Arc Browser Review (2024)
Best Features, Pricing, Alternatives & Verdict
Arc Browser is one of the more recent introductions to the browsing application space, and it’s taking on Google Chrome as an interesting option. But does it live up to the obsession, and is it worth the hype switching to?
What is Arc Browser?
Arc Browser is a Chromium browser with a clean design, boost abilities & AI features.
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What does Arc Browser do?
Arc Browser is a browser experience that can be accessed through Windows and Mac as a way to browse the internet in a much cleaner user interface.
This launch has become very popular among many professionals, using it as a better way than Google Chrome. It has a combination of customizations, keyboard shortcuts, and better ways to navigate the web using tabs and also spaces as a way to coordinate your space on the web a little bit better.
Google Chrome has been one of those applications that has ruled the browsing space for many years, so this browser wants to try and take that on by creating a better browsing experience. It does that through making a clean and calm layout that utilizes the full real estate of the screen and allows you to access the tabs on the left-hand side. It also has an AI experience that can be added onto your account, as well as an iOS application called Arc Search, which allows you to browse the web.
But how does it compare, and what are some of the best features inside of Arc Browser?
Best Features of Arc Browser
Here's some of the best bits of Arc Browser:
Feature #1: Tabs & Spaces
Tabs and spaces inside of Arc Browser allow you to coordinate your account a little more efficiently. You can switch between work, studies, and hobbies just by switching between the spaces that you're working in, which helps you to better organize what you're working on, focusing on, as well as taking advantage of the real estate of the screen to better coordinate the activities that you're doing.
This allows you to organize folders, tabs, and pin shortcuts to quickly access as you're switching between spaces, which makes it a really popular solution for people using it as a work resource too, but also as their own personal browser for coordinating their work on the web. You can quickly set this up and, to be honest, it doesn’t take a hideous amount of time, alongside some of the other split view themes and customization options, which allow you to make the browser more of the home for your work and life.
Combine tasks, calendar, meeting booking links & task consolidation into one.
Bring tasks from ClickUp, Notion, Gmail, Todoist & more in Akiflow for organizing in one.
Feature #2: Arc Max
Arc Max is an AI experience that you can access through using Arc on the browser on the desktop version, and this is basically a smarter way to quickly summarize pages and ask questions about the pages, and also quickly access the likes of ChatGPT using the command bar inside of Arc.
Now, this is something that a lot of people are turning to as a faster way to browse the web. For example, you can hold command F and quickly get an answer from Max that would allow you to take all of the context from the page and to ask questions on it.
There are also features like five-second previews as well as Ask ChatGPT to save a bit of time opening that page so that you don’t have to quickly do it, and there are also abilities like tidy tab titles as well. Now this is just a smarter add-on to the Arc browser experience and actually doesn’t come with an additional cost at the current moment in time.
This, to be honest, was nice to use, but something that probably changes some perspectives you have on how you access the web versus something that a lot of people find to be beneficial.
Feature #3: iOS App (Search)
To be honest, this isn’t really a feature. It’s more of its standalone application which is available on iOS, and it’s an AI-enabled mobile browsing app that allows you to quickly search for a term and get the most clean way to browse with the most suitable recommendations for you. Now, pretty much how Arc Search works is you type in a command like, “find some good restaurants around me that cater to vegan places,” for example, and you can set up things in settings like blocking ads, cookies, and blocking trackers as well, which help you to refine that.
But essentially once you type that command in, you can get a summary of the page with a pinch, allowing you to get useful insight and the most recommended content for the job. Not to be honest, this is just a baby version of the Arc browser and it presents itself as more of a convenient way to quickly search on the browser on the go.
But to be honest, when I was using this as part of the review, I wasn’t largely impressed by the speed in which it created the terms. You had to wait about 10 to 15 seconds before the search command brought things up, and to be honest, I’ve had much faster experiences using Google search when finding something on the go.
Pros & Cons of Arc Browser
Here's the best advantages and disadvantages of using Arc Browser:
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Great for organization | No monetization plans |
Powerful AI abilities | Takes time to setup |
One of the cleanest UX for browsing | Slow search speed on iOS |
How much is Arc Browser?
Right now, Arc Browser is free for everyone.
Combine tasks, calendar, meeting booking links & task consolidation into one.
Bring tasks from ClickUp, Notion, Gmail, Todoist & more in Akiflow for organizing in one.
Verdict: Is Arc Browser Worth It?
So if you’re looking at a browser to replace your browsing experience, you will not be disappointed. This is one of the most subscribed-to experiences out there to date, and it allows you to have a much more customizable, much smarter approach to browsing than Google Chrome offers right now. To be honest, this application is a really impressive experience, and the team, seemingly trying
to push the boundaries when it comes to browsing the web and making a more fine-tuned experience to doing day-to-day stuff that you think Google Chrome should be allowed to do. One of my only concerns as somebody who reviews a wide range of productivity tools and software is that the experience isn’t monetized and the team seemingly taking a large amount of investment overtime.
One of my worries is that Arc Browser goes out of business in a few years, and you will no longer be able to use this experience that is so brilliantly pulled together. My opinion is largely that they should introduce a price and plan so that people can actually pay for the goods that they are using because I think that would help sustain the company in the future, but they want to charge people on a team basis so that you can get the browsing experience for free but for now, Arc Browser is a really interesting alternative to Google Chrome and beats it in many different ways when it comes to organization and productivity.
It’s well worth checking out, but always in the back of the mind having considerations about the future of browsing and whether Arc Browser has the monetization to extend in the future.
