Recs.
Updated
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Out of the box support for almost any audio or video file format
VLC reads almost all music and video without codec installation. It has a wide range of supported encodings.
Pro Surprisingly light on resources
The lightest. Even better than the ones known to be light. Both when playing music, only a single song or when playing a video. Either in terms of Ram and Cpu. Compared with almost all, including the ones from Windows like mpc-hc .. or light ones from Linux like Alsa Player, Audacious, SmPlayer .
Pro Surprisingly lightest on resources
Yes. Lightest. Even better than the ones known to be light. Both when playing music, only a single song or when playing a video. Either in terms of Ram and Cpu. Compared with almost all, including the ones from Windows like mpc-hc .. or light ones from Linux like Alsa Player, Audacious, SmPlayer .
Cons
Con Doesn't prefer embedded covers
VLC does load covers directly from audio files but saves them in artist/album combinations at "C:\Users{Username}\AppData\Roaming\vlc\art\artistalbum{Artist}{Album}" in 500x500 maximum image size. The cover images will be loaded from their respective paths onwards. This can lead to some inconveniences:
It will require extra disc space (although negligible if you only have a couple different albums), these cover files won't be deleted unless you do it manually, so if you chose to edit the artist or albums names previous entries will remain unused.
Covers for individual tracks for already existing album/artist combinations will not be displayed, the first defined one will be used instead, this can also prove problematical if you just want to replace the cover as you have to delete the old one in the files first.
While using Windows, the creation of the required files may conflict with the maximum path length limit of 260 characters if particularly long artist (while including every single performer for example) or album names combined with the already rather long path are used, which can lead to VLC not displaying any cover at all.
At least as of Version 3.0.12, a random unrelated cover will be displayed for every audio file with a missing cover.
Con Lacks libraries and advanced music player features
VLC is intended to be a media player first and foremost. However there is no library management (aside from playlists), usage of tags is very limited, there is no rating system, and VLC is best at playing a file directly from a folder (as opposed to helping you manage or find good songs in your music library).