When comparing Relay for reddit vs Now for Reddit, the Slant community recommends Relay for reddit for most people. In the question“What is the best Reddit app for Android?” Relay for reddit is ranked 5th while Now for Reddit is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Relay for reddit is:
A great feature of Relay is the UX for swiping between the post and the reddit comments. It's very fast to go back and forth between the views.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to flip between content & comments
A great feature of Relay is the UX for swiping between the post and the reddit comments. It's very fast to go back and forth between the views.
Pro Excellent material design UI
Relay uses screen space efficiently and can be navigated quickly. It is mostly designed for viewing a single subreddit at a time and making that experience as pleasurable as possible, with easy access to a subs from a dropdown menu at the top.
Pro Tons of features and functionality
With support for multiple accounts, interface themes, and inline picture previews, Relay for reddit offers a large amount of features for any power reddit user.
There are also many unique functionalities that set Relay apart from the competition.
●It has a 'Remove unread' option to swipe away all read threads. This is especially useful when it's a large and busy subreddit with tons and tons of submissions, to the point where it can get overwhelming. This a convenient option for making your reddit-browsing experience a little easier.
●It offers compatability with the Multi-Window feature which is present on Samsung & L.G phones (soon to be present AndroidOS-wide). This greatly enhances multi-tasking.
●It offers an excellent Spoiler tag support and an AMA mode (conspicuously missing from its biggest competitor).
Pro Allows you to view a parent comment
To keep a better context of the conversation, Relay doesn't hide the parent comment while browsing.
Pro Animations make for more pleasurable usage
The abundant animations make browsing more enjoyable because it transitions so nicely.
Pro Fast GIF loading
GIFs are automatically converted to gfycat format; they therefore load much faster than on other apps.
Pro Clutter-free and well thought-out UI
The moment the user opens Relay for reddit and begins exploring all of its ins and outs, it becomes quite clear how wonderfully designed this app is. There is excellent UX for redditors who prefer discussions and news, rather than pictures, videos, and gifs.
● You can alternate between a cards and a lists UI with a compact list view optional.
● A drop-down menu of all your subreddits is present at the top for quick and easy access. If the user is adequately familiarized with the list, he/she can simply swipe on the banner so to quickly switch between subreddits.
●The comment format option is situated right next to the drop-down menu.
It's an all around wonderful application with many Material Design elements employed.
Pro Automatically loads optimized images based on screen size
The app will automatically load a lower resolution image that is a closer match to your screen size to save bandwidth, with a button to load the original image if you need more detail.
Pro Easily save battery with night time theme
The available night time theme allows the background to be dark with light colored text, which uses less battery on AMOLED screens.
Pro Easily moderate from the app
Moderators on Reddit are allowed more functions over a normal user on Reddit, which is possible to be used in Pro for Relay. With these features included in the app it's possible to approve comments, check modque, and get specifically labelled moderator messages.
Pro Colour coded collapsible comments
Pro Smooth as butter
Opening links, animations, and transitions, as well as scrolling, all work well with no glitches or missed frames. The app feels extremely smooth thanks to the attention to detail in all of its inner workings.
Pro Clean slick interface
With the card-based UI, the app fits in very well design wise with the Material Design of the OS. Everything is intuitive to use being that the interface is familiar and follows Google's design guidelines.
![Siddharth Bandhu](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rWR9HMOqoFg/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAABeg/VWgdOQMd83w/photo.jpg?sz=50)
Pro Translucent nav bar for Android 4.4+
Now for Reddit utilizes the transparent nav bar implemented in Android 4.4+, making for a cleaner looking interface.
![Ben Downey](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-qbtEZPmtnrw/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAHU/AF2mXD4TgC0/photo.jpg?sz=50)
Pro Nicely designed launcher icon
The design of the icon for Now for Reddit is clean, simple and fits well with material design.
Pro Configurable card sizes
Now for Reddit is one of the few Reddit clients that come with the ability to change how much content can be viewed on the screen. You'd also be hard pressed to find another Reddit client that can show you full-size images (via full-size cards) without you having even tapped on the image.
Keep in mind that the configurable card sizes might also have an impact on battery consumption, ranging from tiny cards (most battery efficient) to full size cards (most battery/data hungry).
Pro UI for phones and tablets
The design of the app lends itself well to phones and tablets alike no matter the orientation that the device is being held in. Not having to switch apps depending on the users device is a nice feature.
![Salman Ahmad](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-XdUIqdMkCWA/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAAAA/4252rscbv5M/photo.jpg?sz=50)
Pro Great performance/less jank
Using Android's profile GPU rendering tool it can be clearly shown how the Now for Reddit is generally more responsive than quite a few of the other popular reddit clients. For people obsessive about the 60 FPS mark, it would be hard to find a near 60 FPS experience as good as Now for Reddit.
Pro Easy navigation of subreddits
Cons
Con Can not up/downvote comments
Con Can't disable sliding animations
Sliding animations are baked in & can't be disabled, as some don't like animations.
Con Non native image uploading
All images need to be loaded externally when wanting to view full screen, this means another app will need to be loaded, which can be slow and consumes RAM.
Con Poor feedback for network errors
Sometimes comment submission will fail silently and it isn't clear whether it went through.
Con Not open source
Accessing your reddit acount with proprietary software might not be safe.
Con No gallery swipe view
There is no way to swipe through a gallery of posts pics, which means each pic has to be individually clicked on and loaded, which takes time.
Con Sharing link/comment options buried too deep
At present, the sharing menu is buried deep inside: swipe an article > Click More > Swipe again > then Share.
Con Can be CPU and/or data intensive
Reddit Now tends to use a lot of data as well as runs the CPU pretty hard, which in turn drains the battery fast.
Con Hard to navigate when you subscribe to many subreddits
Con Delayed messages
Most Reddit clients refresh your inbox upon opening the app, notifying you instantly about any messages that you have. Now for Reddit on the other hand may not alert you of any messages even if you're using the app. The delay is generally short, but sometimes can take up to a couple of hours with no noticeable pattern. As a workaround, it's possible to manually refresh, but this might be a deal-breaker for some.
Con Has to reload sometimes and will always reload and forget your place (goes back to frontpage) if you reopen the app from its launcher icon
![Vetted.ai illustration](/images/ai/vetted-illustration.png)