Free AVI Player

Pros

• Plays AVIs plus much more
• Full Windows 10 support

Cons

• No Blu-ray support

Free AVI Player is a freeware video player for Windows that is easy to use and works well.

Free AVI Player is a video player by Aiseesoft for both the Windows and Mac operating systems. Windows users will be happy to note that this is a program in active development, which means that it fully supports the latest version of Windows 10 and receives updates as Windows does. Note that Free AVI Player does have a paid Pro version with additional features we will discuss in a bit.

While the name Free AVI Player is rather straightforward, it may undersell the program a bit to the casual user. Be mindful that AVI is just a container that can contain a wide range of video and audio codecs as well as subtitles. Free AVI Player can play practically any codec whether it is contained in the AVI file format or not. This includes MP4, MKV, WMV, MOV, FLV and M4V.

Free AVI Player is a modern media player intended to play all of the modern media to which you have access. This, of course, includes 1080p and 720p content, but the program also supports 4K UHD. Have 3D content along with a monitor or TV that supports 3D? It can play those files as well. It can deliver lossless sound through DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD. It can serve as your music player and supports MP3, OGG, AC3, FLAC, WMA, WAV and so forth.

Some video programs will maintain walled-off codecs that are specific to the app. Free AVI Player will ensure certain codecs are installed when it installs, but it otherwise uses whatever codecs your PC has available. This may not be particularly useful to the casual user, but it means that power users can expand the capabilities of the program and even fine-tune the experience at the codec level.

The user interface is solid as well. The core interface for playing movies is modern, attractive and streamlined. Even switching the language of the audio track or subtitle track is fast and simple. You can also take snapshots with just a click. Digging into the more advanced settings can be a bit clunky, but this is a UI challenge that many media players face. But within, you will find the ability to adjust brightness, contrast, gamma, hue, saturation as well as the screen mode, such as half, normal, double and fit to screen.

As mentioned in the opener, Free AVI Player has a Pro version that is not free. Aiseesoft does offer a trial of the free version, and it will revert to the actual free version if you opt not to continue. If you choose to continue and pay the one-time licensing fee, you get support for Blu-ray discs as well as files, which means no VOB support in the basic free version.

Pros

• Plays AVIs plus much more
• Full Windows 10 support

Cons

• No Blu-ray support