- Smart Features
- Good aesthetic
- Tons of settings for additional customization
- Not much available for syncing
- A few key settings are a bit buried
The Miren browser is a unique entry to the browsing world, sporting a clean aesthetic, simple operation, and a decent browsing speed.
There are even a few cool features that other browsers in this round-up should consider as well as several customizable, “tweakable” features.
Speed: This browser didn’t come out blazingly fast in our speed test, taking around 10 seconds to load the mobile CNN site. That said, there was some redemption in the 34 seconds it took to load the full CNN website. Scrolling was a bit jerky as was zooming, but it was certainly still functional. The “instant” back/forward feature works as advertised and is actually instant. When going back, for example, the previous page just slides in from the left in a nice animation. Miren works smoothly all around and kept loading pages in a perfectly acceptable amount of time.
Page Display: Miren displayed all pages true to a desktop experience when appropriate and handled embedded videos and pictures well. It also sports several different modes such as a form mode or a reading mode to further simplify page displays depending on the browsing environment. There were no problems rendering content while quickly scrolling or zooming. (Read: There was no “gray checkerboard” to be found). The only problem might be that, by default, the tabs at the top of the screen stay while scrolling up and down, constantly eating up this screen area. However, this feature can be disabled in the settings menu.
Ease of Navigation: As previously mentioned, we were impressed with the instant back/forward feature that actually works as advertised. Miren is a “smart” browser that anticipates what users want to do and executes those requests properly. True tabbed browsing is also a nice feature in Miren for seeing which sites are open without needing to switch between multiple windows. Page to page, Miren moves smoothly and the navigation buttons intuitively appear and disappear at the bottom of the screen while scrolling or reading. The volume rocker on the side of the phone can even be set to scroll up and down.
Extra Features: This browser works great out of the box, but for those who require more customization there are a huge number of settings that can be tweaked including: User agents, page display settings, data saving mode, smart full screen, behavior for swiping at the edge of pages, backup to your SD card, control over when the navigation buttons display on screen, and many more. Some notable features are the RSS feed subscription button that pops up at the bottom of the screen on any page that has an RSS feed. The user agent can be set to desktop browsing mode, several iPhone modes, and an iPad mode.
Overall: We were impressed with Miren’s solid performance, awesome “smart” browsing capabilities, and the huge number of customizable settings. For those looking for a quick, clean, and simple to use browser, Miren is an excellent choice. While those looking for a browser with some depth and customizability will also find Miren an excellent choice.
