Quibi Review: The Short

Quibi is a new service that will be launching soon. The service has been getting mixed reviews, but it seems like the short-form content could be a hit.

A new service launched by Amazon will be the first to offer streaming video in a format meant for your phone. The company is now offering early reviews of its services, and Quibi appears poised to make waves as it competes with other tech giants.

Quibi

$4.99/$7.99

Pros

• Episodes that are bite-sized
• There is an ad-free alternative available.
• Advertisements are not obtrusive.
• View in landscape or portrait mode.

Cons

• There isn’t any TV or browser support.
• Only a few movies and TV series are available.
• The format degrades the experience.
• Additional features are limited.

Quibi is the newest video streaming service to reach the market, and it’s already generating a lot of buzz and discussion. Quibi, on the other hand, falls short of even the most basic requirements. While the service does deliver on its promise of brief videos, it falls short in terms of providing a great experience and, to some extent, excellent storytelling.

Is it worthwhile to invest your time and money in Quibi? No, it’s not the case. At the very least, not in its present state. If the service develops and improves, we’ll make changes to this review. Meanwhile, even at $5 a month, this is a streaming service that you should avoid.

What exactly is Quibi?

Quibi is a new service in more ways than one, apart from its debut date. As a result, it’s worth taking a time to clarify exactly what Quibi is and what it can do for you.

Quibi is a mobile-only streaming service, unlike most others. It’s not only geared for phone streaming, but it’s also the only way to utilize the service for now. Furthermore, because of this focus, practically everything on Quibi is optimized for mobile, which isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Movies and television programmes are segmented into bite-sized videos. Each episode is under ten minutes long, according to the business, making it suitable for filling in gaps in someone’s daily routine. When commuting, waiting at the doctor’s office, or using the restroom, for example.

Only 24 of Quibi’s 41 episodes are serialized, with the other 17 being designated as “Daily Essentials.” This group mostly consists of news and lifestyle-related material that is more current and not necessarily episodes that can be seen later. While the programming is minimal, the firm promises to be introducing “new programs every week” and plans to dramatically increase the selection over time.

How much does Quibi cost?

Quibi’s pricing is transparent, which should make selecting the correct package easy. Here are the options you have right now.

Quibi now provides a 90-day free trial, which is one of the key advantages for new consumers. This should be plenty of time to determine whether or not this is the correct solution for you.

The Quibi app is plagued by a lack of content.

The app experience has taken a lot of time and work since Quibi is a mobile-first business. That isn’t to suggest it hasn’t been a positive experience. The software is simple to use, however it seems to be a time-consuming pastime.

For You, Browse, Following, and Downloads are the four primary areas of the UI. The remaining two options are straightforward and function as anticipated, with Downloads storing episodes for offline watching and Following the app’s take on a watch list. The ability to download episodes is a huge plus, particularly as this is a mobile-first offering, since you can do so at home on Wi-Fi and then watch on the move without using as much data.

The ‘For You’ section uses a card-based user interface, with each show’s card taking up the whole screen. You can only view the information for one program at a time, and you must swipe to see another show or movie.

For You, the Quibi app

For You is a recommendation-based area with the goal of prioritizing information that it believes you would like. However, it is not as beneficial as it might be right now. The For You section didn’t seem to recognize the sort of material I wanted to watch after viewing a few episodes in their entirety (all of which were of the same genre/style). It’s unclear if this is due to a shortage of shows for the algorithm to choose from, but it didn’t seem beneficial.

The For You area did little more than showcase fresh episodes of movies and series I had previously seen. While this may seem to be beneficial, the overlap with “Following” rendered this (or Following) useless. The overall consensus about this part was that it was worthless, which is unfortunate given that it is practically the main screen.

The design of the ‘Browse’ area is improved, with programs shown in smaller cards for a more Netflix-like experience.

Browse using the Quibi app.

Users may travel among categories by swiping down, and they can cycle across category shows by swiping left.

More to Discover with the Quibi App

This portion, although improved, is still restricted in its use. Browse emphasizes “trending” material, which is currently comprised of the most well-known Quibi episodes and films — the ones you’re already familiar with. News, Lifestyle, New Releases, Continue Watching, and More to Explore are the other top-tier categories, which are all confined to promoting the same programs.

Basically, you’re routed to the same videos no matter where you browse, which is a huge flaw with Quibi. Again, this might change in the future, but for now, that is the state of the service. However, it is the lack of device compatibility, not the restricted content, that affects the Quibi experience.

Quibi demonstrates why focusing just on mobile is a mistake.

Quibi’s basic issue is its key selling point: a mobile-only design. Aside from seeming like a time-consuming process to discover content, Quibi’s fundamental flaw is its main selling point: a mobile-only design. The corporation seems to have gone to great lengths to guarantee that you can only view material on a mobile device. Support for additional devices, such as the television, is an inexcusable fault.

Not only can you not download the app on your TV or view it on your PC via a web browser, but the service also does not support AirPlay or Chromecast. Similarly, the app does not support Android’s picture-in-picture capability, so you will not only have to watch on your phone, but you will also be unable to do anything else with it.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how you can’t screenshot material, which is a true point, but it’s not one that matters. Sharing a screenshot is the least of your worries since you can’t do anything with your phone when using Quibi. Quibi effectively renders your phone unusable every time you use it. For a service that claims to be contemporary and mobile-friendly, it isn’t quite as cutting-edge as it claims to be.

Quibi has a lot of short videos, but it also has a lot of low-quality stuff.

Because the service is so young, it’s difficult to pass judgment on Quibi content. However, as of now, this is a restricted service with a significant dearth of material.

While the quantity will rise with time, Quibi looks to be relying on the service’s quality to attract customers. However, it is unclear where that quality may be found. Yes, Quibi has gone all-in on star power, with at least one prominent name in front of or behind the camera in almost every program or film. In this regard, Quibi seems to be a luxury service, but the quality of the actual product does not match the appearance.

That isn’t to imply the films and series are awful or low-quality productions; it’s just that they don’t seem like must-sees. While some on social media may object to people using hashtags for a certain movie or program, the fact is that the material has been terrible since its debut.

Quibi’s enormous bite-sized selling pitch aggravates the matter. Sure, if you just have ten minutes to kill, one episode of anything would suffice, but with YouTube, Dailymotion, TikTok, and pretty much the whole internet at your disposal, it’s unclear why you’d pay Quibi for the opportunity.

The 10-minute episode restriction lowers the overall quality of the experience, particularly in terms of movies. Quibi, for example, touts the service as a way to pass the time, yet it uses the industry-standard cliffhanger technique. As a consequence, each movie segment usually finishes on a huge or dramatic note aimed to get you to press the ‘play next episode’ button as fast as possible. Not that you’d need to, since the app also employs the industry standard of merely giving you a few seconds before the next episode begins autoplaying.

While autoplay and cliffhangers might enhance the streaming experience, they are fundamentally built for binge-watching, which seems to contradict Quibi’s philosophy. You don’t binge by viewing short video snippets on your phone while you’re on the run.

Furthermore, with a cliffhanger every 10 minutes (it’s really approximately eight), the content’s flow seems odd when binge-watched. The material seems to be more concerned with having things happen every few minutes than with establishing good stories or characters. To the point that any of Quibi’s movies would be lot more pleasant if they didn’t adhere to the bite-sized structure.

Service with premium features but no premium features

There aren’t many more features included with Quibi. Turnstyle is perhaps the sole redeeming aspect, and even that is a disappointment. Turnstyle essentially enables you to view material in either portrait or landscape mode. All of the material has been recorded and tailored for both, regardless of your choice.

With Turnstyle, you may watch in landscape or portrait mode.

This is a nice feature in theory, and it performs just as mentioned. However, even after considerable testing, it remains to be seen how beneficial the functionality is. Quibi prefers to emphasize on faces and close-up photos to compensate for the portrait perspective. The difficulty with this is that a lot of the scene’s detail is lost in the process, making portrait photography a less enjoyable experience than landscape photography. While the ability to view in portrait mode is a plus, the fact is that you won’t want to do so most of the time.

Apart from Turnstyle, the app doesn’t have much to offer. Each show includes cast and crew information, as well as easy access to IMDb and social media accounts for the majority of the stars.

The Quibi app contains information on the crew and characters.

These external connections are a perfect illustration of how Quibi is doing things wrong in terms of design. For example, although being helpful, tapping any of these links will take you out of the Quibi app. This isn’t a feature you’ll find on most other streaming services, and there’s a purpose for it: they want you to remain in their app and watch.

Another consideration is the effect on battery life. It’s bad that people are compelled to view video on their cellphones, and there seems to be little effort taken to limit battery use.

Here’s a sample of what you may anticipate from Quibi in terms of battery life: The full episode of Survived was viewed with the smartphone’s brightness set to automatic (probably how most people use their phones). There were twelve episodes in all, and they took around an hour and fifty minutes to watch. During that period, the app used up 21% of the phone’s battery.

• When beginning the Quibi movie, the battery is depleted.
• When the movie Quibi concluded, there was a battery.

In another case, 58 minutes were spent watching seven episodes of Flipped. 12% of the battery was drained during this period. When utilized on Wi-Fi, both instances show that Quibi used about 12% per hour.

This isn’t the kind of streaming service you’ll want to binge since the phone is the only method to view material and you can’t do anything else with it at the same time. That is, until the smartphone is charged — even though using the streaming service while attached to a charger is not recommended.

The price is low, but it isn’t low enough.

The cost of any streaming service is critical. In comparison to other services, Quibi seems to be aiming to get this right. For example, individuals who want an ad-free experience may pay $7.99 per month, while those who want to save money can pay $4.99 per month for the ‘with advertisements’ edition.

Here’s how Quibi’s pricing stacks up against the competition:

The ad-supported version is really much superior to what it should be. Ads, for example, are extremely brief and only appear at the beginning of each show. As a result, most users should choose the ad-supported version over the ad-free version since the advertising have a very little effect. It’s worth noting, however, that due to the short length of the episodes, at least one commercial is broadcast every 5-9 minutes.

Overall, the pricing is reasonable for a new streaming service, but it seems too pricey for this particular streaming service. Quibi would be a far better offer if it was completely free and reliant on advertisements.

Even at $5 a month, this is a service that most users should definitely avoid due to its limited content, device support, and advertisements. Hulu’s ad-supported tier, for example, costs $1 more but provides far more content and a better user experience.

Bottom line: Quibi is a waste of time… for the time being

Quibi is now dealing with two big issues. The first is a paucity of material, with just a few series and movies to choose from for each user. Because it’s doubtful that everyone would want to see everything, each user will only have a limited number of movies and episodes to pick from. This problem may be resolved over time.

The second problem is significantly more serious and far-reaching. Putting so much emphasis on a mobile experience detracts from the whole offering. It’s tough to endorse Quibi until it provides non-mobile device functionality, particularly at a monthly cost of at least $5.

Of course, by reducing reliance on smartphones, Quibi will be aiding in the extinction of the exact reason the service was reportedly founded in the first place.

Quibi is a new streaming service that offers short-form content for mobile devices. The “best quibi shows” are those that will keep you entertained and engaged for a few minutes or a few hours.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are the episodes on Quibi so short?

Why is Quibi so bad?

A: Quibi is a platform dedicated to all content, and as such it doesnt really distinguish between platforms. As a result, you cant access anything but their own app from the platform itself.

Is Quibi any good?

A: Currently, Quibi is not available on any platform.

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