uTorrent Pro Free Download (Latest 2024 version). If you’ve ever torrented anything, there’s a pretty good chance you used uTorrent to do it. Although hugely influential in the early days of torrenting, other BitTorrent clients have done much to improve while uTorrent made the controversial decision to monetize the software with ads and a paid version. uTorrent is by far the most popular BitTorrent client in the world. It’s also one of the few to use a freemium ad-supported model, and for a brief time it bundled a bitcoin miner with its desktop client.
A fact that caused a great deal of controversy among BitTorrent users. Yet, how does the freemium torrent client hold up? This uTorrent review will answer just that and more. μTorrent — commonly referred to as uTorrent (since most people don’t have Greek letters on their keyboards) — tries to pack in a lot more functionality than just a simple torrent client, especially if you opt for the paid Pro version of the software. Not all of these features work as well as we’d hoped though, so it’s a bit of a mixed bag. If you’ve already read our list of the best torrent clients, you know we’re not terribly impressed with uTorrent, and this review should help explain why.
Beyond the Basics: Unpacking uTorrent’s Functionality (and Potential Headaches)
If you’ve never torrented before, we recommend checking out our explanation of what torrenting is, as well as our how to torrent guide, as that will give you a better understanding of the terms used in this review. However, if you already have a passing familiarity with torrents, then we can get started and dig into whether uTorrent deserves its spot as the king of torrent clients. If all you’re looking for is a simple way to download torrents and you don’t care too much about all the bells and whistles, uTorrent is a decent pick.
In fact, uTorrent created what has now become the standard BitTorrent user interface used by many other clients. Unfortunately, uTorrent is bundled with multiple pieces of unwanted software, including McAfee antivirus and RAV Endpoint Protection. It even used to include a crypto miner for a brief period of time in 2015, though it was discontinued due to intense backlash. After installing uTorrent Classic, you can run the setup guide, which tests your network and device capabilities to adjust the client to the optimal settings.
Classic Desktop vs. Web Client
There are two main versions of uTorrent. The first one is called uTorrent Classic and is the old-school desktop version of the software. Although its layout has undergone some minor tweaks over the years, it looks largely the same as it always has (as does pretty much every other torrent client out there). uTorrent includes a search engine in the menu bar at the top of its client, which you can configure for any search provider you want (for example, a torrent site like The Pirate Bay). However, searching simply opens up a browser window with the search engine in question, which hampers its usefulness significantly.
uTorrent Web is mostly a carbon copy of the Classic version, except it runs in your web browser. That said, it doesn’t have anywhere near the number of settings you can tweak and customize, which means it’s a significantly stripped-down torrenting experience compared to uTorrent Classic. One of the biggest strengths that uTorrent brings to the table is that it has an officially maintained mobile app. Predictably, it’s only available on Android, since Apple takes a hard stance on BitTorrent clients on its app store. The app lets you not only control uTorrent on your desktop remotely, but also download torrents directly to your Android device.
The Final Verdict: uTorrent Pro vs. Alternatives – A User’s Choice
Using as little of your valuable system resources as possible was uTorrent’s initial raison-d’être (it’s technically called “MicroTorrent” for a reason). Indeed, the application has a very small footprint, even after growing significantly in scope over the years. uTorrent has a download size of just 1.68MB and takes up a similar amount of disk space with its installation folder (depending on the number of updates and torrents you’ve added). In terms of system resources, uTorrent is incredibly lightweight. Even with multiple torrents running simultaneously, it’s rare to see a noticeable impact on any system resources other than perhaps the hard disk if you’re not running an SSD. uTorrent was stable around 35MB of RAM consumption, and generally hovered between 1.5% and 3% CPU usage (on a Ryzen 7 processor).
Without a doubt, there are plenty of uTorrent alternatives — far better torrenting clients offering more features without the freemium model. That said, uTorrent still does a perfectly decent job of downloading torrents, but that’s pretty much it. uTorrent puts features like sequential downloads behind a paywall, which are free with many other torrent clients, and it does very little to help your security or privacy while torrenting. What did you think of our uTorrent review? Do you agree that most torrent users would be better served by another torrenting client, or do you think we were too harsh? If it’s not uTorrent, then what torrent client is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.
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