When comparing Relay for reddit vs Pushbullet, the Slant community recommends Pushbullet for most people. In the question“What are the best Material Design apps?” Pushbullet is ranked 2nd while Relay for reddit is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Pushbullet is:
Pushbullet also allows its users to push messages, links, files, locations, and more to any of their devices or to other Pushbullet users.
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 Does a lot more than just notifications
Pushbullet also allows its users to push messages, links, files, locations, and more to any of their devices or to other Pushbullet users.
Pro Superbly easy to use
After installing the Pushbullet application the set up process is as easy as it gets. Pushbullet will first ask you to sign in to your Google account. Then all you have to do is enable notification access and install the Chrome extension.
Pro Almost no delay
Pushbullet is just as fast as its name suggests at mirroring notifications or pushing links or files.
Pro Uses a Chrome extension for PC/Mac or a Windows application
Pushbullet is designed to use its Chrome extension although a Windows application can be used as well. The Chrome extension provides the best experience because any computer with a signed in Chrome browser will provide your Android notifications.
Pro Runs without Chrome open
As long as you enable "Keep Pushbullet running after I close Chrome" in the Pushbullet extension options, Chrome does not need to be open to receive notifications.
Pro Free
Pushbullet is free with no advertisements.
Pro Chrome notifications act as a notification drawer
Pushbullet uses Chrome notifications to act as a running list of past notification that have not yet been dismissed. This is especially useful if you receive a lot of notifications or you are not at your computer when they are received.
Pro Cross device notification mirroring
Pushbullet can even sync notifcations with other Android devices (beta). This helps prevent you from having to dismiss notifications more than once and allows you to always see your notifications no matter what device you're on.
Pro More information shown in the notification than other services
Pushbullet includes the sender's name, email address, unread count, subject, and a preview of the message all in the notification.
Pro Universal Copy/Paste
Copy text on PC,paste it on your Android device and vice versa. You need the windows app for this. iOS and OSX support coming soon.
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 Mac users must use their browser
There is currently no desktop application for Mac users available. The Pushbullet website claims a native OSX client is "coming soon".