Style Jukebox Review

As one becomes used to the software in which they use on a daily basis, it’s a very difficult and often useless task to move away from said software. One great example of this kind of software is media players, which people like myself often run in the background to play music whilst doing other tasks on the computer. Think about it: how often do you use a media player? In recent years, I have been a huge fan of two media players on the Windows platform: foobar2000 and iTunes. Both were relatively simple applications to use, and because of this they were “go-to”. However, BestTechie was recently asked to review Style Jukebox, a promising media management application that I soon found to be one of the best media applications I have used to date.

One of the first things that really stuck me about this application is the three years of dedication that the software developer has put into making the application. This dedication and the fruits of the developer’s labor can be seen in the simple yet powerful user interface that makes managing and enjoy a media library with Style Jukebox super-easy.

Upon first installing and opening Style Jukebox, I was pleased to be presented with a codec manager that recommended installing the “K-Lite Mega Codec Pack” to ensure that I could play video in a wide variety of formats. This goes to show not only the simplicity behind the application (all I had to do was click “Install” and press a couple of buttons), but also shows that the goal of Style Jukebox is to be a Swiss Army knife of sorts, ultimately ensuring that all of your media can be easily played from one simple application.

Adding media to Style Jukebox was dead simple. From the “Add” menu, I was given the option to add a single file, or an entire folder to my library. While this is definitely a standard feature for media management applications, the sheer simplicity in this task and the fact that I did not have to hunt through menus to do a simple task really impressed me.

From there, I was able to play a few songs with the application, and was again impressed with how easy it was to use. Changing the size of the text in the song list (something that you cannot do with many media applications) was as easy as moving a slider. Want thumbnails for songs or albums? Simply move the slider, and the text that makes up the song lists turns into thumbnails.

Another thing that I found to be pleasantly surprising was the fact that Style Jukebox – a dead simple media player – had the ability to make itself more complex for advanced users with the use of an equalizer. Additionally, the ability to view and modify meta data for songs was another feature that I was glad to see, yet surprised to see in the beta version of this application.

Importing and playing movies was just as simple of a task, and the simple layout of the controls meant that there wasn’t any form of a learning curve whatsoever.

All in all, while I’m impressed with the power behind Style Jukebox, I definitely think that it’s main advantage is its polished interface, bringing simplicity and ease of use. Having said this, I would highly recommend Style Jukebox to anyone looking for a dead simple media management application, as it definitely puts traditional media applications such as Windows Media Player, VLC, and foobar2000 to shame.