uTorrent

Some torrent clients dazzle you with their array of powerful features. Not uTorrent. It’s designed to cover the essentials, and with a footprint of just over 2MB on disk it’s smaller than a typical smartphone photograph. That means it doesn’t hog all your system’s resources, which is important with big downloads: it uses around 6MB of RAM, so it’s not going to make your system crawl like some apps can do.

Just be careful where you get it. We've provided a link to the official site, but there are lots of counterfeits out there selling subscriptions or charging real money for a free product.

uTorrent’s main appeal is that it’s fast, and you can take advantage of power user settings including remote management, scripting and automation. You don’t get all the features of the paid-for Pro version – there’s advertising, and the free version doesn’t scan downloads for viruses and malware – but you do get bandwidth management in the form of speed limits. You can customize those for specific days and times, so for example you might tell uTorrent to slow down when you’re likely to be on your PC and to go full throttle when you’re asleep or out.

User experience

uTorrent got into trouble a few years back when it secretly bundled Bitcoin mining software in its installer, and although that’s gone and the ads are considerably safer for work than they used to be, you need to keep an eye on the installer to ensure you’re not accepting software you don’t want.

That aside, uTorrent is really easy to use and doesn’t look as frightening as some of its rivals. It’s a shame that you need to find your torrents outside the app, though: an integrated search option would have been really handy. Nevertheless, it’s rightly loved by its army of users: it’s a good, straightforward and speedy app.

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