Does Tubi’s app make the streamer easy to use?
Does Tubi’s app make the streamer easy to use?
The Tubi smart TV app puts all the streamer’s content on the biggest screen in the house, but is it easy to use?
Tubi piles on the content, being one of the few free ad-supported streaming services that creates its own original shows and movies. The Tubi library is vast, as it also incorporates a wide selection of licensed titles from studios across Hollywood, and all of it streams with no credit cards required.
But experience has shown that sometimes, free streaming services come at the cost of not having a great user experience, in a true get-what-you-pay-for scenario. What of Tubi? Does it make a decent effort to make its user interface easy to use, or do you leave with the sense that you should have been thankful to watch free TV and movies? I took a look at the streamer’s connected TV app to find out.
How do we score Tubi’s user interface?
How does Tubi’s home page rank?
Anyone who has read my user reviews in the past knows I value the proximity of the Continue Watching row to the top of the screen quite highly, and unfortunately, Tubi loses a point or two here. Continue Watching is four rows from the top, a little bit of a long scroll for my tastes to get to the row. The top content carousel on Tubi is Featured, followed by Recommended, Back by Popular Demand, and a Movie Night row in my inspection of the streamer.
Continue watching is a little too low on the Tubi home screen for my taste.
Some of these rows could clearly be placed lower down in the pecking order on the Tubi home screen, but the streamer clearly has a recommendation algorithm at work. I mostly go to Tubi for its prodigious collection of horror movies, and my home page is replete with rows recommending spooky stuff as a result. An Award Winners & Nominees row is also right at home in my range of tastes, so I applaud Tubi for paying attention to my habits, which is no guarantee for a free streaming service.
You can even find live channels on the Tubi home page if you scroll far enough, but beware. If you hover over a live channel tile on the Tubi home page long enough, not only will autoplay start at the top of the screen, but it will also pull you into a full-screen view of that channel automatically, which I didn’t much enjoy.
Overall, the Tubi home page has mostly bright spots, with a few areas of annoyance that I personally think the streamer could stand to improve. It’s not the best I’ve tried in this series of reviews, but it’s hardly the worst.
Home page score: 7.75 out of 10
Is content discovery easy on Tubi?
Tubi’s algorithm does a good job of delivering relevant TV show and movie recommendations, as noted above. Scrolling through the home page makes all of these recommendations easy to browse through, and Tubi does a good job of shaking up its tile carousels so you’re not just seeing the same thing row after row.
The Search function that allows viewers to seek out specific show and movie titles is conspicuously placed at the top of the left-hand menu, and comes with a trending searches grid just in case you are truly stumped on where to go next. No complaints to be had about content discovery on Tubi, other than I suppose there’s no area to sort by genre in the Search page.
Content discovery score: 9 out of 10
Is switching between categories simple with Tubi?
The left-hand menu on Tubi has a ton of options packed in, including Kids, Search, Home, Categories (which I was missing earlier), My Stuff, Movies, TV Shows, Live TV, and Español, followed by settings. It’s a ton of options, but I think it’s exactly what a streamer with the amount of content Tubi has needs.
You can easily narrow down your browsing to see exactly the type of titles you want to see with this menu, and clicking Live TV will whisk you to the Tubi live channel guide, which has plenty of ways to narrow down your browsing view once you’re in it. While I’m usually loath to give out perfect scores in the course of these exercises, I have to do so in this case.
Category switching score: 10 out of 10
How good are Tubi’s playback controls?
The Tubi playback controls are perhaps trying to do a little too much, but I appreciate all they are doing nonetheless. You get the standard fast-forward, skip to the next episode, and less standard options like the fast-forward and rewind 30 seconds buttons. I think some viewers would prefer to skip ahead by less time, so a few points are lost by Tubi there. Viewers can also adjust subtitles and send feedback through the Tubi playback controls.
One thing I really liked was an all episodes button, which allows the viewer to skip to a specific episode in a series without having to navigate back to the details page. There’s also a row of other titles you may like at the bottom of the screen if you scroll down far enough in the playback controls, but I think this takes up a little too much screen real estate overall.
Tubi’s playback controls go above and beyond. Click to expand.
Tubi’s playback controls are mostly intuitive and come with a lot of options, though I think there are one or two tweaks to consider overall.
Playback control score: 8 out of 10
Is skipping opening and closing credits easy with Tubi?
Opening credits are simple to skip with Tubi — though unfortunately, there’s no way to skip the obligatory ad that plays when the episode or movie begins. The Skip Intro button comes up right away when the credits start, and though it will disappear from the screen eventually, calling up the playback controls will bring it back.
Skipping closing credits happens automatically, as Tubi pops up with a screen previewing the next episode and giving the viewer just three seconds to decide if they want to stick with the credits or not. I think that could be stretched to five seconds, but that’s a relatively minor complaint.
Skipping credits score: 9 out of 10
Closing thoughts
I came away from the examination of Tubi’s user interface pleasantly surprised. If I were grading the service on a curve compared to other free streaming services, it would have rated even higher. Tubi organizes its information in an easy-to-grasp manner, and browsing through it is fast and simple.
There were no major flaws with the Tubi interface, just a minor quibble here and there that added up to a very solid experience from a user perspective. Whether or not Tubi has the content to keep you consistently engaging with it on a daily basis is up to the individual viewer, but I had very few pain points when trying to use the Tubi connected TV app.
Overall score: 8.75 out of 10
Tubi
Tubi is a free video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 200,000+ movies and TV episodes - more than any other streaming service. Its ad breaks are shorter and less frequent than most free services. Fox executives have called their service “TV on steroids.”