μTorrent Review: Popular Windows Client Comes to Mac

For years Windows users have had access to the popular μTorrent client to download Linux ISOs and other large files. μTorrent is considered by many to be one of the better clients for the BitTorrent network, but it only recently became available for OS X in the past few months. Though still in beta, it seems as though most of the kinks have been worked out.

μTorrent sports a handsome native cocoa interface

Users are greeted with a somewhat-vacant main window when they load .torrent files, but a well organized one. Windows users who have used μTorrent on XP or Vista will recognize the interface, but miss a few of the more robust features available for the Windows client. One major feature of this app that sets it apart from some of its other Mac competitors is its ability to load multiple torrents and manage them well (I realize that Transmission does this, but when downloading 2 or more files it gets difficult to manage).

I frequently download new Linux ISOs when they’re first released, ranging from 700mb to 2gb. Now getting the entire thing down can be a game of cat and mouse with the seeding ratio and upload/download limits, but μTorrent handles the connections quite nicely. Many users (including myself) have noticed significant down speed increases with the new μTorrent client. I was a Transmission user for a few years, but even when configured identically downloading the same torrent there’s no question that μTorrent is faster.

The preferences panel is well organized and gives users control
over all aspects of their Torrent experience

The app is great for downloading torrents and configuring network settings and preferences, but it doesn’t go much further than that. There is a search that launches to Google for searching, and some control of bandwidth priority, but overall in feature-set the client is rather light. It is quite quick, I found launching and quitting significantly faster than Transmission. All in all it’s a great client, but I found myself missing the RSS torrent download features available to Windows users. I used to be able to let μTorrent stay on top of the latest Ubuntu releases, but now I have to track down a number of different distributions from different pages. I hoping in future releases more of these features are integrated, but in all fairness the app is still in beta. Transmission users, trust me: it’s worth the switch. For now it functions as a solid client, just bare of some of the creature comforts that come with other apps.

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