Perfect Web Browser review

Rob Potter

We review Perfect Web Browser for the Apple iPhone, an alternative to Safari

Published on Sep 4, 2009

It’s a bold claim, but Perfect Web Browser reckons it’s bettered Apple’s own iPhone web browser. In many ways, it’s right too. There are plenty of extras that put it ahead of Apple’s offering, and in many ways they’re easy wins. But is it enough to really teach Apple a lesson?

Neat features such as searching for text on a web page, full-screen browsing and customisable bookmarks make for a more powerful browsing experience than many iPhone owners will be used to.

However, there’s a problem here. On the surface, Perfect Web Browser is a powerful app, but dive a little deeper and you’ll see many of its selling points are less than essential.

Full-screen browsing is a nice luxury, but it’s hardly crucial, especially with the iPhone’s standard browser able to zoom quickly and easily with a simple pinch.

What’s more, when we tested Perfect Web Browser on an iPhone 3G it seemed sluggish while viewing heavy web pages. Compared to Safari running on iPhone OS 3.0, it was noticeably jerkier while scrolling too.

That said, Perfect Web Browser’s Hyper Scroll feature, which adds a proper vertical scroll bar to websites, is dead handy and a stroke of genius when it comes to reading lengthy pages, assuming you let them load completely before scrolling.

The fact remains, however, that Perfect Web Browser’s main functions are already available on the iPhone as standard. Its extra features are handy, but a far cry from essential tools on the go.

What’s more, clever bookmarklets can bring in-page text search to the iPhone for free, negating one of the app’s core features.

Is it value for money? At less than a pound, it’s hard to say. If you’re the sort to spend hours scrolling vertically, meticulously saving bookmarks and desperate to save a few extra pixels with full-screen browsing, it might be worth it.

However, if you simply want standard web browsing on the go, there’s little here to justify the outlay.