Bandizip Review – Lightning Fast Archiver with Extensive File Type Support

very good
key review info
application features
  • Compress files and decompress archives
  • (9 more, see all...)

We don't know about you guys, but the first thing we do after reinstalling Windows is set up a powerful compression and decompression program that's capable of extracting files from downloaded archives which house all our much-needed tools in order to get the OS up and running.

One such example is Bandizip. It offers support for plenty of popular formats for creating archives: .zip, .zipx, .exe, .tar, .lzh, .iso, .7z. When it comes to extracting files from archives, file extensions extend to .rar, .ace, .bin, .arj, .bh, .bin, .bz, .cab, .jar, .img, .lha, .lzma, .tbz, .tgz, .udf, .z, and others.

What sets it apart from other compressors is that Bandizip implements a special function that enables you to perform high-speed operations when you're attempting to compress multimedia and archives, by simply excluding them from the task, since it's a known fact that you cannot get good compression results and this usually delivers archives larger than the original files.

File type associations and context menu integration

The installation procedure is fast and simple. The only notable aspect about it is that Bandizip offers to associate itself with the supported file types for extraction.

Plus, although this isn't mentioned in the setup phase, the software program integrates several entries into the Windows Explorer context menu for extracting files in the current or a custom location (with or without administrative rights), opening archives, adding files to an existing archives, or compressing files on the spot.

Simple and straightforward interface

The interface doesn't put too much emphasis on looks, preferring to focus on functionality instead. Bandizip adopts a clear-cut structure that permits any type of users to quickly figure out its features, whether they are experienced with such apps or not.

The columns shown for each file can be customized. By default, the tool displays the compressed and original size, file type, and date of modification. These can be hidden or new ones can be added: compression and encryption method, CRC hash, file attributes, and file comments.

Split and encrypt archives, select the compression level, or use Unicode filenames

When creating a new archive, you can include any files and folders while keeping an eye on their accumulated size. Apart from picking the archive name, saving location and format, you can split the new archive into multiple volumes in case you want to save them across multiple storage devices (especially if they're large), choose the compression level (no compression, fast, normal, or maximum), password-protect the file, compress each file into a separate archive, as well as set Bandizip to automatically delete the source files on task completion.

Quickly create archives and decompress files with Bandizip
Quickly create archives and decompress files with Bandizip

More advanced compression settings are available. For instance, you can create a root folder when compressing a single directory, use Unicode file names in .zip, .tar and .tgz files (UTF-8), include thumbs.db files when archiving, save NTFS time information when creating .zip files, disable high-speed compression for multimedia and archive files, deactivate multi-core processing when creating .zip files, keep the progress window on screen after archiving, specify a default location for new archives, as well as exclude any file types from the operation.

During compression or extraction, you can view the passed time and total estimated time for the current file and entire job, as well as pause the task to temporarily allocate system resources to other apps. It's also possible to open the file's location in Windows Explorer or make the tool do this after the job ends.

Other options and app settings

The program integrates options for testing an archive to make sure all its contents are intact, renaming files within an archive or deleting them, editing an archive's content and saving it as Unicode (UTF-8), and searching for files within an archive.

Configure advanced extraction settings
Configure advanced extraction settings

You can personalize the file types associated with Bandizip (archives, UNIX, CD/DVD, .jar, .war, .apk, .ipa, .xpi) together with the context menu entries. Extraction parameters can be changed when it comes to keeping the progress window on top after task completion, using fast drag-and-drop if the extracted file is too big (skips creating temporary files), or extracting .tgz and .tbz files at the same time. Plus, you can create a list with custom file types to unpack everything for. Settings can be reset to default.

Performance results

We tested Bandizip, WinRAR and 7-Zip on an Intel Core i5-3470 with CPU @3.20GHz and 12GB RAM, running Windows 8.1 Pro, in order to evaluate archiving and extraction speed. Default settings were applied. The goal was to compress a 4.09GB directory into .zip format, as well as to extract contents. Since speed varies, we ran five tests for each application, and calculated the average time.

Bandizip created a 3.81GB ZIP archive in the average time of 61.4 seconds, and extracted files from the same archive in the average time of 69.8 seconds.

WinRAR created a 3.81GB ZIP archive in the average time of 101.2 seconds, and extracted files from the same archive in the average time of 84.2 seconds.

7-Zip created a 3.80GB ZIP archive in the average time of 110,2 seconds, and extracted files from the same archive in the average time of 67,2 seconds.

According to these tests, Bandizip was the fastest compression tool with the average time of 61.4 seconds, followed at a great distance by WinRAR with 101.2 seconds and 7-Zip with 110 seconds. The speediest extraction app was 7-Zip with an average time of 67.2 seconds, followed by Bandizip with 69.8 seconds and WinRAR with 84.2 seconds.


The Good

It's cross-platform (Windows, Mac OS X), multilingual, and compatible with all popular Windows versions from XP to 8/8.1 (32- and 64-bit). Keyboard shortcuts and help documentation are available.

It offers extensive file type support when it comes to compiling archives and extracting archive content, and it can be associated with its supported file types.

With the help of this app, you can compress files and decompress archives, enable high-speed compression for multimedia files and archives, split large archives into multiple pats, choose the preferred compression level, password-protect archives, test their integrity, as well as extract data from compressed files via fast drag-and-drop which enables the tool to skip creating temporary files in case they're too large for the disk.

It's free and doesn't contain third-party components at startup.

Those who want to skip the installer and directly run the app from a pen drive may resort to its portable twin (Bandizip Portable).

The Bad

It doesn't integrate options for repairing damaged archives, nor does it show the "before" and "after" compression ratio.

It doesn't integrate a Windows Explorer folder structure for easily navigating directories to compress and extract files.

The Truth

We are pleasantly surprised by Bandizip during our evaluation. It was faster than WinRAR and 7-Zip at compressing files, although all three created an archive with the same size. The extraction speed was also good. You can definitely take it for a spin to find out if it's worth replacing your current compression and decompression tool.

user interface 4
features 4
ease of use 4
pricing / value 5


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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Bandizip (14 Images)

Quickly create archives and decompress files with BandizipCreate new archives after configuring settingsConfigure advanced compression settingsTest the integrity of archivesAdd or edit archive comments
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