TED for Android

TED brings you over 1700 TED Talks. These engaging videos, ranging in length from a few minutes to over half an hour, feature social reformers, brilliant scientists, technology gurus, musicians, and more.

Pros

Great design and solid performance: TED showcases videos in a clean-cut interface, as thumbnails with headlines featuring the name of the speaker, and makes sorting and search options readily available. Navigating through videos and checking their individual pages for a brief summary and author bio are both smooth experiences, as is the playback itself.

Download option for offline viewing: Apart from sharing and bookmarking favorite videos, you can download them on your device, which is great for when you want to enjoy selected videos offline. Depending on your preferences, you can choose between high-quality, low-quality, and audio-only downloads.

Nifty extra features: The subtitle localization into 22 languages, the Surprise Me feature, which recommends content based on how much free time you have, and the integrated TED Radio Hour on NRP are three handy extras that increase the app's appeal.

Cons

Awkward landscape mode bug: While testing this app on our Nexus 7 tablet in landscape mode, tapping on some videos directed us not to the page of the respective videos as it should, but to the featured video page. Switching to portrait mode cleared this bug.

Sometimes crashes: In spite of the app's overall solid performance, now and then it crashes when you press the playback button. Only the player crashes, though, not the app, so that tapping again on the video usually plays it properly.

No comments: You can't comment on videos like on the official TED website.

Bottom Line

If you're looking for serious, thought-provoking content, TED has plenty of it, nicely packed in a compact interface. Although it doesn't support comments and may crash now and then, it's much more convenient for mobile users than the official website, especially since you can download videos for offline viewing. We wholeheartedly recommend this engaging app.