When comparing MPV vs SMPlayer, the Slant community recommends MPV for most people. In the question“What are the best media players for UNIX-like systems?” MPV is ranked 1st while SMPlayer is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose MPV is:
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Needs no additional codecs
Everything MPV needs to play media files is contained within which means no outside codecs are needed.
Pro Integrates with streaming services
When used with youtube-dl.
Pro Minimal interface
Click to open files and get Video with sound (and passthrough of codecs like DTS etc) for a perfect cinema experience. Works okay for many files.
Default window is not much more than a title bar - and if you drag/resize the window it resizes the video and leaves no empty areas. There is no visible control or display unless you use mouse/keyboard over the window.
This is the best player to use unless you're going for a media center (then use MPV based Plex Media Player to display and play the Plex Server library).
Pro Up to date
Always up to date, rapid development.
Pro Extremely responsive
Pro Caches livestreams
Intelligently caches livestreams and enables jumping within the cached stream.
Pro Fast
Pro Intergrated Subtitle download
Pro Faster than VLC in some cases
Pro Uses mplayer 2 and mpv as engines
Cons
Con Minimal theme support
Con Lack of a typical GUI can be jarring to some
The minimal interface comes at the cost of beginner-friendliness. You need to know keyboard shortcuts by heart, settings are set in text files, right-clicking won't bring up a menu, etc.