Conclusion

WinRK was the best compressor in filesets that it compressed. Unfortunately, it was a really picky compressor. When it came to tough filesets (e.g. MP3, MPG and JPEG), it just didn't bother compressing them. Instead, it just packed them, producing archives that were bigger than the original files. It was also a very slow compressor, taking several minutes when other compressors take only seconds. Little wonder it scored second last in overall efficiency.

Curiously, where WinRK refused to work its magic, SBC Archiver proved to be the best compressor in those filesets. Overall, it was the second-best data compressor after WinRK. However, like WinRK, it was also slow. Fortunately, it was not as slow as WinRK. This gave it a much higher overall efficiency rating than WinRK.

WinAce was amongst the best data compressor in this comparison. However, it was also the slowest data compressor. That made it the most inefficient data compressor of the lot.

Popular compressors like WinRAR and WinZip produced only average compression rates when set to their fastest settings. However, they were amongst the fastest compressors in the comparison. As a result, WinRAR and WinZip were second- and third-most efficient data compressors overall.

StuffIt and the Linux favourite, gzip, mimicked WinRAR's and WinZip's success. They had good compression rates, backed by fast compression times. This made them amongst the most efficient compressors overall.

Although ARJ32 may offer really fast compression, it doesn't always compress the files. Couple that with the fact that it doesn't have a graphical user interface, ARJ32 won't make a very enticing choice for many users.

As such, we would still recommend GUI alternatives like WinRAR and WinZip for fast compression jobs. They are almost as efficient as ARJ32 and certainly a lot more user-friendly. Plus, you can count on them to at least try their best to compress any files you throw at them.

So there you have it - the results of the Fastest Compression Test. Click here to go back to the test results index.

Questions & Comments

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