Test device:
Samsung Epic, Cyanogen 9 RC1 (Android 4)

Roughly 8 years ago, the podcast (or netcast for the anti-Apple crowd) was born from the idea of a content delivery system for portable media players. Now, spread across the web, are millions of these digital broadcasts, containing both audio and video, coming from amateurs and professionals alike. With so listening/viewing content available, good tools (apps) for finding, filtering, subscribing, downloading, and playing are a must. Especially for junkies of this media type. And that is where ACast, MyPod, BeyondPod, and many others come in.
I chose these three apps out of a large variety that are available for Android devices because they offer similar features across different price points but with differing interfaces. Unlike some of my previous comparative reviews for audiobook managers, I specifically wanted to look at apps whose UI were distinctly different from each other. To me and others, features are great and all, but they are near worthless is they are a pain to use on full time basis. For the most part, I want to touch on how each of these apps differ more than how they are the same.

Search:
A podcast manager without a search function for feeds is rather pointless. Though each of these apps has this ability, they go about it a bit differently. MyPod automatically searches based on your entered keywords, along with filter options. As your typing in the keywords, MyPod tries to make suggestions for you in the area below the text box. Tapping those suggestions didn't do anything. (I had a friend try it on his stock Galaxy Nexus, just in case, and he came up with the same issue.) Results from the search are speedy, and I was able to find every feed I tried, including several obscure ones. ACast skips the suggestions and filters, instead offering several different search service options. Nice, if you're hardcore maybe, but I feel most people would prefer if it would just search everything, then let them pick from the results. Getting results from ACast wasn't as fast as MyPod, and no matter what search option I used, a number of feeds never showed up in the search results. BeyondPod turned out to be the speediest at getting results from, and seemed to offer more results per query without doubling up as much as either of the other two.

Playback:
Getting your podcasts playing back is, well, majorly important, right? Certainly! Describing the differences here is a little tough without referencing the UI, of which the player is an integral part. MyPod does pretty well, with its more utilitarian interface. Finding the podcasts you've download is simple, and I liked being able to set the jump forward/backward buttons on the fly instead of having to go into settings each and every time. MyPod really has two players, one foreground and another in the background, allowing you to have two podcasts lined up to switch between as desired. The bite in ass though is that MyPod also has a habit of not wanting to restart playback on a given podcast when you come back to it later and/or forgets where you were. (Again, I checked with the friend, and they had the same issue.) When this happens, one has to futz around a while until it magically starts working again. Bummer, especially if it happens while you're driving. ACast's player is located on every screen, being up pullup item with simple audio controls. Sorting through your feeds and downloads is a little more challenging than either of the other two, but you'll get there eventually. The pain I encountered here was that updating feeds, ACast liked to bring back episodes I had gotten rid of previously. BeyondPod I found to be just as easy as MyPod, but better looking and with all the playback options in one spot.

User Interface:
Now this is where we find some major differences. MyPod, as mentioned before, is much more utilitarian. Everything is plain, but easy to find and easy to use, with two exceptions. First, there are two ways to search for feeds, being an automatic and an advanced with Google. For whatever reason, the devs put the automatic on the main menu and the advanced on the feed menu instead of the automatic. Second, when listing episodes in a feed, the display is *tiny* to the point of being unreadable. You can pinch zoom in on it, but it doesn't remember the next time you load a feed and it seems to me that something like making a page readable with no extra step needed is a no-brainer for any dev. BeyondPod is at the opposite end of the spectrum. It looks the best of the three, but not quite as intuitive. It takes a little messing around to get the hang of where everything is, but in the end it's worth it. And finally, there is ACast, which has taken the middle ground. It looks pretty ok, also needs some poking around, and uses a number of symbols that it would be helpful to figure out.

Price:
Ready to break out your wallet? With ACast, it's not required. You can use the full version, which is supported by ads, for free. BeyondPod and MyPod on the other hand are crippleware. MyPod has slightly reduced functionality and ads. BeyondPod gives you 7 days to try it out and then disables or reduces some functionality, but no ad. Of the three, it's also the most expensive. Currently, the full version is seven bones, and Amazon doesn't (currently) offer the tablet optimized version, (you'll need to visit Google Play for that). ACast and MyPod are four and three dollars, respectively.

Conclusion:
So, which one is best? My thought is that it's between BeyondPod and MyPod. Price is the major issue against BeyondPod, while bugs plague MyPod. If you're going by looks alone, BeyondPod is the easy winner here.

*Note: Apps can get updates and change over time, for better or worse. Please note the date of this review, as it may contain info that is no longer accurate.*

Brand	N/A
Rating	3.1 (279 ratings)
Price	$N/A
Category	Podcasts

BeyondPod Podcast Manager