Tube Downloader Free

Summary

Today we’re featuring an app which has been downloaded 50 000-250 000 times and given a rating of 4,5 out of 5 stars based on 2374 user ratings—an app with those kind of credentials certainly deserves to be put to the acid test.
This app claims that it will allow you to download music and videos from three (!!!) different video portals.

In this review you’ll find out whether that is the case (and whether it can be done in good quality) as well as if the app is well constructed.
 

Tube Downloader Free is the counterpart to “Free YouTube Downloader” and “Free YouTube to Mp3 Converter” on PC and allows you to download videos as well as the accompanying audio files, so it’s really practical for all those of us who like listening as well as “watching” music.

The accessed portals are:

• YouTube
• Google Video
• and last but not least DailyMotion

I have to confess that I tend not to fall back on the latter two, as YouTube usually provides everything one would normally search for.

The videos are stored as Mp4 and are well cropped on my Magic’s screen.

The quality of the downloads largely depends on the quality of the uploaded source material. A music video of good quality is at least 15-17 MB.
A preview of the videos can be viewed before you download, and from time to time this should be taken advantage of before you waste a lot of traffic and time, as the quality of the videos does vary quite strongly. Also, there are – unfortunately – a few jokers on YouTube who insert an image of an original video as a thumbnail… but after downloading a 15 MB folder you are then left with two giggling girlies who want to prove how well – or not – they can sing the new Rihanna single.

Furthermore, you can read the information related to a video stored on YouTube.

When it comes to downloading songs the process is similar to that of downloading videos, the difference being that you can chose between the average quality of an MP3 and the high quality of an AAC. Whilst reviewing the app I found the MP3 quality to be totally satisfactory.
Those of you with really sensitive ears should probably go for AAC… but, as I said, my botchy ears couldn’t detect much of a difference ;-)

During the testing period I did notice two things I found fault with:

1. Downloaded videos and songs are sometimes not immediately viewable in the gallery or media player. Even though this doesn’t come down to technical issues related to the app it’s still kind of annoying. There are, however, three solutions to this problem: you can reboot, you can establish a connection via USB or you can use ReloadSD-Widget, which tricks your phone into re-reading your SDcard.
2. Tracks are listed as folders with the names of the videos. Tags aren’t transferred, but I find that I can live with that.

Bottom line:
This app is not only appealing to scrooges and skinflints—it’s for anyone who enjoys music videos freebies… and that’s quite a few of us!

The app's setup is excellent.

After playing around with it for a while I clicked on the menu button out of curiosity and was surprised to see that you can set download folders. Up until that point I hadn’t been able to use the menu button.
Aside from the fact that sometimes you stumble across these great functions more by chance than anything else, the rest of the app's setup is rather intuitive.

There are three tabs:

1. Find Videos: a search bar as well as a “tick your preference” option to chose which portal you want to browse through.
2. Results: shows you the results of your search. Clicking on your video selection in turn opens a pop-up from which you can chose from “preview video”, “informations”, “download as video”, “download as MP3” and “download as AAC”.
3. Downloads: you can check the status of your download here. You can interrupt or cancel an active download. After downloading the video can be played back, removed from the list or saved to a location. If ever a download stalls you can resume it or restart it as a video, MP3 or AAC.

That’s it!

Bottom line:
The controls are pretty self-explanatory, so no further explanations are required. The app is fairly simple and limited to the basics.
 

There were no crashes during the testing period. Videos and songs can be downloading and converted in a reasonable amount of time.

Tube Downloader can be downloaded for free from the Android Market.

A Plus-version, which allows you to initiate two downloads simultaneously, is also available and can be downloaded for €1,99 from the Android market.