WinZip Review

A product by WinZip International LLC

Overview

WinZip is one of the oldest file compression program, first time being released in 1991. The ZIP (.zip) extension is the most used to create and work with archives.

Although .zip is the most used archive format, is not the best regarding file size reduction (see our test). The major advantage and an explanation why is .zip most popular archive format is that .zip archives can be created and extracted by the majority of file compression programs (free and paid) while .rar (another popular format) can be created only by paid programs.

Compression Speed
4.85/10

WinZip it has an average speed while is creating archives.

Compare Compression Speed (higher is better choice)
WinZip
8.39
8.10
7.13
4.87
4.85
4.39
4.23
3.17
2.94
2.41

Extraction Speed
3.51/10

The speed of extraction is even lower than the speed of compression and is below the average of top programs.

Compare Extraction Speed (higher is better choice)
WinZip
10
8.63
8.39
8.36
6.75
6.65
6.52
6.26
6.15
3.51

Compression Formats
2.61/10

It has poor support for creating different types of archives and supports only native formats ZIP and ZIPX. It doesn't support 7Z, TAR.GZ, RAR and others.

Compare Compression Formats (higher is better choice)
7.78
6.41
6.27
6.01
5.23
5.16
5.10
4.90
4.77
3.99
* WinZip in not included in the above chart because is weaker than these competitors

Extraction Formats
7.32/10

It supports a wide range of archive types, including RAR, 7Z, native formats (ZIP, ZIPX) and others.

Compare Extraction Formats (higher is better choice)
9.09
8.36
7.58
7.56
7.50
7.44
7.42
7.39
7.36
7.35
* WinZip in not included in the above chart because is weaker than these competitors

Features
8.89/10

Like WinRAR, it offers a variety of features and options to work with archives.

It supports drag and drop to add files, sort files by column names, encrypt archive with password, set default folders to extract files or to save new archives, customize columns and change view mode.

It allows to split files by size to to choose between different compression methods, create self extracting files and test archives.

WinZip offers some additional features such as resize pictures, convert Office documents to PDF, add watermark to images and PDF files. It can be integrated with cloud storage services (Dropbox, Google Drive, Mediafire etc.), with social media and email accounts to share or send archives instantly from its interface.

Compare Features (higher is better choice)
WinZip
10
10
8.89
8.89
8.89
7.78
7.78
6.67
6.67
5.56

Pro

  • detailed online manual and guides

Cons

  • at installation it offers to install a toolbar (you can uncheck it)

Conclusion
6.09/10

The program lacks at types of compression formats (only ZIP and ZIPX are supported), compression and extraction speed aren't very good, but it offers a modern interface with many options and additional features.

Images