Best RSS Feed Reader for Windows?
Comparison of Google Reader, Netvibes Wasabi, Bloglines, and FeedDemon
Posted March 7, 2010 – 5:39 pmRecently, I’ve been doing a deep dive comparison of the top RSS readers for Windows.
Netvibes Wasabi RSS Reader:
The Best Feed Reader?
It all started when I became aware of the new Netvibes Wasabi edition. This version was released last fall (here and here).
Wasabi provides an alternate format for viewing feeds within Netvibes. The new Wasabi reader is more in the style of Google Reader as compared to the ‘start page’ (or ‘widget’) style Netvibes reader I’ve been using for some years. You can switch back and forth between the ‘widget view’ and the ‘reader view’ with a click of a button.
While my initial reaction to Wasabi was very positive, I had some problems with my feeds. Thus began a month long re-look at all the major Windows RSS readers to see if there was something better.
At the same time I starting looking into the top feed readers, I also cleaned up and expanded my custom feeds. These include feeds generated by Yahoo Pipes, Google Alerts, Google News, and Twitter Search. Turns out these custom feeds are fairly problematic for many feed readers and were the stumbling block that got me looking elsewhere beyond Wasabi.
Here’s a recap of what I found about the best RSS readers for Windows.
The Most Popular Windows Feed Readers
There are quite a few Windows feed readers available, but the main options I looked into were:
- Netvibes – Wasabi edition
- Google Reader
- Bloglines – beta edition
- FeedDemon (by Newsgator)
There are some other readers out there, but none of these seemed compelling enough to try. A few others I glanced at included: FeedReader3, RSSOwl, and BlogBridge. All of these are Windows desktop readers, but browser-based readers seem the way to go.
Windows RSS Readers Comparison
So with the top 4 feed readers, I did a deep dive review of their various features. I installed and configured each of them with my 100 or so feeds. I used an OPML import to get things going and then spent a fair amount of time with each reader customizing the layout and setup. Among other things, I worked on getting the individual feeds and feed groups organized in a particular (non-alphabetic) order that I like. I also spent a fair amount of time using each reader, though Netvibes and Google Reader got the most playing time.
The main things to look for in a feed reader are: feed handling and readability. In addition there are some secondary features worth looking at, such as sharing, saving, tagging, and feed importing/exporting.
Comparison of Windows RSS Readers
| Features | Netvibes Wasabi | Google Reader | Bloglines Beta | FeedDemon |
| Cost | Free | Free | Free | Free |
| Type | Browser | Browser | Browser | Desktop |
| Feed Handling | ||||
| Normal feeds |  |
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| Yahoo Pipes feeds | |
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| Google Alerts / News feeds | |
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| Twitter feeds | |
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| Readability | ||||
| Layout / readibility | most readable, good use of color, lines | simple, functional design, least readable for me | nice design touches, 2nd most readable | could be good – but the chiclet count is off the charts |
| Viewing options | 3 – list, expanded, mosaic | 2 – list, expanded | 3 – list, expanded, hybrid | 3 – list, summary, expanded |
| Organizing feeds | any order (Ajax) | any order (Ajax) | fixed order, alpha only | fixed order, alpha only |
| Themes / skins | many skins, but can’t change feed/item colors | none | none | 1 skin, but nice options to change feed/item colors |
| Other Features | ||||
| Sharing / Saving / Tagging | email, social sites (FB, Twitter), save (no tagging) |
email, save, tag (no social sites) |
email, save (no social sites, no tagging) |
email, save, tag (no social sites) |
| OPML Import / Export | / |
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| Pros & Cons | ||||
| Pros |
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| Cons |
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What’s the Best RSS Reader for Windows?
After way too many hours fiddling around with this, I think the answer is ‘none’ – in the sense that not one of the 4 readers did all the key things you’d like it to do. Two of the readers – Netvibes Wasabi and Google Reader – are clearly way ahead of the pack. They win top honors, for sure. Which one of these two is best for you depends on your specific needs.
Netvibes Wasabi is the most readable, user friendly feed reader of the bunch – by far. It is uses colors and lines, font treatments, skins, etc. to make reading feeds a (comparative) pleasure. On the downside, Wasabi feed handling isn’t rock solid. Wasabi does a decent job with most feeds most of the time, but now and then it can be slow to update mainstream feeds (like Techcrunch last week). Plus, it definitely struggles with some of my custom feeds, especially feeds off Yahoo Pipes. I’ve been in touch with their tech guys and I know this is a recognized problem that they are working on. If/when Netvibes delivers bullet proof feed handling, Wasabi will be the top reader for most everyone. In the meantime, I’d recommend Wasabi as the best feed reader for anyone who mostly or exclusively uses ‘normal’ feeds.
Google Reader shares the top honors with Wasabi – and it is the most popular reader in terms of numbers of users. Google Reader delivers bullet proof feed handling – but the big issue I have with it is readibility. Some folks may prefer the stark layout, but I find it very tough to pour through a lot of content on Google Reader. The layout is either over-dense (‘list’ view) or it is not dense enough (‘expanded’ view). The overly functional design just doesn’t offer up enough in terms of readability features. Beyond readability and feed handling, Google Reader also has another huge thing going for it: many mobile RSS reader apps (e.g., Newsgator’s NetNewsWire for iPhone/iPod Touch and most Android RSS readers) use Google Reader as a launching point. They pull feeds off Google Reader and repackage them for delivery onto your smartphone.
FeedDemon is the next best RSS reader. It is outstanding when it comes to handling feeds. From my testing, it appeared to deliver feeds as well as Google Reader. But on the downside, the fact that it is a separate program is a real drag. FeedDemon has a sort of built in ‘browser’ to view the original post on their live sites, but the browser isn’t that great, so you end up having to switch back and forth between your browser and FeedDemon. That’s no good. In terms of readability, FeedDemon is in the middle of the pack – some good features, some not so good.
Bloglines Beta, while it has a nice pretty nice design – the 3-pane viewing layout seems promising – so I rate it as the second best in terms of readability. But the killer is that Bloglines just doesn’t handle feeds that well. It wouldn’t display any of my custom feeds at all – Pipes, Google Alerts, Twitter, etc. Worse, it isn’t even able to deliver a lot of normal feeds like the Google Blog or this blog in a timely fashion (e.g., when I posted this article, the other readers had the feed item within <2 minutes - Bloglines? not so much). I'm not sure how this could be, but adios Bloglines.
Bottom line
Netvibes Wasabi and Google Reader are the top two Windows RSS readers, for sure. However, since neither is the perfect complete package, you may find that you need to maintain them both — especially if you are a heavy consumer of RSS fees. Netvibes Wasabi gives you the polished, user friendly readability features you want while pouring through piles and piles feeds day after day. But the rocky Netvibes feed handling means you want Google Reader at hand in case there’s a glitch.
As well, you may have to have Google Reader around to power the mobile RSS reader you use on your smartphone. If you are on an Android or iPhone, it’s pretty likely that your mobile reader is going to pull your feeds off Google Reader. Blackberry not so much.
5 Comments
Earlier this year, I ran Wasabi and Google Reader for about a month using the same RSS feeds. For whatever reason, Wasabi picked up only a fraction of the items generated by the RSS feeds that Google Reader generated. I reported this to the NetVibes folks, who said they were working on the problem. However, after a month, they did not have it resolved. I requested that they let me know when they resolved it and they said they would. I have not heard from them.
Yes, I’ve been doing a similar side-by-side comparison with Google Reader myself for some time. Can be quite frustrating.
My experience has been not so much that things are altogether missing from Wasabi, but rather that they can take a lot longer to post. For older items, say 12hrs – 18hrs old, the items lineup is generally identical between the two. I’ve never found anything permanently missing.
The biggest issues are my Yahoo Pipes feeds, but it can be any random feed on any given day. If things look delayed, I often switch to G Reader to get latest there. Otherwise, the updating cycle is generally within tolerance for my purposes, but others may need the info absolutely up to the minute. If so, Wasabi is going to be a headache.
Despite these glitches, for me, Wasabi’s superior readability still wins – but I surely look forward to the day (hopefully soon) when I can 100% rely on Wasabi.
Another major con for Google Reader is lack of authenticated feed support.
I have been using netvibes for a long time. Never any real problems until I “Upgraded” to Wasabi. Should never have done that. Feeds don’t update,duplicate feeds, seems to be a resource hog etc. Wish I could find a way to roll back to the version I had before Wasabi.
I have to agree with you here – my experience has been the same: long time user, then ‘upgraded’ and now persistent feed problems. In my case, I added a bunch of complex feeds after the upgrade, so I’ve not been sure that the regular version would have had trouble with them, too.
They keep saying they are working on it, but it seems like these feed problems are not getting fixed too quickly and that their attentions are elsewhere – e.g., new “Dashboard Everything” push.
You raise a good point about rolling back. Did you ask tech support about that? They’ve been pretty responsive to me – even if they weren’t able to actually things every time.
Thanks for your comment.