The reason why we chose WinRar as one of the best file compression tools is simple, it’s one of the most powerful and flexible applications still. WinRar, along with WinZip are the OGs of file compression and anyone who has a PC probably heard about one of them. However, WinZip comes with 3 price plans and a trial version, if you only need an archiver, you’re better off using one of the free compression tools such as 7-zip or PeaZip. As you can see, WinZip doesn’t lack features and between me and you, it’s probably the most featured-packed of them all but it comes with a price tag and that price is well worth it if you need all its features. Lastly, as an extra feature that we like, WinZip lets you connect to Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive so you can send your archives easier and faster into the cloud.
There are paid PDF applications that do this so if you manage PDFs on a regular basis, WinZip is more than affordable to you. While not directly related to compression, the tool lets you combine multiple PDF files into one, reducing the overall size, making it more accessible and evidently, being able to share the combined PDF easily. If you share or send/backup mp3 regularly, any compression gain matters so that’s a plus for WinZip in our book.Ī feature that’s probably overlooked by many when deciding on the best compression software is Winzip’s PDF combiner. We’ve tested this feature against 7-Zip and WinRar and we got some small improvements in compression but the difference is minimal. The tool also comes with an enhanced lossless MP3 compression algorithm, bragging itself with a 15-20% more compression rate for your music tracks.
WinZip comes with full Windows integration and it’s also optimized for touch-enabled devices. The software comes with all the features you’d expect from a top file compression tool, including a file manager, 128 and 256-bit encryption, and support for all major formats. WinZip is one of the oldest archivers in the industry and was launched in 2011 as a graphical interface for PKZIP.
Here we have the grandfather, the mighty WinZip.
That’s right, compared with WinRar and WinZip (both paid), it’s an obvious choice for those who want a powerful free compression tool. Lastly, what makes 7-Zip more appealing to most people is that it’s completely free. As for encryption, 7-zip comes with strong AES-256 encryption in both 7z and Zip formats.ħ-Zip also comes with a powerful file manager and evidently, with Windows shell integration, allowing archiving and unpacking using the contextual menu. 7z, but can unpack all popular formats such as. The software comes with its own open-source format. First of all, in our compression tests, it slightly surpassed WinRar and WinZip and proved to be faster than all the compression tools we tested. 7-Zipħ-Zip is our favorite file compression software for many reasons. That being said, we tested all the archivers and we choose the best file compression software for Windows. The difference between the top file compression programs lies in their compression speed, ratio, and encryption capabilities.
All the top file compression programs come with their own archive format (with some exceptions) but they usually support all popular types as well.