of not boring you to death while doing the things you can do on any other app. One feature, in particular, is the 360 VR mode. This option lets you zoom in on a video and look around as if you were in it. While the concept is cool, the actual effect, not so much. For example, if your device has less than 8GB of RAM all you’d get is a pixelated spinning screen. You wouldn’t see much of the action going on in the video, either. The only thing that can make this work is if you watch a video specifically made in 360 mode.

GOM has a sleek design equipped with a user-friendly interface. You can easily find what you’re looking for - navigation is simple. In this regard, it’s better than Winamp and PotPlayer. The developer was smart enough to condense most of the configurations into the mouse’s right-click.

Playback and file management

GOM plays most types of files, including MP3, MP4, AVI, MKV, WMV, and ASX. It can play files that are exclusive to other programs as well. However, when you open it, the file extension will get converted into ASX, as everything you save from this app becomes that file type. If you have more than one media player, it’s best to keep one default extension. You can make GOM your default player upon installation or any other time.

One weird thing about this app is that it doesn’t automatically play from a designated folder. In fact, you can’t even set a default folder from where it will load files. You would have to manually select the songs you want to play from the folder where you keep them. What’s worse is that every time you close the app, all your songs would be erased, and you’d have to upload them again. To prevent this from happening, you need to save them into a playlist. These playlists would then go into a folder as an ASX file, and you have to repeat the process to listen to music. That is extremely cumbersome and that alone makes most other apps more preferable.

Configurations

GOM has an extensive selection of UI controls. So many that you wouldn’t know what to do with most of them. For example, you can adjust the aspect ratio of the app in many different sizes. Doing this doesn’t improve the quality of your playback one bit, and most users would watch a movie in full screen.

This app lets you play a file in specific frame rates. You can also navigate through media by some small frames back and forth. This is useful when you’re watching security footage or a recorded voice clip. The good thing is, all these configurations aren’t cluttering the interface. Access them with your right mouse click.

The 360 VR mode would have been an awesome feature if the developers had spent a little more time on it. You don’t really get much from this mode except for a pixelated screen that divides itself as you spin around. If you have a 360 video, the experience slightly improves, but there are apps that can play those better than GOM.

Performance and issues

The extensive customization does not make up for GOM’s poor performance. The playback quality isn’t as high as they claim. Popular media players like VLC Media Player or WMP play your music at the maximum capacity of your sound card. GOM does not. Audio is low and there seems to be no bass involved.

You would be tempted to use the browsing app to watch YouTube videos. While this is a cool feature, it does suck up a huge amount of data. There’s no good reason to stream videos in GOM. it stresses your bandwidth and RAM, making your device significantly slower.

Another issue is the ads. Whenever you close the GOM player, pop-up ads will appear. You can disable these in settings, but they’re still an annoyance.

Redundancy

The biggest problem with GOM is that it contains too many adjustments. It seems the developers have bitten more than they could chew. Most of GOM features will go unused, not to mention the resources it takes to run it. Apps like Groove Music and VLC are widely preferred due to their simplicity. This app, however, is not something you want to let run in the background. A lot of users like to let their music play while tending to other tasks. But, unless those tasks don’t involve a lot of memory or data, you would run into lag.

Another thing when you’re downloading the free version of GOM is that it may come with other software. They give you the option of installing additional applications like GOM Audio, GOM Mix, and GOM encoder. Do not do this for it would spam your device with installations.

If you like customization and playback options, GOM gives you plenty. But, for those who just want to listen to music and watch offline videos, there are many better alternatives.