Update: Recently, this iFun Screen Recorder was renamed into iTop Screen Recorder. Therefore, you can also take this post as an iTop Screen Recorder review too.
iFun Screen Recorder is a new-merging free screen recorder for Windows PC. However, is this freeware really fully-featured and worth a shot?
Since the advent of COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, more and more people, especially those involved in remote-work or remote-learning, have an increasingly need for screen recording software to do things like documenting online meeting/course, recording slideshow presentation video, keeping a recording of gameplay video for sharing, and so forth.
Still, many tech and software companies step into screencasting filed by introducing new screen recording features or program to improve their user experience or grow their businesses. For instance, big video hosting site Vimeo added a new video messaging tool called “Vimeo Record” (available as a Chrome extension now) in October 2020 to help collaborate better remotely, PC optimization and security software developer iObit launched its first multimedia utility called “iFun Screen Recorder” in March 2021 to make general users’ screen video creation simpler without limit…
In just a few month, iFun screen recorder has gained top ranks in Google. Currently, even by searching “screen recorder”, users can see its names in the first page, following tightly after some prestigious Chrome plugins and online tools like screencast-o-matic and Icecream Screen Recorder. In such a high Google position, is iFun Screen Recorder, which claims itself a 100% free screen recorder, really worthy using? This all-around review post will help you find the answer to this question.
Key Features of iFun Free Screen Recorder
From the text on official page, post in third-party press/review/blog sites, as well as my real software testing, iFun screen recorder has multiple core features as follows:
- Flexible area selection ability for PC screen recording, be it full screen, any Window, or screen region. (4:3 and 16:9 two aspect ratios are pre-loaded for more convenient standard video shooting.)
- It allows users to record screen with other elements like speaker audio, microphone voice, mouse effect and webcam overlay.
- Various setting options to self-define the recording’s quality level for both video and audio, video format/size/bitrate/frame rate, audio format/frequency/channel. If you get the PRO version, the audio can be saved as a standalone file to save you much time to extract it from recording video afterwards.
- Recording schedule function is standby here to help you make a recording schedule advance and once the software is running in the background, the ready-made task will begin by itself on time.
- An internal basic editor to preview, trim and export video at one go.
Is iFun Free Screen Recorder Really Freeware?
The free version you get from the web is totally free and has no time limit on recording. However…
Like most other free or trial version of shareware does, it attaches a brand related watermark – “Recorded with iFun Screen Recorder”- into the final video, in the top right corner. As to the feature, only some basic ones are open to all. To remove the fixed watermark or unlock more advanced functionalities, you should pay for its premium plan. Below are the comparison details of free and paid versions.
With paid pro version, you can enjoy the extra key features like:
– GUP accelerated screen recording experience
– Game recording with higher FPS (no clear statement on how high the FPS could be)
– Save the recorded audio to a single file after recording
– Schedule video recording
– Customize the watermark
Conclusion
From the information mentioned above, we can see iFun screen recorder is just another mediocre screencasting product from a recognized PC optimization and security software developing developer. The free program is a genuine tool since there’s no time limit. But it applies watermark embedding and certain-key-feature-blocking strategy to encourage the freeware’s users to move up to pro version. That’s just the classic software marketing manner.
Speaking of features, it has nearly 90% of that a common desktop screen reorder has (see online vs. desktop screen recorder). While there’s no real-time annotation tool and the built-in editor is too simple to handle more editing requirements like, rotating, adjusting volume, adding BGM/subtitle etc. But taking a look at its version number now – v.1.2.xxx, this screen recording application just begins its life.
