How to pick the Best Torrent Client
Mention Torrent to anyone, and the first thing that runs into their minds is piracy. It is in the public domain that torrents are engaged in so much piracy on music, TV shows, movies, software, and other files. This is one of the reasons that so many torrent websites are getting shut down.
The thing is, there are so many files that cannot be accessed anywhere but through torrents. We also have several legal torrents that you can easily download into your local storage without getting yourself on the wrong side of the law. Also, some people simply prefer torrent because they are a lot faster when downloading even the biggest of files. This means that you can download several gigs of a file through torrents a lot faster than you would if you were to source from a standard website. Finally, some people simply prefer torrents because it gives them access to thousands of files from across the world. It’s for these reasons that the demand for torrents continues to increase even as the crackdown on piracy continues.
To get the best experience in your torrents, you need the best torrent clients. There would be no difference from downloading huge files from a standard website if your torrent client is slow or worse, drains a lot of resources from your pc making it almost impossible to do anything else while the download is in progress. To avoid all this nuisance, you have to get your decision right when looking for a torrent client. The good news is that most torrent clients are free, which means that you have some freedom to experiment and switch between them.
Even then, you might still find it difficult to settle down on one particular client due to the vast number of torrent clients available. To make your work easier, we have prepared the list of the best software clients that you can rely on for all your torrenting needs. These are clients with super friendly interfaces that don’t require tech savvy to navigate. Clients that are super lite with enhanced speeds that will get you the files you need as efficiently as possible. Here are our top pics:
1. qBittorrent
qBittorrent packs all the relevant features that you’d ever need in a torrent client. Talk of speed, simplicity, and a dozen other features that are geared towards making your experience hassle-free.
The user-friendliness of the UI means that virtually anyone can use this client with ease. It won’t matter if you have experience on torrenting or if it is your first time in the torrents world, but the simplicity here will make sure that you can navigate and get everything you need with ease.
Most torrent clients will provide all the relevant features that you typically need, e.g., getting magnet links, encrypted connections, and private torrents are not that hard. The biggest problem has always been on the execution of these features and how well they perform in real life. After using and testing so many torrent clients out there, I can tell you for the fact that it is one thing for a client to mention that a particular feature is available and for the feature to work as required. With qBittorrent, all the features have been included not just for the sake of it, but they are perfectly engineered for seamless performance. This is why downloading torrents using the client is not just easy but also very quick.
You will also get additional features such as an inbuilt search tool that will make it easier for you to get the files you need. What I liked the most about this feature is that it can search the files you need from different sources and bring them directly to you, thus saving you from having to go through the torrent websites yourself. This does not just save you time, but it also protects you from ending up in torrent websites with malware.
You will also get several other features such as media player, prioritization of both torrents and the files within the torrents, torrent creation, and IP filtering.
With qBittorrent, you’ll also never have to worry about your devices lagging due to downloading torrents. This software does not pull too many resources, and hence, it allows you to go on using your devices for other purposes as the torrents download in the background.
qBittorrent is available on MacOS, Windows, Linus, FreeBSD, and OS/22, just to mention a few. You’ll also love the fact that it is ad-free and hence you don’t have to endure the constant spamming of online ads as is the case with most other torrent clients.
Drawbacks
qBittorrent has much fewer plugins as compared to other popular torrent clients such as utorrent. This may come as an inconvenience to everyone who loves options as far as extensions and plugins are concerned. I must mention that setting up this tool may become a bit tricky due to the regulations governing piracy on torrents.
2. Deluge
Deluge is nowhere as popular as your uTorrents and qBittorrent, but it is just as powerful and as simple to use. The torrent client features a rather simple user interface that may seem a bit complex at first. This is especially the case to everyone who has used utorrent or qbittorent before, and that’s because Deluge has taken a rather different path on how they designed the UI. The good news is that after a few days of using it, you should get well familiarized with it and get down into enjoying the vast features on offer.
What features are these? Well for starters, you could use Deluge as a desktop torrent client or simply set it to run in the background as a service where you can integrate it with a Firefox or Chrome browser. This makes it more convenient to use, even for a distribution server. You will also enjoy the convenience that comes with this highly-customizable client. For instance, you can set Deluge to start downloading torrents automatically and give them unique batch names. A single setting will also allow your system to go to sleep when all the torrents are downloaded. You could also set the client to delete all torrents that are not fully downloaded automatically. You will also get a wide range of other features including bandwidth control, IP blocklist, notifications, upload and download statistics, among others.
Drawbacks
One brilliant thing about Deluge is that it is easily extendable via plugins, but the biggest issue is that the number of plugins available is a bit limited.
3. uTorrent
uTorrent is another extremely popular torrent client maintained by BitTorrent themselves. This client has been around since 2005, which basically makes it the grandfather of torrent clients.
What’s so impressive about uTorrent is that after more than a decade in existence, you’d expect it to be phased out by other newer clients, but that is not the case. uTorrent remains highly reliable to its clients and a benchmark to other torrent software.
The simple reason behind the continued popularity of uTorrent is its performance. This lightweight client uses less than 6mb of RAM to operate, which means that you can do so many other things with your system as torrents are downloading in the background. This also increases download speeds significantly.
If you’re not a newcomer in the torrents world, then you must have used uTorrent at one point or another. The one thing that all uTorrent users love is the simplicity of the user interface. Everything is placed within your reach with no tech skills required to navigate or operate the client. This doesn’t just apply in downloading torrents, but you will also find it quite easy to use even when you are uploading the files. Sure, it will take some time and practice to learn (if you are a starter), but once you get the hang of it, then you’ll find it very intuitive.
Another advantage stemming from the fact that BitTorrent maintains uTorrent is that you will constantly receive system updates (which tend to improve the software and fix bugs which occur once in a while) and you will also have dozens of plugins at your disposal. This is one area that no other torrent client can beat uTorrent.
Drawbacks
The biggest issue with uTorrent has to be the ads. There are so many of them, and they do tend to become irritating sometimes.
The client also doesn’t provide search tools, something that could have made it convenient to use.