Panels - Comic Reader 4+

I’ve been using panels for going on 2 years now. In the beginning, it was really cool to be able to read my manga and comics on my iPad because I switched from physical books to digital thanks to the pandemic. Panels was really nice in the beginning albeit a bit lackluster feature wise. Over the course of my use, it’s been improving each update, adding all sorts of wonderful features and just making it a better experience. By far my favorite feature to day is them adding custom SMB server support. I have it connected to my home server where all my e-books are stored and now it’s just like my Plex server. Panels is definitely my go to app for all things comic related. You honesty can’t beat it in my opinion. I don’t even make reviews for apps but Panels is definitely one that deserves the praise. I put all my friends on to it and they love it just as much as I do. Please keep up the good work Panels time, y’all are truly making something special here for us comic lovers .

Ive been using Chunky app for a while, and is a great app, but Panels push the boundaries further with its awesome Library view, editing and import support. There were some minor bugs on iOS 12 or older. I contacted the developer by email and the response time was no joke. Not only they make sure they understand the issue, they asked me more input about the app updates. I was going to give 4 stars because of just one issue that I think could be improved (in my two cents of opinion), but the communication with the developer was so fast and satisfactory that that alone is worth two extra stars if there were more to give. Panels is elegant, organize and the app aesthetics (which is backed by its performance) just wants you to read more.

This is one of the better readers from a basic UI standpoint, but probably one of the worst from a technical one.

You can add files through iTunes, but not whole folders. As for retrieving them from the app, you might as well forget it. You must create the folders in the app separately, either to import into or add to later. These folders also become part of the app and cannot be managed anywhere else. It’s an overly tedious design that hints at poor development or excessive attempts to force subscription without first building the trust that it will be any less tedious.

Subscriptions meant to cover the cost of services make sense. After all, some do charge the developers. Lumping in services that the developers don’t pay a dime to maintain should be a separate, one-time fee to cover the cost of publishing the app. I can’t see paying Panels monthly to cover the cost of using my local server, unless they plan to send out techs to maintain it. After my experience importing files, I wouldn’t want to pay for that experience again.

There is almost no animation to reading beyond the generic slide. For one of the most expensive apps to own, it is sad to fall short of the stock Books app included by Apple.

Overall, I like the basic look of the UI and hope that one day the functionality catches up. Until then, I will continue to sync with Chunky and import the files here to organize when I get to it. If not for the UI, I probably wouldn’t bother at all.