Castro - High Fidelity Podcasts Review
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Castro - High Fidelity Podcasts Review

Our Review by Campbell Bird on December 17th, 2013
Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar :: CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR
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Castro is an elegant-looking podcast app, but does it have what it takes to dethrone de facto standards like Downcast and Instacast?

Developer: Supertop Software
Price: $2.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1
App Reviewed on: iPhone 4S

iPhone Integration Rating: starstarhalfstarblankstarblankstar
User Interface Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: starstarhalfstarblankstarblankstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarblankstarblankstar

Castro is a podcast app designed specifically for iOS 7 boasting a sleek aesthetic and fast searching capabilities. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with the app itself - that is, it plays podcasts perfectly fine and offers some nice customization options to boot - Castro's feature set isn't quite as robust its competitors', making it a hard app to buy into.

Probably the most striking thing about Castro is its appearance. Users that are in the market for a podcast app that matches the iOS 7's "flat" design will definitely be drawn toward this one in particular. The app has a "podcasts" and "episodes" view, both of which are visually pleasing due to their minimal, yet functional appearances.

Beyond looks, Castro also has a tool set that can help make podcast management relatively easy. For starters, users can enable news mode on any particular podcast to make sure only the most recent episode is waiting for playback. In addition, there are five different playback speed settings for listeners to use just in case they want to speed up or slow down their content. Lastly, Castro's search functionality is really fast, which is especially nice since the app allows users to listen to podcast episodes that they don't subscribe to.

While all of this is well and good, the fact of the matter is that there are other podcast apps out there that feature all of Castro's functionality and more for the same price (i.e. Downcast). To be fair, Castro's support page lists additional features to be added later, but it's hard to recommend purchasing this app based on the promise of future functionality when there are pre-existing apps offering so much more right now.

Overall, Castro is just not quite up-to-snuff. While it looks nice, that isn't enough for it to overthrow the old standbys. There's just no reason to switch over to it, especially if users have already invested in their podcatcher of choice. Even if they haven't (or otherwise have some compelling reason to switch/upgrade), Castro is an extremely difficult sell.

iPhone Screenshots

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